The development and testing of a video system for online authentication of assessment

Having an online assessment system that is secure,--effective and efficient is a major problem for distance learning providers. At the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, the Criminal Justice Team (within the Social, Community and Health Studies) and the Department of Computer Science are two departments that--deliver significant e-learning programmes. This paper describes the design development and evaluation of a secure system for verification of candidates identities for use in online objective assessment, using video and chat. The findings of two studies are reported in the paper, a pilot study with expert evaluators and a--study with a group of undergraduates. We were able to show that the method is acceptable to candidates and imposed little additional cognitive burden. We also measured the efficiency of the system developed and identify problems and limitations with the approach.