ProjectProposal-LeoChen
From CS160 User Interfaces Fa06
The Anoto Teacher Test Aid
Abstract
A study by The Center for Academic Integrity found that almost 80% of college students admit to cheating at least once. (Plagarism.org) This project is designed to aid professors in reducing the number of cheaters during exams. The idea is to utilize the Anoto's ability to time stamp documents and pen strokes in order to red flag potential cheaters, during a test. Our system also enables professors to see which test questions take students longer; which in the end can assist them in adjusting their lectures and future tests.
Target
The target in this case are test administrators who have to deal with a large amount of students taking multi-page tests in a testing environment. Our system could be implemented at any school level.
System Description
Our system composes of a couple parts. It would require a wireless Anoto pen and paper for each student. A wireless bluetooth network in place and test proctors with some way of receiving wireless transmissions from a base station.
Each student is required to take the test on special Anoto paper and with an Anoto pen. The test is laid out so that each question is on its own page(s). So by querying the page ID from the pen, our system can determine which problem each student is currently working on. In addition to all this, each student's location in the testing room is recorded by the instructor and mapped to their Anoto pen ID.
Our system will have an algorithm that red flags potential cheaters based on location and the question they are currently working on. Of course, at the beginning of the test, there should be very little divergence in terms of questions being worked on by students, however as the test progresses students should start to separate in terms of test questions. Locations that have been red flagged will be transmitted on the wireless blue tooth network over to the test proctors. This allows them to step in and observe those students in question.
The idea behind our system is that because each question is printed on its own page, a cheaters must be working on the same question in order to copy off one another. Lower division classes at UC Berkeley often have class sizes that are in the hundreds. It's impossible to properly proctor tests. However, by red flagging potential cheaters, and relaying the information to test admin, proctors can move to a position to better observe the students in question.
Further advantages can be gleaned from the basic backbone of our system. Because of the time stamping that takes place, a professor can determine which questions students struggle on. If the class spends an excessive amount of time on a certain question, the professor has quick feedback on this and can adjust his lectures in the future.
Hurdles
We do make some assumptions in our system. A student may take a long time just reading a question; our system has no way of determining which question is being read in this case. Perhaps by making students check off a page when reading a test problem, this issue could be overcome. But this requires more effort on the part of the student and would be hard if not impossible to enforce.
A second problem would be the result of students checking over the test. They would be flipping through pages, which would expose their test answers to cheating. Once again, there is no easy solution to this unless the students voluntarily mark on their papers when they are checking over answers.
The third design hurdle will involve the range of bluetooth devices and the possible interference that results from 100 students all w/ blue tooth pens. The typical bluetooth device has a range about 30 ft. Receivers would have to be set up in a lily pad configuration around the test room, which means that test rooms would have to be modified beforehand.
