Hi Marcus
Back to the original subject. After a long ride I come to the same conclusion. This detailed post https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=377609#p1522487 in the German community is a good summary. As far as BYOD goes, either you stand behind the candidates during the exam or go to expensive proprietary supplier of a proctoring service. The critical point is that you don't have control over the device.
If you have control over the device, and the examination is conducted in a controlled space (lab, classroom) only then SEB is a feasible and a good solution.
That’s nonsense. People concentrating only on the possible technical means of cheating when doing exams on electronic devices miss the essential point: Cheating in other ways (cheat sheets, smuggle a mobile phone with Bluetooth earpiece, smart watch etc.) is much easier and you can just prevent it by a code of honesty, good proctors/invigilators in the exam hall and severe punishment when a student gets caught cheating.
SEB is mostly used for exams on student owned devices, by estimate approximately 80% of all of the estimated 2-3 million single exams performed using SEB per year worldwide. Not many cases of cheating are reported. Surely not more than with classic exams.
Full disclosure: I’m the project leader and lead developer for Safe Exam Browser
Hallo Daniel
It is always good to be talking to the source!
In fact, I had a look at SEB a long time ago, then BYOD was not a topic. In our computer labs SEB worked well. Then there was a long pause, now both topics have arrived in one package.
Anyway, back to what you wrote:
> That’s nonsense.
What exactly is the nonsense. I touched quite a few points in my post. They all can't be nonsense. They made perfect sense to me.
> People concentrating only on the possible technical means of cheating when doing exams on electronic devices
Are you talking about me? If you've read my post, you would have seen that I am not. Read,
>> As far as BYOD goes, either you stand behind the candidates during the exam or go to expensive proprietary supplier of a proctoring service.
> Cheating in other ways (cheat sheets, smuggle a mobile phone with Bluetooth earpiece, smart watch etc.) is much easier and you can just prevent it by a code of honesty, good proctors/invigilators in the exam hall and severe punishment when a student gets caught cheating.
Did I say something different?
> SEB is mostly used for exams on student owned devices, by estimate approximately 80% of all of the estimated 2-3 million single exams performed using SEB per year worldwide.
That is surprising. I should look at SEB in connection with BYOD one of these days. But honestly, with BOYD alone we have plenty of headaches that I am not too inclined to try new things out in the near future. Sorry!
P.S. Saw your other post https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=361974&parent=1523205. It has sufficient information for me. Thanks!
It is always good to be talking to the source!
In fact, I had a look at SEB a long time ago, then BYOD was not a topic. In our computer labs SEB worked well. Then there was a long pause, now both topics have arrived in one package.
Anyway, back to what you wrote:
> That’s nonsense.
What exactly is the nonsense. I touched quite a few points in my post. They all can't be nonsense. They made perfect sense to me.
> People concentrating only on the possible technical means of cheating when doing exams on electronic devices
Are you talking about me? If you've read my post, you would have seen that I am not. Read,
>> As far as BYOD goes, either you stand behind the candidates during the exam or go to expensive proprietary supplier of a proctoring service.
> Cheating in other ways (cheat sheets, smuggle a mobile phone with Bluetooth earpiece, smart watch etc.) is much easier and you can just prevent it by a code of honesty, good proctors/invigilators in the exam hall and severe punishment when a student gets caught cheating.
Did I say something different?
> SEB is mostly used for exams on student owned devices, by estimate approximately 80% of all of the estimated 2-3 million single exams performed using SEB per year worldwide.
That is surprising. I should look at SEB in connection with BYOD one of these days. But honestly, with BOYD alone we have plenty of headaches that I am not too inclined to try new things out in the near future. Sorry!
P.S. Saw your other post https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=361974&parent=1523205. It has sufficient information for me. Thanks!
Hallo Visvanath
I meant the first part of your last sentence "If you have control over the device, and the examination is conducted in a controlled space (lab, classroom) only then SEB is a feasible and a good solution.". But I apologize for the word "nonsense", that was not appropriate.
I understood that as a general statement that BYOD can never be secure, and as an attack on SEB ("only then SEB is a feasible solution"), which our experiences contradict. You're right that BYOD can never be 100% secure and that environments with managed devices offer more security. But unfortunately it's not feasible that all universities and schools have exam rooms with hundreds of devices. And as BYOD is the general trend, we have to work on delivering as secure BYOD environments as possible. On desktop operating systems that's a tough business and a kind of cat-and-mouse game (we close security holes as they get discovered and that goes on and on). But the OS companies realized that secure e-assessment is very important for the education sector, so there is a lot going on. iOS already has a very secure BYOD kiosk mode (since iOS 9.3.2), ChromeOS at least for managed ChromeBooks. Microsoft and Apple are working on improvements in Windows 10 and macOS to support lockdown/kiosk applications. So I'm quite optimistic about BYOD for e-assessment also in the future.
Maybe I understood your point wrong, of course you're completely right that proctoring is necessary and that exams taken at home can hardly ever be secure enough. That's also our point, we neither recommend nor support remote exams. Remote proctoring might be a business model, but I currently wouldn't try any kind of high stakes exams without human proctors and examinees sitting in an exam hall.
Regarding BYOD exams, yes, there are plenty of headaches especially in the beginning (and depending on the state of the private devices used), but with good organization, support for students and around 10% of spare university devices it works.
Hi Chris
Don't worry about 'nonsense'. Nothing wrong with the word itself, just its usage was vague. Now you have clarified it, I see my point which you don't agree: In "If you have control over the device, and the examination is conducted in a controlled space (lab, classroom) only then SEB is a feasible and a good solution." you say the first condition "If you have control over the device" is wrong.
Fair enough. It could well be my ignorance. As I already said, my SEB times were long ago. And personally I am busy with other things related to BYOD (and not related to on-line examinations). But colleague are. I will recommend them to try SEB. In fact, I ran a search on moodle.org for SEB and found plenty of references, promising ones. Thanks for keeping up the dynamics of this FOSS project. (For the benefit of those who are new, their website https://safeexambrowser.org has all the information.)
Don't worry about 'nonsense'. Nothing wrong with the word itself, just its usage was vague. Now you have clarified it, I see my point which you don't agree: In "If you have control over the device, and the examination is conducted in a controlled space (lab, classroom) only then SEB is a feasible and a good solution." you say the first condition "If you have control over the device" is wrong.
Fair enough. It could well be my ignorance. As I already said, my SEB times were long ago. And personally I am busy with other things related to BYOD (and not related to on-line examinations). But colleague are. I will recommend them to try SEB. In fact, I ran a search on moodle.org for SEB and found plenty of references, promising ones. Thanks for keeping up the dynamics of this FOSS project. (For the benefit of those who are new, their website https://safeexambrowser.org has all the information.)
+1 to Daniel and the amazing SEB team for sharing your great work with the Open Source Community!!!!
100% agree that technology alone cannot solve all issues involved with cheating and academic integrity, and some of it requires old-fashioned proctoring and monitoring as well as character education and having positive relationships with students....
....but using tools like SEB does allow teachers to leverage all of the benefits of technology while minimizing some of the downsides and risks, making it possible to try and do things never before possible!!!
Thanks to SEB and Moodle, we have had teachers now trying things out that were not possible before, including giving immediate, dynamic feedback during exams, allowing students to correct mistakes, and using the tool to enhance the assessment and learning experience (e.g. taking an anatomy quiz after a rat dissection and using the adaptive and interactive modes in Moodle to help facilitate discussions with lab partners in a low-stakes learning environment with multiple attempts to help each student succeed!)!
Thank you Daniel!!!