Cheating (the kind that students do when taking tests) has existed for ages – perhaps the very day that man started to exist – and it seems that as time goes by, the methods used for this unscrupulous activity just gets more creative. Blame whatever you want for that, but technology does play a part.
Unsurprisingly, technology is also becoming a bane for cheaters. There is actually a company that specializes in technology that catches cheats. Caveon Test Security has been in operation for several years now and uses statistical anomalies to determine if students have been cheating. The algorithm that they use is not exactly public, but neither is it a secret.
As a matter of fact, using statistics as the basis for catching cheats is an age old trick – Caveon only makes it more advanced and accurate. The basic idea is that their algorithm checks for patterns that show up if test takers have been copying from each other (high number of the same incorrect answers). It also checks for illogical patterns such as people getting correct answers for harder questions and getting easy questions incorrectly.
It is easy to see that while those ideas do make sense, it may not be foolproof. Critics are actually pointing out that the methods used by Caveon may not be that accurate – and they may very well be right. Then again, it might be better than allowing cheating to go unchecked.
What do you think of Caveon’s premise? Is it logical or does it put too much faith in technology?
Photo via Instructables
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