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Blackboard Teams with Acxiom To Deliver Student Identity Verification

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 03/13/09

Blackboard and Acxiom have teamed up to authenticate the identities of distance learning students. Acxiom will make its Risk Identification Suite, prevalent in authenticating online banking transactions, available to Blackboard clients to verify the identity of distance learning students. The partnership offers a means for colleges and universities to improve student verification at a time of growing interest in verification policies, spurred by passage of the federal Higher Education Act. The act requires verification that individuals completing online assignments are actually the students registered for the distance learning classes.

"All higher education institutions with distance learning programs are looking for a simple, affordable solution that does not require hardware to meet evolving integrity policies in distance education," said Tim Christin, Acxiom senior VP. "As a champion of consumer privacy and online safety, Acxiom views its identity management services as a perfect fit for Blackboard clients to use in developing new practices in student authentication."

Blackboard's online learning application, Blackboard Learn (formerly the Blackboard Learning System), is the most widely adopted course management system among U.S. post-secondary institutions.

The student identity verification is performed over the Internet with no intrusion into the learning process. Acxiom's authentication system asks verification questions that only the student enrolled in the course can answer. The questions are based on information contained in Acxiom's risk mitigation solutions. The application requires no special hardware, and institutions using Acxiom's solution control when, where, and how frequently students authenticate. Instructors and administrators are notified of results. The entire process is delivered through Blackboard software, enabling authentication during the learning process.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a writer who covers technology and business. Send your higher education technology news to her at dian@dischaffhauser.com.

Comments

Wed, Mar 18, 2009 John B.

In relatively small physical classes, an instructor gets to know each student and there is no need to check IDs. In these smaller classes, an identity ruse would need to last the entire term and that is highly unlikely. In larger physical classes, anonymity increases and there is greater opportunity to have someone take an assessment for you, but there is always the possiblity that someone might spot a new face in the crowd and question that person. With online courses, there is no such opportunity.

Tue, Mar 17, 2009 Rick Balogh Antelope Valley College

First a comment. We should not expect any more for online than for oncampus classes. So, although in a classroom the instructor can monitor cheating, does the instructor really know that the person sitting there in the class is really the one enrolled? At my school I have been told that checking IDs is not permitted. Secondly, I believe that a reasonable approximation to student ID in the classroom is to have the online student obtain part of the password to an exam via email, the other part via voice announcement on my college phone and , when they call to get the partial password, they must leave a voice message stating their name, class, student id number and that they will take the test without assistance of any kind, in their own words, and finally end the message by reading the first question on the randomized test. The time of the message must match the time they started the test online. A message like this for each test is stored as a wav file and processed to a visual product so by ear and by sight, the voice for each test can be compared and verified. I call it VOICE (Verbal Online Identification of Class Enrollment) which I have patented. Yes, they can still get help during the test. As a NASA computer friend of mine told me, there is no way known to be sure of no assistance when using a remote (online) situation short of a proctor who is actually paying attention.

Tue, Mar 17, 2009 Fred Stielow

Fortunately, all students in large land-based classes are perfectly verified as part of the normal police function that helps defines the mission of the modern university. ;-)

Tue, Mar 17, 2009 Mike

Thank you for the constructive comments. It works well in the banking, insurance and retail industires. Early adopters in distance ed say is an effective solution at a good price. Other benefits of the system are that it increases types of available assessments, reduces costs of proctored exams, saves students time, and increases student satisfaction.

Sun, Mar 15, 2009 Larry San Deigo

Seems to me if we want to do this right we are going to need a hermetically sealed container for online students and never let them out until they are finished with their term, and even that may be in doubt

Fri, Mar 13, 2009 John B.

Schools have committed a lot of money to online education. The solution suggested in this article is nothing more than window dressing. A third grader could figure a way around this identification system.

The problem isn't whether you can verify the identify of the person taking the course; the problem is, can you absolutely identify the person providing the answers to an assessment.

As has been pointed out in this discussion, if you ask identifying questions, the person taking the class can answer those questions, then another person can provide the answers to the assessement. Some people have suggested using biometrics, but all that proves is the person with the biometric is at the scanner. Even if you put a camera in the room, the answerer can sit behind the camera looking at a second computer screen.

Matthew - This isn't just about collecting homework online. In online courses, everything is submitted online: homework, papers, quizzes, exams, etc.

Arthur - I don't believe having community colleges proctor assessments is a good long-term solution because they are instituting online education as fast as everyone else and they have the same identification problem.

Someone told me that FedEx Kinko's proctors assessments, but I have not verified this.

Fri, Mar 13, 2009 david lutzka

It is easy for someone to portray another easily online, as someone has done in their post to this article. Would others have known that the second post did not come from me if I hadn’t brought it up? Maybe not, but the point of my comment was not trying find the cheapest way to verification, it was to work at finding ways to get closer to 100% student verification, without spending money on methods that do no more than we can do right now.

Fri, Mar 13, 2009 Arthur

It's the easiest thing in the world for a student to supply his or her tutor or "friend" with the answers to the possible verification questions. Alternatively, the tutor can send a text message to the student asking for the answer to the verification question and get the answer back in less than a minute. The only solution is to insist on proctored exams. We already have a network of community colleges that are willing to proctor exams for online students taking courses at other colleges.

Fri, Mar 13, 2009 david lutzka

This looks good on paper, but through the verification process identified, there is still the possibility of another student working on the computer of friend, with the friend at there side giving them the answers. I believe if we are going to spend money on verification software, then it must be fool proof, because there are other ways of getting the same results without spending much money. One such way that is just as effective would require a phone call to occur when a student is submitting homework, or taking a test. Their telephone number could be verified against the system and random set of questions could be asked. This is no more effective then the latter, but it proves the point that unless we can achieve total student recognition, then we should find the least expensive way of verifying a student’s identity.

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