Online-Proctoring-System
Online Courses greatly expand the reach of todays educational institutions, both by provid- ing a wider range of educational resources to enrolled students and by making educational resources available to persons who cannot access a campus due to location or schedule con- straints. Exams are a critical component of any educational program, and online educational programs are no exception. In any exam, there is a possibility of cheating, and therefore its detection and prevention is important. According to a survey about 29% of the students admitted cheating. When exams are administered in a conventional and proctored classroom environment, the students are mon- itored by a human proctor throughout the exam. The overall goal of this system is to maintain academic integrity of exams, by providing real-time proctoring to detect the ma- jority of cheating behaviors of the test taker. To achieve such goals, audio-visual observations about the test takers are required to be able to detect any cheat behavior. Our system monitors some signs in the room where the test taker resides, using two cameras and a microphone. The first camera is the webcam of laptop itself. The other camera can be a smartphone camera. The microphone is the built in microphone of laptop, So no extra hardware is required on behalf of student to give the exam. Using such sensors, we propose to detect the following cheat behaviors:
- cheat from text books/notes/papers,
- using a phone to call a friend,
- asking a friend in the test room, and
- having another person take the exam other than the test take
This project has the following features:
- Proposes an automated online exam proctoring system with visual and audio sensors for the purpose of detecting cheating.
- Collects a multimedia dataset of images of student from both the cameras during exams and also the dataset of anomalous behaviours of student.
Insights
The functioning of each module in the project is as follows:
Camera 1:
Camera 1 is the web-cam of the laptop itself. It clicks the photo of the student after some fixed interval of time, decided by admin. The photo clicked by this camera is sent to Microsoft Face API as well as to the main server and a response from Microsoft API is received. The response contains the coordinates of a rectangle bounding the face and coordinates of pupil and nose. This response is checked against some predefined bounds and estimated result is send to local server.
Camera 2:
Camera 2 is the Mobile camera. This works through an Android App. The student is required to download an app for this. And before starting the exam, student needs to enter his registration ID in the app and put phone in some place from where his photo can be clicked. This camera checks for the open books and mobile usage. This app clicks the photo after some regular interval of time and sends it to Microsoft API as well as to the main server and receives the response. Again this response is checked against some predefined conditions and result is send to local server.
Voice Recognition:
This is done through the microphone of the laptop. The recorder records sound for every three seconds and sends it to voice API. This is done through threading. One thread records the sound and other thread sends it voice API simultaneously. Our sound testing module compares this recorded sound with the previously recorded sounds using Bits In Harmony voice API. And the result is send to local server.
Main Server:
This is our main web application developed in java using eclipse IDE. It contains entire web server, chat server and database server. Web server contains rich collection of servlets which are accepting the request and generating the response in the form of jsp page. Servlet which are specific to administrator are well separated in packages. When the user give some inappropriate input appropriate response is generated using dynamic jsp pages.
The Database is implemented using MySQL database and Chat-server is implemented using Web-socket API. Currently no registration module for chat server the Administrator has to send a message ’REGISTER ME’ on opening the chat interface to register to the Chat server.
Local Server:
This is basically collection of 3 servers each one accepting data from camera1, camera2 and voice recognition system. Local server keeps log of how many times each student has failed in particular checking module and send the data to the main server as soon as student fails in a particular checking module.
Java Web Start:
You must be wondering how Local Server(java program) and Voice recognition(java program) gets downloaded and run at client side. This is through ’java web start’. The Java Web Start software allows you to download and run Java applications from the web. The Java Web Start software:
- Provides an easy, one-click activation of applications
- Guarantees that you are always running the latest version of the application
- Eliminates complicated installation or upgrade procedures