Copy proof

It’s June and the dark shadow of exams is hovering over the life of many muggle children and youngsters. Parents are suffering too. More than in the past do they copy their children’s insecurities and nerves. Worse still, the adult distortion mirror of hindsight and hopefulness often amplifies their experience.

New electronic learning tools have made little difference in these testing times. Used extensively for assignments and evaluations during the course of the learning process, they do not satisfy the basic requirements for a final examination. They are still not identity- and copy-proof.

Indeed, you can require distance students to turn on their webcam for the duration of the examination. But what if the device blacks out during the allotted time? Is the attempt invalidated? This question looms high over any technical setback during the test and holds legal repercussions.

The point of assuring the individuality and originality of the answers is, if possible, even more tricky. A webcam cannot detect a second laptop placed tactically outside its visual field, much less pages of a book or an all too helpful uncle. I have read about examiners who are scanning the students’ eye movements to make sure that no undue wanderings outside the screen occur. Imagine the stress involved in this level of control. No wonder many institutions have abandoned the pursuit of organizing exams online and returned to actual sessions.

Let me move on to the broad and more acute problem of plagiarism, present in all forms of education today and exponentially so in elearning. Of course, one can install plagiarism detection software that will cut each assignment nicely in two percentages, original and copy. It is probably an indispensable tool in higher education. But how to explain what plagiarism is to young people who always had this wealth of information at their fingertips? Is the concept of plagiarism itself not due for a revision?