Online teaching: Do you know who is taking the final exam?

In recent years Distance Learning has been steadily gaining popul arity. More and more courses are being taught online. However, one question remains for those who tea ch online courses: who is doing the real course work? In this paper we will briefly s urvey the commonly used methods to prevent students from e-cheating, attempt to answer the quest ion whether present technology has made it possible to completely eliminate student dishonesty in Distance Learning. In particular we look at how biometrics as identificat ion tools can be applied to achieve this goal. The main purpose of the paper is to ask college educators and policy makers to rethink the credibility and quality of modern college education which could be endangered by issuing college degrees to the students who never really took the r equired courses.

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