ValID: A Trust-Based Virtual Assessment System

Even though online education is a very important pillar of lifelong education, institutions are still reluctant to wager for a fully online educational model. At the end, they keep relying on on-site assessment systems, mainly because fully virtual alternatives do not have the deserved social recognition or credibility. Thus, the design of virtual assessment systems that are able to provide effective proof of student authenticity and authorship and the integrity of the activities in a scalable and cost efficient manner would be very helpful. This paper presents ValID, a virtual assessment approach based on a continuous trust level evaluation between students and the institution. The current trust level serves as the main mechanism to dynamically decide which kind of controls a given student should be subjected to, across different courses in a degree. The main goal is providing a fair trade-off between security, scalability and cost, while maintaining the perceived quality of the educational model.