Usability of profile based student authentication and traffic light system in online examinations

There has been an increased interest in effective approaches to student authentication, given that online examinations are a crucial component of online learning. The work presented here, is part of an ongoing programme of research on the extent to which challenge questions are an effective approach to student authentication in online examination contexts, where face-to-face invigilation is not in use. Although the use of challenge questions shows great potential, there are some concerns about its usability in particular relating to memorability. This paper summarizes the findings of an empirical study in which, 23 participants used a framework developed by the authors namely “Profile Based Authentication Framework” (PBAF). Findings from the empirical study suggests that memorability, questions clarity, varied writing syntax and case variation can cause usability issues leading to failed authentication. A traffic light scheme was implemented to improve the usability of challenge questions for online examination authentication.