Design, privacy and authentication of challenge questions in online examinations

Online examination is an essential part of the online learning and secure authentication is considered vital for the success of online learning. This study is part of an ongoing research on student authentication approaches and the use of challenge questions in online examination authentication. This paper presents the results of an empirical study based on “Profile Based Authentication Framework” (PBAF), which uses challenge questions for student authentication in online examination. The PBAF uses challenge questions related to personal, academic and professional information. These questions inform the usability, security and privacy of PBAF authentication approach. The results presented here summarizes the impact of questions design on the usability based on data collected from challenge questions authentication and a post-experiment survey on the data privacy.