Is Your Avatar Ethical? on-Line Course Tools That are Methods for Student Identity and Verification

On-line college courses present a mandate for student identity verification for accreditation and funding sources. Student authentication requires course modification to detect fraud and misrepresentation of authorship in assignment submissions. The reality is that some college students cheat in face-to-face classrooms; however, the potential for on-line fraud exceeds that of traditional classroom protocols. Because of reduced personal contact, on-line teaching requires additional ways to prevent cheating and to authenticate authorship of course submissions. Key issues include providing both legal and ethical accountability to college's funding sources for accreditation. Detection methods include qualitative and quantitative analysis utilizing course content analysis, psychometrics, and biometrics (which includes fingerprint, voice recognition software, camera photo ID matched to student ID). Case studies include qualitative analysis focused on cultural causes related to ethical lapses. This article describes these topics and methods and how their use helps detect and reduce cheating. Verification methods should identify student authorship and submission misrepresentation and reduce errors in student evaluations, grading, course outcomes analysis, and the granting of college credit for work completed.