Student trust in e-authentication

Abstract

Trust is a fundamental prerequisite for the success of any technological development, especially in education. Without the trust of stakeholders, educational technologies (however effective they might be) can fail to be taken up at scale. This work-in-progress paper reports on a study that investigated the trust students have in tools developed to support e-authentication for online assessments in Higher Education. The study, part of the EU-funded TeSLA project (http://tesla-project.eu), involved almost 500 students from the Open University, UK. Students were asked their views on trust and other issues before and after they used a tool developed to authenticate student identity in online assessments. A key finding is that, after using the tools, participants marginally increased their trust in online assessments, with the majority also reporting that they also trusted how the institution would use the outcomes.