A Study of the Acceptance of Facial Authentication in Distance

Education in Different Spanish Speaking Countries

Francisco D. Guillén-Gámez and Iván García-Magariño

Department of Computer Engineering and Industrial Organization, Faculty of Technical Sciences,

Open University of Madrid (UDIMA), Madrid, Spain

Keywords: Face Recognition, Online Learning, Analysis of Perceptions, Educational Results, Biometrical Recognition,

Tools Moodle.

Abstract: Accurate student identification has usually been considered important in the field of e-learning. Nowadays,

there are several technologies to identify students and one of them is facial authentication (by means of

biometrics), which allows user identities to be authenticated and verified based on their physiological

features of their faces. There is actually a high demand of students wanting to gain admission to e-learning

programs. Therefore, it is crucial for this kind of education to be as adequate and recognized as any other.

For this purpose, it is necessary to verify the students’ identity when they are doing their homework using

the Learning Management Systems (LMSs) such as Moodle platform. The main objective of this research is

to analyze student perceptions about the development and implementation of facial authentication for e-

learning within the Moodle platform in different Hispanic speaking countries (Spain, Dominican Republic

and Colombia).

1 INTRODUCTION

Like Arenas, Domingo, Molleda et al. (2009)

mention, universities are on the way to transform a

classic teaching model into a new mixed teaching

model, combining distance learning and face-to-face

learning. Distance learning is commonly also called

distance education and e-learning. Toth, Pentelenyi

and Toth (2008) affirm that e-learning is a new kind

of interactive learning in which the learning content

is available through the network and, therefore,

provides an automatic feedback about teaching

activities for the students. Llamas (1986) establishes

that e-learning can be explained as the ways to study

that are not instructed or monitored directly in the

presence of a teacher in class, but benefit from the

tutors’ planning and guidance through a mean of

communication that permits the interrelation among

students and professors.

Currently, there is a big demand for admissions

into e-learning university degrees. Consequently it is

necessary for distance education to be as acceptable

as another sort of education. In order to achieve this

requirement, it is needed to certify the students’

identity when they do their exercises within the

Moodle platform (Dougiamas and Taylor (2003)),

and thus, should be able to avoid educational frauds.

In this sense, Moodle has turned into one of the most

used platforms in universities as a preferential way

to encourage interactions between professors and

students (Çelik, 2010).

It is fundamental to delimit what biometrics is, to

be able to implement this procedure of verification.

As Jain and Flynn, (2008) indicate, biometrics is a

method for recognizing people based upon

physiological or behavioral characteristics. There are

different typologies within biometrics, such as

fingerprints, iris, voice, facial verification (García-

Hernández and Paredes, 2005).

There have been some attempts to solve people

authentication having in mind physical aspects of the

human body, but it is through facial authentication

(Tapiador, 2005) where it appears an opportunity in

e-learning to verify the absence of frauds while the

students do their activities on the platform

. As Duró

(2001) states, face-based authentication corresponds

to a system that allows the identification and/or

verification of a person’s identity as of the

morphological or behavioral characteristics, unique

to each individual.

From the other side, the Project we are working

in has focused on the perception Master Degree

392

D. Guillén-Gámez F. and García-Magariño I..

A Study of the Acceptance of Facial Authentication in Distance Education in Different Spanish Speaking Countries.

DOI: 10.5220/0004936003920397

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2014), pages 392-397

ISBN: 978-989-758-020-8

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

students from different Hispanic speaking countries

have had with the implementation of face-based

authentication in the Open University of Madrid

(UDIMA) within the Moodle platform. A

questionnaire was produced for the development of

the project in order to know the perceptions of the

students.

2 RELATED WORKS

Lately, new information and communication

technologies have merged with e-learning through

the Moodle platform. The focus of our attention will

be on the best renowned articles about the

acceptance that facial authentication could have in

different geographic regions on the platform

Moodle

Domínguez (2010) ran an article about Moodle

platform in the world; regarding our territory, Spain

is placed at second position throughout the world,

before the United Kingdom and behind the USA.

This analysis concludes that countries like Colombia

or Dominican Republic are not amongst the top 10

countries with registered Moodle sites.

Rama (2010) analyzed the percentage of e-

learning enrollments compared to the other kinds of

education. As it can be perceived in the article, e-

learning in higher education hardly reaches 10

percent of the whole Colombia enrollment. With

respect to the Dominican Republic, the e-learning

modality represents 11 percent of the country

institutions and 6.26% of the total amount of

students in the country. Comparing these data to

Spain’s, 15 percent of Spanish students study at the

National Distance Education University (UNED),

hence the fact that it is possible to assure that at least

15 percent of students are distance learning students.

Moreover, the real percentage will be higher due to

there are new private universities having distance

education programs in Spain (UDIMA, UOC,

Universidad de Cantabria, etc.) but there are not

enough data to estimate the percentage of population

that study at these Spanish universities

Besides et al., (2008) completed the investigation

about the implementation of facial verification into

Spanish education with a successful positive result.

The goal they pursued was to guarantee that the

students in line are who they say they are, and to

know exactly the amount of time that they spend in

front of the computer reading or realizing their

virtual activities. In the same way of face-based

authentication, Ullah et al., (2012) posed a facial

authentication mechanism in order to ensure that the

students are not impersonated to improve their

marks in virtual tests. Lastly et al., (2011) presented

a system to check that the students are really

attending virtual classes through physical biometric

characteristic (face features).

On the other side, there are numerous

researchers that use the webcam of computers or

laptops of the students in their methods to extract

images of them, to subsequently proceed with using

facial authentication as of those pictures. Along

these lines, there are works as Pattanasethanon,

Savithi (2012) or for instance, those from the

researchers Grafsgaard et al., (2013) from the North

Carolina State University. They developed an

investigation about the software of recognition of

facial expressions where the emotions of on-line

students can be evaluated with accuracy and predict

the effectiveness of the tutorial sessions through the

video camera of their webcam.

When comparing these analyses to ours, the main

difference is that our research is focused on knowing

the percentage rates that the development and the

implementation of facial recognition in different

Hispanic speaking countries.

3 MOTIVATION

Until now, the way of working of the students in

distance education was not controlled considering

that there were not any way to monitor in which

situation they developed their activity. The use of

this technology within education raises the

possibility to verify that there are not frauds while

students do their activities on the platform.

The purpose of this investigation is focused on

knowing the degree of valuation and usability that

the implementation of face-based authentication in

e-learning through the Moodle platform in different

Hispanic speaking countries, like Spain, the

Dominican Republic and Colombia has in university

students. To put it in another way, it is expected to

know the students opinions and attitudes from each

country, comparing with the remaining ones and a

scale with the degree of acceptance about which

kind of activity (continuous assessment, learning

activities, tests) is more valued for the

implementation of the tool in distance education.

The SMOLW tool was implemented as facial

recognition software for the research development. It

consisted of capturing photos of the student for his

subsequent webcam verification. SMOWL was

inserted when the student used to insert contents in

glossaries and to do tests of the different lessons of

the subject.

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4 ANALYSIS OF THE

PERCEPTION OF STUDENTS

ABOUT FACIAL

RECOGNITION

The poll had a size of 56 students from the course

‘Advanced techniques in E-Learning’ from the

Master Degree on Education and New Technologies

and from the course ‘Technology Platforms’ from

the Master Degree on Digital Communication of the

Open University of Madrid (UDIMA). The sample

of respondents was composed of 50% of Spanish

students and the rest 50% of Latin American

students, in particular from Colombia and the

Dominican Republic. The Spanish average age was

32.54, being 64.28% women and 35.71% men. On

the other hand, the average age in Latin America

was 36.75 with the same percentage of women and

men.

The collection of data is another important step

in the investigation since the conclusions of a study

are based on such data. In most investigations, when

assessing attitudes and opinions, the seven-point

Likert scale is usually used: Totally disagree(1),

Disagree (2), Slightly Disagree (3), Neither agree

nor disagree (4), Slightly Agree (5), Agree (6) and

Strongly Agree (7). The questions of the current

research are answered with this scale.

Among all those questions that have been

conducted, the most valuable in terms of content has

been highlighted. Table 1 presents these questions,

which have been raised with the Likert scale:

Table 1: Questions of the questionnaire.

Question

After testing the software, do you think it is a good

method to identif

le?

Do you think it is appropriate to use facial authentication

in e-learnin

Do you think it is fair to monitor distance education in

order to avoid cheatin

If you could choose, would you rather realize the activi-

ties with the incorporation of this software in order to

demonstrate that you have done the activity, and not be

harmed in front of students that ask others to do their

activities?

Do you think the use of this software could have caused

a rise of your academic efficiency when you have been

doin

our activities?

Do you think you have taken the same time to do your

activities when you knew your identity was being

verified?

Do you think it is appropriate to apply facial

authentication to the tests?

Do you think it is appropriate to apply facial authentic-

cation to the activities of continuous assessment?

Do you think it is appropriate to apply facial

authentication to the learnin

activities?

5 RESULT OF THE ANALYSIS

In relation to the knowledge the participants of the

study have about the implementation of face

authentication in e-learning in different countries, it

is noticeable that there are quite positive average

values. Related and gathered data have been

attached to the Figure 1, in order to start analyzing

the impact achieved, as well as all the questions

suggested in the questionnaire. Each question is

presented with the average of all the respondents to

have a general view. It is useful to recall that number

1 would be ‘Totally Disagree’ and on the contrary 7

‘Strongly Agree’. Also, it is necessary to have in

mind that ‘SPA’ refers to Spain and ‘LAT’ to Latin

America.

Figure 1: Average responses of all the questions with the

seven-point Likert scale.

If the responses of the figure 1 are analyzed for

the two geographic group of students, one can

observe that the use of the tool has a good

acceptance in the whole geographic area that has

been investigated. Although on the other hand, when

analyzing the gathered data from the investigation

for all the questions depending on the different

geographic areas, one realizes that the

implementation of facial authentication has more

acceptance for the students from Latin America.

Figure 2: Do you think it is appropriate to use facial

authentication in e-learning?

It is clear that for all the respondents of the

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Figure 2 it is necessary the implementation of

SMOWL in e-learning. Although, if the question is

analyzed by areas, we find that Latin America gives

a better reception and approval than Spain. If the

different averages are observed, it can be seen that

Latin America has an acceptance average of 6.29 out

of 7 in contrast with 5.82 out of 7 of Spain.

Figure 3: Do you think it is fair to monitor distance

education in order to avoid cheating?

In Figure 3, it is clear that for almost all the

people replying the survey, it is fair to control who

performs the tasks and who is a fake user. In fact,

one can observe that almost all respondents agree or

strongly agree with this proposal. Only two learners

disagree with it. If one compares between countries,

one can observe that it is perceived as fairer by

learners from Latin America.

Figure 4: If you could choose, would you rather realize the

activities with the incorporation of this software in order

to demonstrate you have done the activity, and not be

harmed in front of students that ask others to do their

activities?

In figure 4, we can see again how the students

from Latin America are more willing to accept the

use of facial authentication in online classes. One

can tell intuitively that Spanish students resist the

idea of these new technological methods. If we take

the average of both areas, it is possible to see how

Spain has an average of 5.07 while Latin America

has 5.71.

Figure 5: Do you think the use of this software could have

caused a rise of your academic efficiency when you have

been doing your activities?

In figure 5, It is obvious that Latin American

students have different more different opinions than

Spanish learners and also there are not an answer

that prevails in the rest of the options. From the

average, Spanish students disagree with an average

of 3.07 in relation to the average of 4.04 from Latin

America. From this, it can be deduced that Spanish

students think that the use of facial authentication

does not help improving the efficiency when doing

their activities, as they think they have been able to

work in the same way as they would have worked

without the tool.

Figure 6: Do you think it is appropriate to apply facial

authentication to the tests?

In Figure 6, there is a high percentage of

students that accept the application of facial

authentication to the tests on the Moodle platform.

The sample of respondents thinks it is fair to monitor

and verify when the student realizes their tests to

avoid cheating.

In addition to the implementation of facial

authentication in the tests in Moodle, it is also

necessary to accomplish the continuous assessment

activities, due to this kind of activities is quite

important in the course. If the Figure 7 is analyzed

carefully with the average, and Latin America keeps

the same percentage over Spain.

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Figure 7: Do you think it is appropriate to apply facial

authentication to the activities of continuous assessment?

Figure 8: Do you think it is appropriate to apply facial

authentication to the learning activities?

With respect to the learning activities, Figure 8

shows that the majority of the students think that

learning activities should also include the facial-

recognition software, although there are some

students that slightly disagree.

On the other hand, if the average about the

different typologies of activities we can accomplish

in the platform Moodle is analyzed and compared,

one can extract the order of preference of students to

include facial authentication in the different kinds of

activities. For students, the tests are the most

important activities to include facial authentication,

followed by the continuous assessment activities,

and the least important ones are the learning

activities.

Without any doubt, the analysis carried through

the perceptions of the students from both Hispanic

speaking areas shows the acceptance of the tool,

although there are differences in the degree of

implementation depending on the country. In

particular, Latin American countries present a wider

acceptance than Spain.

6 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

This section presents the conclusions that have been

reached in the development of this project and the

results obtained through the presented analysis. In

addition, some future work is raised based on this

research.

The analysis of the answers of the students

revealed that the respondents from Latin America

valued the implementation of this tool in distance

education more than Spanish students. Moreover,

they accepted the tests to be the main activity to be

monitored in Moodle.

Comparing and analyzing the data gathered with

the work of Rama (2010), one can conclude that

Colombia and the Dominican Republic have higher

acceptance of the tool, but at the same time there are

more Spanish students signed up in distance courses

than Latin Americans. One possible reason for this

fact can be that Spanish are more used to online

education (for now without being monitored in

LMSs), and consequently they feel the facial

authentication as an intrusive technology that they

have not used for many curses. On the other hand,

Latin American students have started online

education more recently, and they find more

appropriate to authenticate the student identities,

since they are not still very used to LMSs without

biometric authentication.

The work of this survey opens new ways and

lines of research with which to continue working in

the future. In the first place, it is planned to develop

a Moodle plugin for SMOWL accessible for all the

education community, in which instructors can

configure the activities where they want students to

be facially authenticated.

The work is also planned to be extended with more

elaborated and extensive questionnaires in order to

know the perceptions of the students in both

Hispanic areas. Moreover, this research will also

include an analysis of the legislation issues about

privacy in the different countries. In the future, it is

also important to wonder until which point

biometrics permits privacy. In fact, we plan to

reflect on this aspect, because any technology based

on biometrics is traditionally considered to be able

to dehumanize and threaten the privacy rights of

people.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work has been done in the context of the

research project Desarrollo de un módulo de

autenticación y monitorización biométrica de

usuarios en entornos virtuales de aprendizaje,

supported by the Universidad a Distancia de

Madrid, with grant UD-019. This research work has

also been funded by the Spanish Ministry for

Economy and Competitiveness through the project

Social Ambient Assisting Living - Methods

(SociAAL), with grant TIN2011-28335-C02-01.

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