Can technology help stem examination leakage?

 

In Summary

• If, as a nation, we have for a long time tolerated and glorified theft in every sphere of our leadership, why should we be shocked that the education sector is finally getting infected by similar behaviour?
• Technology on its own cannot, of course, cure this type of incapacitating disease. It can, however, begin to mitigate or at least slow down the grand march towards self-destruction.
• The long-term solution is to stress the importance of hard work, honesty and diligence instead of instant gratification that is preferred by our "instant-coffee" generation.

The unprecedented leakage of our secondary school examination papers is quite worrying and perhaps might be replicated next week when the national primary school examinations are administered.

Several suspects have been arrested across the value chain that handles the national examinations, but this has not really addressed the root cause of this behaviour.

Many blame the proliferation of social media tools such as WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and others that have been used as the conduit for sharing the leakages. My blame would, however, lie elsewhere.

If, as a nation, we have for a long time tolerated and glorified theft in every sphere of our leadership, why should we be shocked that the education sector is finally getting infected by similar behaviour?

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LEAGUE OF THE FAKE

If you need a fake or corrupt police commissioner, a fake gynaecologist, a fake pastor, a fake professor, a fake musician, a fake politician, you name it, Kenyans can get you one instantly without too much effort or research.

So why should we be surprised that our children want to join the league of the fake and corrupt by cutting corners in their search for educational success?

Indeed, in some twisted form of wisdom, some reports indicate that a few parents are actually involved in procuring some of the leaked exams on behalf of their kids

Clearly, the old slogan of "work hard to secure a good job in the future" has now been replaced by "cheat smart to secure instant success". This seems to be the slogan that previously was silently practiced, but is currently proclaimed loudly and exercised without apologies across our social fabric.

We as a nation have collectively failed to pass on the values that we inherited from our forefathers and we are now paying dearly for it. Hard work, honesty and diligence, among other virtues, are currently considered a weakness, while shortcuts, deceit and laziness are widely celebrated and instantly rewarded.

TECHNOLOGICAL INTERVENTIONS

Technology on its own cannot, of course, cure this type of incapacitating disease. It can, however, begin to mitigate or at least slow down the grand march towards self-destruction that we and our next generation seem to have deliberately chosen.

One of the technological interventions is practiced by many of the professional bodies that currently offer their exams through the online delivery mode. The UK accounting exam, ACCA, the global technology exams such as by CISCO and Microsoft are just but a few examples.

In the online examination delivery mode, a large data bank of questions is built from which the computer randomly selects a range of questions that would be subjected to the candidate.

The actual questions the candidate will respond to are actually not known in advance, but are instantaneously generated when the candidate logs into the examination portal. Even the setters do not know which of their questions will actually be administered.

Furthermore, if two candidates are seated next to each other they will be answering a different set of randomly generated questions – as longs as those questions have the same pedagogical objectives and weighting.

HARD WORK, HONESTY, DILIGENCE

Of course, this approach will not work for millions of our candidates who have no access to computing devices, let alone Internet services. However, the concept that we could create a database of many questions with a view to randomly selecting a set of them to be administered by a sub-county, county or country would go a long way in curbing cheating incidences.

This is particularly true if those randomized sets of questions are determined and generated on that very morning of the examination day. Copies can then be electronically circulated to the examinations centres, 10 to 15 minutes before the exam for printing. This assumes that by then the candidates are already seated in the exam room without their mobile phones or WhatsApp-related tools.

This may be some form of first-aid to address the crippling disease that straddles the examination sector. However, the long-term solution is to stress the importance of hard work, honesty and diligence instead of instant gratification that is preferred by our "instant-coffee" generation.

Mr Walubengo is a lecturer at the Multimedia University of Kenya's Faculty of Computing and IT. Twitter: @jwalu  Email: jwalubengo@mmu.a