Digitalization of Exams - A study of how digitalization can improve the examination processes at NTNU

Abstract

Digital examination and assessment are increasingly sought after in tertiary education. Due to new technological innovations and new requirements from both the society and the stakeholders associated with the digital examination process, we see a shift in universities trying to acquire the technology to support a digital process. The educational landscape in Norway is in transformation, where different universities are in different stages of the process of digitalizing the complete assessment process. At NTNU, the predominant form of examination is the traditional pen and paper exam. The exam is typically taken in proctor controlled environments. When we want to transform the paper system we cannot simply put it into a digital solution and expect everything to be as wanted. The processes need to be reengineered, and accepted by the stakeholders. When the reengineering takes place, we need to maintain the core activities. In this thesis, we will see how digitalization can support process improvement through i.e. simplification, exclusion, and automation of current processes. With a digital exam comes a digital solution. This solution needs to be secure and robust, especially since new technology means new ways of exploiting vulnerabilities. The thesis will account for several new security threats that can exist because of a digital environment, pertaining to unwanted behaviour in the form of cheating. After assessing the new threats, the reader can find proposals to safeguards that can mitigate some of these threats. As the threat picture is quite complex and vast, we want to assure the reader that this is an incomplete overview of both the security threats and countermeasures. When transforming organizations, it is important to have a clear strategy, and align this strategy with the practices and services associated with the transformation. A strategy is the organizations way of describing how they create value. The thesis therefore presents a value creation template known as Value Proposition Design, and attempt to address how it can drive the digitalization of the process improvements.