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
Copyright
c
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
1
After testing the software, do you think it is a good
method to identif
y
p
eo
p
le?
2
Do you think it is appropriate to use facial authentication
in e-learnin
g
?
3
Do you think it is fair to monitor distance education in
order to avoid cheatin
g
?
4
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?
5
Do you think the use of this software could have caused
a rise of your academic efficiency when you have been
doin
g
y
our activities?
6
Do you think you have taken the same time to do your
activities when you knew your identity was being
verified?
7
Do you think it is appropriate to apply facial
authentication to the tests?
8
Do you think it is appropriate to apply facial authentic-
cation to the activities of continuous assessment?
9
Do you think it is appropriate to apply facial
authentication to the learnin
g
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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394
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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395
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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