SAFE: Smart Authenticated Fast Exams for Student Evaluation in Classrooms.

Considerable experimentation is happening in today's classrooms to handle large classes. In this paper, we present SAFE (Smart Authenticated Fast Exams), a tool that enables continuous assessment in the form of regular quizzes in classes. SAFE is based on a BYOD (bring your own device) model that leverages student smart-phones to conduct auto-graded, cheating-free exams in a proctored class room setting. SAFE has 3 components: a smart-phone app, a web server and WiFi infrastructure to enable app-server communication. SAFE support a rich set of features to handle various types of questions as well as instructor preferences. In the design of SAFE, we set to achieve 4 goals: easy setup, cheating-free operation, robustness and scale. Easy setup is achieved predominantly due to the BYOD model and online mode of exams. Cheating is prevented via locking the app for the intended purpose along with reporting to the server any user attempts at cheating. Robustness is handled via periodic syncing of messages and careful consideration of corner cases. Scale is handled by carefully tuning the WiFi as well as via application level scheduling. SAFE has been used so far to conduct 90+ in-class quizzes in 9 courses in the last year. It was also used to conduct a high stake admission test for a Master's program in Computer Science. The feedback from end-users has been very positive and we continue to get new requests for trials in other courses. This paper presents the design of SAFE and evaluation based on our experience thus far.