Assessing the Usability of Smartwatchesfor Academic Cheating during Exams

This research paper was published in MOBILEHCI 2017; one of the top tier conferences with 20 percent chances of successful publications. As my research is in collaboration and usability of smartwatches. The goal of this study was to assess students' abilities to cheat on exams using a smartwatch; the cheating paradigm set as an example to understand the perceived usability and appropriation of smartwatches in an academic setting. I was interested in comparing picture-based and text-based answers, as well as MCQs and SA questions. I conducted a laboratory experiment with 16 participants (5 males and 11 females), and focused on one wearable (i.e. smartwatches) to test how students can appropriate them to cheat in an anatomy assessment. I examined the effectiveness, efficiency and usability of the smartwatch based on our five hypotheses. My role included:

• User Research
• Quantitative Analysis
• Publication

Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis

I analyzed the data using a two-way repeated measures ANOVA and used the Usability Metric for User Experience (UMUX) for analyzing the usability of the smartwatch. For the qualitative analysis, I used the think-aloud method and semi-structured interview to gain insight into the usage of the smartwatch for cheating.

Results

I discovered that students with no prior cheating experience or knowledge of assessment can cheat effectively using smartwatches. They score higher on the MCQs test assessment versus the Short Answers. However, there is no significant difference in the efficency to use for either test assesment or response format (Picture vs Text).




Smartwatches which are not designed to be a cheating tool, can be appropriated to cheat, and provide contextual and glanceable information in both text and pictures. Even with low usability rating, the study highlights that students and professionals would be motivated to cheat using the smartwatch if it reduces stress and helps to gain grades or monetary benefits.   The study emphasized the need to explore how cheating can be deterred using: (a) more constructive response formats, (b) further investigation on the interactions for Short Answers (SA) for the two response formats (Picture and Text) and (c) the frequency of interaction in relation to the position of the smartwatch.