Education

Identity Verification to Support Academic Integrity

Student identity verification capabilities

Distance learning promises anytime, anywhere learning. But that convenience for students comes with a potential risk for educators – finding a way to make sure the registered student is really the person doing the work.

Acxiom helps higher education institutions verify the identity of distance-learning students. We work with:

• Public and private universities
• State colleges
• Community colleges
• Distance learning consortiums
• Professional continuing educators

Here’s a snapshot of how it works:

• Each day, Acxiom collects, synthesizes and maintains a database of U.S. consumer public records. We use this to verify an individual’s identity.

• By matching a student’s directory information (name, address, phone) to our database, we match the student to our database. The student then must answer questions to verify their identity, which may include name, address and date of birth.

• We integrate to popular Learning Management Systems (LMS) to imbed identity verification into the learning process.

Acxiom’s secure verification capabilities can help reduce the costs associated with testing center registration, proctor validation and proctored exams. Acxiom offers predictable pricing and the flexibility to meet instructor and administrator needs.

New higher education accreditation regulations soon will require institutions to verify that the distance learning student who registers for a course is the same as the student who performs the work. Unlike fingerprint recognition, webcam monitoring or test recording programs, Acxiom’s capabilities provide a very cost-effective way to strengthen an institution’s academic integrity programs and policies. Here’s how:

• Acxiom provides the institution with an API document that will help guide them to link to the Learning Management System to enable identity verification. Together, Acxiom and the institution work on setting up the exam strategy criteria and details.

• The institution decides when, where and how frequently to verify identity.

• Students provide simple directory information in the learning process and respond to the identity verification questions.

• Instructors and distance learning administration determine the criteria for pass/fail rates and are then notified of these occurrences as well as the metrics around student responses to Acxiom’s questions.

• The institution never releases directory information so there are no Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) violations.

• The institution never sees the data sent to and from Acxiom, so student data control and privacy is maintained.

Due to the decentralized nature of IT departments, higher education leads all industries in numbers data breach events. Acxiom’s verification capabilities were designed so that student and instructor privacy is a critical feature of our solution. Institutions never receive the data Acxiom uses in this process. They are simply made aware of the pass/fail rates. Students may opt out of the process and we recommend a comprehensive communication plan to administrators and students prior to a pilot and large scale rollout.