Facial verificafion to prevent students from registering attendance for each other

[samykhalil]

Hi,

We have a scenario where students are required to attend in person and scan a QR code to be marked as present. The challenge we are facing is that some students have started sharing their Moodle login credentials with other students so that attendance can be marked on their behalf.

To address this issue, I have considered the following two possible approaches:

1. Face verification during attendance marking
   When a student scans the QR code on their mobile device to mark attendance, they are prompted to capture a photo of their face. The image is then processed by an AI service to generate a facial signature. This signature can be compared against those of students who have already marked attendance. If the system detects that the same face has already been used for another account, the attendance marking is blocked.

2. Device-based identification using cookies
   Another approach is to assign a random value stored in a cookie on the student’s device when they log in. The same value is also stored in the database alongside the user ID. If the student logs out and attempts to log in with another student’s account on the same device, the cookie value can be checked against the database. If it is already associated with another user who has marked attendance, the system can block the attendance action.

I would appreciate any suggestions for alternative or more effective methods to prevent students from marking attendance on behalf of others.

[danmarsden]

You can prevent students from using the same ip address to register multiple users however your moodle site must be seeing end users ip addresses in the logs and not a web proxy. (Students will just clear any cookies or use a private browser window before trying another login if ou use a cookie-based check)

The best/easiest way to do this is to make sure you have mfa enabled at the point of login, it means users cannot simply share a password.

We could have some form of photo id check at the point of the student taking attendance but there's a decent chunk of work involved in implementing that in a useful way and its unlikely I would do that as a volunteer. If you are interested in funding the development time to do this feel free to reach out privately to discuss.