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Can a robot invigilator prevent cheating?

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Abstract

One of the open questions in Educational robots is the role a robot should take in the classroom. The current focus in this area is on employing robots as a tool or in an assistive capacity such as the invigilator of an exam. With robots becoming commonplace in the classroom, inquiries will be raised regarding not only their suitability but also their ability to influence and control the morality and behaviour of the students via their presence. Therefore, as a means to test this cross-section of Educational robots with the underlying issue of morality and ethics we conducted an empirical study where the Nao robot invigilated an exam for a group of students. A between-subjects design (N = 56, 14 groups of 4 students) compared whether Nao was able to deter students from cheating and maintaining their discipline in comparison to a human invigilator or when there was no invigilator present. Our results showed that while explicit cheating rarely took place across all conditions, the students were significantly more talkative when they were invigilated by Nao. In conclusion, we discuss and speculate upon some of the ensuing implications towards not only the application of robots in education but also consequently the wider issue of the preservation of morality and ethics in a classroom in the presence of an agent.

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Acknowledgements

The first author would like to acknowledge the academic development program (ADP) at Western Sydney University which provided the time and resources to carry out this research project. The second and third author would like to acknowledge UPAR Grant (31H125) from UAE University. All authors would also like to acknowledge the logistical support of Waleed Riaz towards the running of the empirical study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Sciences, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia

    Omar Mubin

  2. School of Engineering and IT, ADFA, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

    Massimiliano Cappuccio

  3. UAE University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates

    Massimiliano Cappuccio

  4. College of Information Technology, UAE University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates

    Fady Alnajjar

  5. Herriot Watt University, Edinburgh, UK

    Muneeb Imtiaz Ahmad

  6. Department of Computer Science, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan

    Suleman Shahid

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  1. Omar Mubin
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  2. Massimiliano Cappuccio
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  3. Fady Alnajjar
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  4. Muneeb Imtiaz Ahmad
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  5. Suleman Shahid
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Correspondence to Fady Alnajjar.

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Mubin, O., Cappuccio, M., Alnajjar, F. et al. Can a robot invigilator prevent cheating?. AI & Soc 35, 981–989 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-00954-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-00954-8

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