A CONTINUOUS IDENTITY AUTHENTICATION MONITORING SYSTEM FOR ONLINE SERVICES USING AUTOMATIC FACE, VOICE AND KEYSTROKE RECOGNITION

Project Information

SMOWL

Grant agreement ID: 811319

DOI 10.3030/811319

Closed project

EC signature date 13 September 2018

Start date 1 September 2018

End date 31 August 2020

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost € 839 250,00

EU contribution € 587 475,00

Coordinated by

SMILEY OWL TECH SL
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SMOWL (A CONTINUOUS IDENTITY AUTHENTICATION MONITORING SYSTEM FOR ONLINE SERVICES USING AUTOMATIC FACE, VOICE AND KEYSTROKE RECOGNITION)

Reporting period: 2019-09-01 to 2020-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

As online education continues to grow, the academic integrity is called into question. How do you give the credit and certification to the right person?
Smowltech is a technology based start-up founded in late 2012 as a spin-off of Vicomtech-IK4, a prestigious European technology centre specialized in computer vision and IA. From the beginning, we’ve been focused on developing a user friendly eProctoring solution to avoid online learning fraude and improve academic integrity.

In such a complex and changing world due to technological evolution, organizations are required to use technology to improve the life quality of the people. At Smowltech, we aim to travel alongside institutions and students offering the best user experience in the continuous assessment process in online learning allowing universal access to education while maintaining academic integrity. Online education is here to stay and it’s revolutionizing the way we learn. Due to the transformation of our society and technology, a large number of jobs will be destroyed while new ones will be created, for this reason studying a career will not be enough to be prepared for the rest of our professional career. Therefore, the concept of lifelong learning should be embraced since people will have to be learning continuously to help organization to face new challenges.

This new paradigm will require people of any age to be in constant training. For this, flexible solutions that allow them to combine work, training and family conciliation will be demanded. These solutions will have to be user-centric, their way of learning, wherever and whenever they want. With this in mind, we not only work alongside institutions to provide the required technology to verify the identity of the students and monitor their behavior to keep academic integrity, but offer our support in the implementation and adaptation of our solution to the institution’s pedagogic methodology, aiding the management of the change, forming both students and teachers, and establishing the required protocols so that the students are conscious of the importance of keeping the same rigor that the onsite learning.

Smowltech is built on top of three essential pillars: Simplicity, Flexibility and Scalability. Smowltech aims to help organizations by building trust in their eLearning environments, providing a continuous eProctoring service using facial recognition, which enables organizations increase their eLearning offer with credibility and cost-effective. SMOWL is a practical and reliable solution for online user identification and monitoring. It consists in a new cyber-security service covering the need for a continuous, automatic and scalable authentication of online user’s identity and monitoring. The technology, based on continuous automatic facial recognition can be applied to numerous sectors.

SMOWL project is implemented into the e-learning growing market ( eLearning market 23%, fastest one in the education sector (LATAM, 14%, USA 6,7%)), where a substantial need has been detected for online proctoring and remote invigilation services. The overall objectives of this project is to test the solution in large scale pilots testing the scalability of the solution and look for the internationalisation of the company and enter new markets.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The work carried out during the first year of the project is focused on meeting the main objectives set at the beginning of the development. Among others, these are the main goals that want to be achieved by Smowltech:
- OBJECTIVE 1: To implement the business plan and develop a broad market introduction (initially 3 big target markets). So far, there has been an updated of the commercial plan in order to focus on key markets that are growing exponentially and starting to identify and connect with potential institutions.
- OBJECTIVE 2: To perform big demonstrations pilots. Smowltech proposes a pilot demonstration program over the most relevant e-learning universities/institutions/companies around different international countries all over the world to demonstrate the scalability and performance of the system. Some of the most relevant international and sectorial agents have already shown their interest in SMOWL trials with thousands of users for pilot demonstration.
- OBJECTIVE 3: To optimise and customise SMOWL features. Being SMOWL an artificial intelligence proctor, it has been necessary to add some other features as the voice and keystroke recognition and “computer control” (key features for invigilation) to increase our offer, be more competitive for exam proctoring service and introduce SMOWL continuous proctoring services through the most known service in the market: exam proctoring. In addition, it has already been adapted to new countries privacy policy legislation’s, homologation agencies’, new customer’s and platform’s requirements.
- OBJECTIVE 4: To create a continuous technical support department for 100% reliable authentication of students, a 24h/7d support team, chat and email assistance.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Smowltech provides a flexible online proctoring solution with a unique approach (named as cool vendor by Gartner) which adapts to each institutions pedagogical methodology, being able to continuously monitor a student not just on a final exam, but during a whole course in different kind of activities that want to be assessed by the organization:
- Prevent misuse of identity and inappropriate behaviours
- Increase academic integrity and credibility in the market
- Increase online volume of students with integrity and cost-effective
- Comply with Accreditation Institutions regulations
Whole SMOWL system is patented in EU, and pending in US.

Integrity is a crucial component to educational equity because it validates student identity and gives everyone an equal opportunity to earn the grade that they deserve. In this sense, remote proctoring is the key tool for Institutions to be able to provide universal access to education to any person to carry out their training 100% online, being accredited and recognized, that the person who has made the course is the correct one and has obtained the knowledge, providing a high level credibility to the certification obtained. It helps to break the geographical and temporary barriers for those who have mobility problems, are working and do not have enough time or money to attend face-to-face training, or have family and schedules that are not compatible. Online learning provides the opportunity to those persons to continue learning through their lives and SMOWL service enables them to proof and give them the credibility of the knowledge acquired creating trust in online learning environments.

By being committed to creating a fair and egalitarian environment, Smowltech is making sure that no group of students are left behind and that the same opportunities exist for all regardless of socio-economic status.

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