Digital "God Assist" in the College Entrance Examination｜Digital Literacy

The annual college entrance examination, which has attracted much attention from the Chinese people, is coming as scheduled. Today, we will take a closer look at what technologies are used in the current college entrance examination in order to improve the overall efficiency of the college entrance examination and strengthen the fairness and security of the examination room.

Method 1 before entering the examination room: facial recognition

In the early years, the invigilators would simply compare the ID cards with those of the candidates in person and then determine whether the candidate was taking the exam on behalf of another candidate.

However, there are only a limited number of invigilators, and it takes a lot of time to check all the candidates one by one. Moreover, there will be some differences between the ID photo and the real person.

In the early years, there was only one way, which was to spend huge sums of money to strengthen the training of invigilators, and train them all to a level similar to "detectives" so that they could identify whether someone was taking the exam for someone else within a second just by looking at the certificate.

Obviously this is not realistic because the cost is too huge.

Candidates' facial recognition authentication (Source: Xinhua News Agency)

Nowadays, the college entrance examinations in most provinces in China rely on artificial intelligence technology and have adopted advanced facial recognition systems, which has extremely efficiently solved the problem of cheating.

As artificial intelligence continues to improve, facial recognition will inevitably also improve. In the future, even identical twins will find it difficult to escape facial recognition systems.

Finally, no matter how many times we warn candidates, every year there are candidates who forget to bring their ID cards and admission tickets, or lose their documents on the way, which leads to trouble when entering the examination room.

But now, in some areas, because of the facial recognition system, even if the ID card and admission ticket are lost on the road, other verification measures can be assisted to enter the examination room smoothly.

Method 2 before entering the examination room: security gate

In addition to facial recognition, many provinces have begun to use "security gates" before entering the examination room.

College entrance examination security check, picture from Xinhuanet.

In the examination room, if you have a mobile phone or smart watch, the answers on the test paper can be easily checked. In the early years, candidates in some cheating cases even used erasers and rulers with display screens.

This type of eraser and ruler is no different from a regular eraser and ruler before being turned on, but after being turned on, they become a display screen that can display various information.

However, many examination rooms have security gates. If you carry a mobile phone, smart watch, bracelet, smart glasses, or modified erasers and rulers, it will be difficult to escape the "eyes" of the security gate and will be detected at the first sight.

Method 1 in the exam: AI marking

Today's test papers have a large number of multiple-choice questions, so in the examination room there are problems such as peeking at other people's answers, conveying answers through body language such as gestures and eyes.

An extremely clever solution is to use AB papers, with students with odd admission ticket numbers using Paper A and students with even admission ticket numbers using Paper B.

The questions of these two papers are the same, but the answers to the multiple-choice questions are different. This difference can be achieved in two ways.

One is the "question number dislocation method", which is to shuffle the order of multiple-choice questions.

One is the "option misplacement method", that is, the multiple-choice questions are the same and the order is the same, but the options in each multiple-choice question are misplaced.

That is, for the same multiple-choice question, option C is the correct answer in Paper A, while option D is the correct answer in Paper B.

AB papers are excellent, but there is a big problem: it will place a huge burden on the examiners. Different papers have different answers, and it is easy to make mistakes.

However, if the answer sheets are scanned by machines and graded by artificial intelligence machines, the grading problems caused by AB papers can be easily solved.

Method 2 in exams: Adding AI to invigilation

In the past, college entrance examinations relied entirely on the invigilators present, but an invigilator only has one pair of eyes, and two invigilators only have two pairs of eyes.

However, now, most provinces have adopted video surveillance for the college entrance examination. Therefore, it has changed from relying solely on two invigilators in the past to multiple pairs of eyes supervising remotely at the same time.

The surveillance video can be retained and viewed later.

In addition, the monitoring images have gradually changed from standard definition to high definition, and now from high definition to "ultra high definition", so that every small movement of the candidates can be seen clearly.

Cloud monitoring of the college entrance examination, picture from Xinhuanet.

In addition, the examination room monitoring systems in the past could only perform remote cloud monitoring and retain monitoring images.

Now, an AI monitoring system has been introduced on the basis of the original one, which has greatly improved the efficiency again. This smart AI monitoring system can immediately identify various abnormal actions of candidates. If suspected cheating behavior is found, the AI ​​monitoring system will be triggered and then the invigilator or other staff will be notified immediately for review.

Method 3 in the exam: frequency suppression

A few years ago, when the college entrance examination security check was not so complete, some candidates hid their mobile phones in their clothes and avoided security checks.

To prevent such incidents from happening, in addition to upgrading the security inspection system, the suppression of mobile phone signals has also been upgraded.

Previously, the suppression of mobile phone signals in examination rooms could only interfere with 2G, 3G and 4G signals. Since 5G signals are the latest to be adopted, it is inevitable that some "slips through the net". However, things are different now, and the shielding of 5G signals in examination rooms has long been solved.

Some provinces even sent drones to cruise over the examination halls. The drones are equipped with highly sensitive equipment and can capture radio signals in all directions at high altitudes, achieving full-frequency capture and positioning.

Author: Hanmu Diaomeng, a popular science writer and winner of the "National Excellent Popular Science Work Award" from the Ministry of Science and Technology

Reviewer: Lan Mingying, Associate Professor, School of Digital Media and Design Arts, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications

Produced by: Science Popularization China

Produced by: China Science and Technology Press Co., Ltd., China Science and Technology Publishing House (Beijing) Digital Media Co., Ltd.