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# System prepended metadata

title: Proposed Methodology

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# Proposed Methodology

The capstone project's main focus is blocking and limiting students' options for cheating. The group has identified the exam pages of UVLE (a modified copy of Moodle) to be easily replicatable which allows the students committing academic dishonesty to easily download the exam page or print the page as pdf and distribute it to others. In order to do that, the group will implement modifications to the base Moodle code in order to disable printing of web pages - specifically, the exam page. For the entirety of the capstone project, a local copy of Moodle will be used to develop the features proposed below. The main languages dealt with in the development of the capstone project will be html/css, javascript, jQuery, and PHP which is what Moodle is mostly composed of.

## Limiting Replication
Firstly, the css file for the exam page will be modified by redefining how the page works when the media query ```@media print``` for printing (exporting to pdf) is detected. This will result to a blank pdf page being exported. This works similar to that of DRM systems commonly used by big media companies, with the best example being Netflix's DRM system which creates a black screen when screenshotting their content with the only difference being that most DRM systems only work for audiovisual content.

## DRM Effectiveness
When checking how effective DRM systems protect content, there have always been loopholes that users can exploit to bypass the DRM. This is true to Netflix's own DRM too. With that, the group acknowledges the loopholes of the proposed solution. In an attempt to cover these identified loopholes, event listeners will be set up when the user decides to use the print screen button and exporting the page to pdf which they would not be able to do by then. This will not stop them from saving a screenshot but it will track whoever attempts to do so, allowing the teacher to question students caught screenshotting the exam pages.

## Addressing Loopholes
Using event listeners, the name of the account on which the action was done will be recorded in the server and track the amount of times the students attempted to screenshot or export the exam page. To implement the tracking of those who attempted to screenshot/export the exam page, a new page will be designed to show the names of the offending students and the amount of times they attempted to do so. 


After addressing this loophole, there is one acknowledged loophole to the whole proposed solution which the group has no viable solution to - manually taking a picture of the screen of the exam page. This though, does not affect the capstone project in achieving its primary objective which is to creating a high barrier for students to commit academic dishonesty which will discourage them to do so along with the certainty that those who try to commit these types of academic dishonesty will be found out.





