{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,18]],"date-time":"2026-03-18T00:06:13Z","timestamp":1773792373059,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":52,"publisher":"PeerJ","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,9]],"date-time":"2025-09-09T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1757376000000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100011941","name":"Government of the Principality of Asturias","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100011941","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"name":"European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) Under Project","award":["IDE\/2024\/000751 (GRU-GIC-24-070)"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["IDE\/2024\/000751 (GRU-GIC-24-070)"]}]},{"name":"University of Oviedo through its Support for Official Research Groups","award":["PAPI-24-GR-REFLECTION"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["PAPI-24-GR-REFLECTION"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"abstract":"<jats:p>The rapid expansion of online learning has made education more accessible but has also introduced significant challenges in maintaining academic integrity, particularly during online exams. For certain types of exams, students are prohibited from connecting to the Internet to prevent them from accessing unauthorized resources, utilizing generative artificial intelligence tools, or engaging in other forms of cheating. However, in online exams, students must remain connected to the Internet. Most existing online proctoring systems rely on various devices to monitor students\u2019 actions and environments during the exam, focusing on tracking physical behavior, such as facial expressions, eye movements, and the presence of unauthorized materials, rather than analyzing the students\u2019 work within their computers. This often requires human review to determine whether students are engaging in unauthorized actions. This article presents the development and evaluation of a machine-learning-based assistant designed to assist instructors in detecting fraudulent activities in real-time during online programming exams. Our system leverages a convolutional neural network (CNN) followed by a recurrent neural network (RNN) and a dense layer to analyze sequences of screenshot frames captured from students\u2019 screens during exams. The system achieves an accuracy of 95.18% and an F<jats:sub>2<\/jats:sub>-score of 94.2%, prioritizing recall to emphasize detecting cheating instances, while minimizing false positives. Notably, data augmentation and class-weight adjustments during training significantly enhanced the model\u2019s performance, while transfer learning and alternative loss functions did not provide additional improvements. In post-deployment feedback, instructors expressed high satisfaction with the system\u2019s ability to assist in the rapid detection of cheating, reinforcing the potential of machine learning to support real-time monitoring in large-scale online exams.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.7717\/peerj-cs.3159","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,9]],"date-time":"2025-09-09T08:28:14Z","timestamp":1757406494000},"page":"e3159","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["A machine learning assistant for detecting fraudulent activities in synchronous online programming exams"],"prefix":"10.7717","volume":"11","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1199-8649","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Francisco","family":"Ortin","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Computer Science, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, Asturias, Spain"},{"name":"Computer Science, Munster Technological University, Cork, Ireland"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Alonso","family":"Gago","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Computer Science, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, Asturias, Spain"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1646-4796","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Jose","family":"Quiroga","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Computer Science, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, Asturias, Spain"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3150-2826","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Miguel","family":"Garcia","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Computer Science, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, Asturias, Spain"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"4443","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,9]]},"reference":[{"key":"10.7717\/peerj-cs.3159\/ref-1","first-page":"3","article-title":"Foundations of educational theory for online learning","volume-title":"Theory and Practice of Online Learning","author":"Ally","year":"2004"},{"issue":"3","key":"10.7717\/peerj-cs.3159\/ref-2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"104005","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ipm.2024.104005","article-title":"CLAVE: a deep learning model for source code authorship verification with contrastive learning and transformer encoders","volume":"62","author":"\u00c1lvarez-Fidalgo","year":"2025","journal-title":"Information Processing & Management"},{"issue":"7","key":"10.7717\/peerj-cs.3159\/ref-3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1609","DOI":"10.1109\/tmm.2017.2656064","article-title":"Automated online exam proctoring","volume":"19","author":"Atoum","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Transactions on Multimedia"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj-cs.3159\/ref-4","first-page":"279","article-title":"On the efficacy of online proctoring using proctorio","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2021)","volume":"1","author":"Bergmans","year":"2021"},{"issue":"1","key":"10.7717\/peerj-cs.3159\/ref-5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"63","DOI":"10.1080\/01587919.2011.565502","article-title":"Synchronous collaboration competencies in web-conferencing environments\u2014their impact on the learning process","volume":"32","author":"Bower","year":"2011","journal-title":"Distance Education"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj-cs.3159\/ref-6","first-page":"1","article-title":"Observations of cheating behaviours in online examinations and tools for mitigation","author":"Castro","year":"2023"},{"issue":"2","key":"10.7717\/peerj-cs.3159\/ref-7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"84","DOI":"10.1287\/ited.2021.0260","article-title":"Who\u2019s cheating? 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