Best way to make sure kids have not tampered with their grades online?

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I know there are several different ways someone can "fake" what a page shows by modifying its HTML after its been received by using tools like Inspect Element.

Let's say kids have been using this to their advantage and "changing" grades on their online gradebook.

Let's say that I am the director of the school.

What could I do to prevent this? Asking parents to refresh the page seems redundant, so what are other ways to make sure parents are getting the real deal?

Joseph A.

Posted 2016-05-10T13:20:33.467

Reputation: 1 844

Question was closed 2016-05-10T14:19:14.827

2Why is asking the parents to refresh the page redundant? The changes made with the developer tools won't stay. – Burgi – 2016-05-10T13:24:02.263

@Burgi I think rather than "redundant", it's "annoying". I hope you understand I would prefer staying away from having to send an e-mail to all parents telling them to refresh the page, and having to cope with parents who forget to do so. – Joseph A. – 2016-05-10T13:25:15.443

1Don't parents at your place have their own computers & get their own logins to check on the grades? – user1686 – 2016-05-10T13:25:19.377

3I've voting to close this as off-topic, as this isn't really a computer problem. You can't police every home computer, give up now. How about something "radical" like Parent/Teacher interaction beyond a web page? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2016-05-10T13:25:36.223

4You could post or email the results directly to the parents, bypassing the children altogether... – Burgi – 2016-05-10T13:36:34.263

Infinite Campus offers both a web portal and mobile app that may be worth the investment in your school district. Students and parents get discrete user accounts tied to the child's attendance and academic records. – RobPaller – 2016-05-10T14:11:22.603

If the parents don't have their own accounts to access this information nothing can be done, outside of, asking the parents to refresh the page or mailing a paper copy of the grades. – Ramhound – 2016-05-10T14:54:59.983

Answers

0

You can't ever stop someone doing this, so don't try to.

Instead think of providing the same details in other forms - an email directly to the parent, a letter (the student could still copy/replicate the letter but it's a lot more work to do so), published grades at the school, etc.

In fact, a nice complicated printed certificate wouldn't cost much to produce, gives the student something to be 'proud' of to show off, can be framed etc. The little cost involved plus the complication of trying to replicate/forge this would be sure to stop all but the most determined students (and those are the ones who in my experience get the best grades anyway).

As for fixing the 'page' itself, some 'simple' changes you could make are such as displaying the grade as a semi-complicated image, rather than just text, or having 'parent' logins, which you'd hope they didn't share with the students.

djsmiley2k TMW

Posted 2016-05-10T13:20:33.467

Reputation: 5 937

2Please avoid answering off topic questions. Per the [help], "Not all questions can or should be answered here. Save yourself some frustration and avoid trying to answer questions which...are not about computer software or computer hardware as defined in the help center". – CharlieRB – 2016-05-10T14:21:30.953

@CharlieRB - it's not impossible to answer, it's just impossible to do within the constrains of current browsers. An X->Y problem of sorts.

That said, taken on board. – djsmiley2k TMW – 2016-05-10T17:01:17.297

Asked: 2016-05-10T13:20:33.467

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Active: 2016-05-10T14:12:04.670