Abstract: On-line course offerings can be made available to users using computational techniques that reliably authenticate the identity of individual student users during the course of the very submissions and/or participation that will establish student user proficiency with course content. Authentication methods and systems include applications of behavioral biometrics.

Abstract: Conventional techniques for automatically evaluating and grading assignments are generally ill-suited to evaluation of coursework submitted in media-rich form. For courses whose subject includes programming, signal processing or other functionally expressed designs that operate on, or are used to produce media content, conventional techniques are also ill-suited. It has been discovered that media-rich, indeed even expressive, content can be accommodated as, or as derivatives of, coursework submissions using feature extraction and machine learning techniques. Accordingly, in on-line course offerings, even large numbers of students and student submissions may be accommodated in a scalable and uniform grading or scoring scheme. Instructors or curriculum designers may adaptively refine assignments or testing based on classifier feedback.