Achieving Exam Integrity and Productivity: Maximising the Potential of Online Proctoring

‘The ideal proctoring service will work with your LMS or can be part of an overall online assessment solution’

Everyone wants to do more with less

When it comes to formal exams and assessments, we want to ensure the integrity of the exam and reduce the operational costs. Does this sound impossible or too hard to do at the same time? Well, it is not that hard, nor impossible, as adding an online proctoring service to your online exams and assessments can achieve both at the same time, and here is how.

Institutions are increasing taking advantage of this global and connected world to market and sell their online courses beyond local students to new national and/or international cohorts. Reaching these new cohorts comes a responsibility to provide each student with tools that allow them to learn at any time, and also to be assessed at any time. The assessment systems must provide integrity and an assurance that the student that is taking assessment is the actual student and of course all of the work that they submit is their own work.

How does online proctoring help improve integrity? To make sure it is the right person sitting the exam, a proctoring service will use at least three levels of authentication.

• A registered username
• A unique password
• ID Matching of the on-file photo of the test taker

When a student logs-in and there is a match on all three levels of authentication the test taker can take the exam.

The second way a proctoring service improves integrity is to record the test taker’s activities and interactions during the assessment. The software provides for each test taker a recording that enables notifications to notify the invigilator to any activity that may be of concern (e.g. the test taker used a mobile phone, the test taker talked to another person in the room).

Closed book exams can be a third aspect that the proctoring service can manage as it can put restrictions in place to stop the test taker accessing other websites or applications during the exam or assessment.

A proctoring service can be easy added as a wrap-around service to an existing Learning Management System, such as Moodle or Canvas and as such it will deliver immediate productivity benefits. If test takers sit in traditional halls, then invigilation ratios can be amended to reflect the proctoring enabling less in-person staff to look after the same number of test takers.
The invigilators save time on test taker registration and identification checks, as the test takers are checked by the proctoring service when they login. As the test taker activities are being recording in the assessment, less time is needed for post-exam academic reviews as there will be a recording for each student to review.

The second area for productivity improvement relates to the recording themselves. In real time, an invigilator can see a ‘red flag’ displayed on the screen that indicates that there is concern with this test takers interactions (e.g. there are two faces in the camera view). That said the test takers do not need to be watched live, as the whole process can be recorded and watched at a later time. The actual recordings do not need to be watched in full as the flags indicate where there are concerns (e.g. student left their PC).

A proctoring service will improve assessment integrity and staffing productivity. It can also offer your institution flexibility that enables a better student experience, especially when many are working part time or will be sitting for tests and exams from an abroad. The ideal proctoring service will work with your LMS or can be part of an overall online assessment solution. Elumina offers both and can help you win in both domains.

Three reasons why Assess App improves the student experience?

1. It enables students to take assessments in a self-service manner at any time with or without an invigilator.
2. It is a minimal invasive technology for the student, the system will not have access to their personal files on their device.
3. It is flexible and supports open and close book exams on many laptops, desktops and tablets.

Three reasons why Assess App improves productivity?

1. Instead of watching all students, just watch the ones that the AI modules has indicated concerns with.
2. Lower your invigilation rates confident that the technology will catch and record cheating concerns.
3. Spend less time managing challenging IT and installation issues with students using the easy to install software.

Andrew Parker
VP Customer Solutions

Learn more about Elumina’s proctoring solutions here: iProctor Secure Proctoring