6 Ways Auto-Proctoring for Online Remote Exams Will Benefit Your Organization

Without reliable exam integrity, where would your organization be? 

For many businesses, training centers, educational institutions, and government bodies, this is a mission-critical question. As a leader in such an organization, you need to be confident that your testing procedures do indeed:

• Keep your learners or employees compliant with industry or professional standards. 
• Ensure exam integrity.
• Ensures the quality of the product or service provided by your test-takers. 
• Protect the credibility and perceived value of your accreditations.
• Confirm the identities of your test-takers and assess the skills they possess.

 

In-person proctoring is no longer enough or possible

In the past, it seemed to make sense to have people alone proctor your test-taking sessions. After much logistical coordination, you corralled your test-takers into a physical space, distributed a paper-based test, had a person(s) watch over the testing, and then hoped to get exam results reflecting honest individual effort.   

Today, this form of testing oversight is often not possible, and yet your critical need for exam integrity has not changed. You certainly don’t want to expose your organization to the risk of less rigorous proctoring. And you don’t want to increase your testing costs. In fact, you’d even like to reduce them.

So what can you do?

Educational technology has a solution that will meet your needs and deliver peace of mind.

It’s called auto-proctoring of online remote exams.

This fully automated online service combines authentication of the test-taker, validation, and physical and digital environment monitoring with an AI and human review of the exam session recording to ensure that the test-taker is verified and assessed on their performance based on the criteria established for the exam.

Auto-proctoring benefits organizations like yours by supporting your efforts to:

 

1. Test knowledge-acquisition remotely while monitoring exam integrity

Wherever your test-takers are, you can assess their knowledge and skills, on-demand, securely, and rest assured that the test-taking was rigorously proctored.

 

2. Streamline your costs and increase your capacity

Consider the cost to rent, maintain, administrate, and proctor the physical spaces where your learners can be tested. With an auto-proctoring solution, you can eliminate most of these costs. What’s more, you can increase your capacity to deliver tests with the same scalable tool. 

 

3. Expand access to your accreditation

The physical location of your traditional testing may have limited the number of candidates who could access your test. Auto-proctoring of online exams wipes out that limit.

Now you can tap into previously inaccessible pools of people seeking your accreditation, and expand the reach and awareness of your organization.

 

4. Protect the reputation of your certifications

Are your customers counting on you because your team is certified  compliant with industry standards? Are your learners investing in your training because people value your certifications?

In either case, you want to safeguard the value the world perceives in your certifications. Using an auto-proctoring solution will help secure testing integrity and the value of your certifications. 

 

5. Reduce your administrative interventions

When human proctors alone are supervising exams, managers and administrators will get called on regularly for rulings on suspicious behavior.  

Using a modern auto-proctoring solution, you benefit from two layers of integrity control: AI monitoring and human review. Together, these two systems offer you clear rulings and the information you need to decide the next steps.

 

6. Offer your learners valuable convenience

The constraints of traditional in-person proctoring oblige your test-takers to rearrange their lives around the testing session(s). Baby-sitters, travel arrangements, work leaves, etc., have to be set up so the test-taker can attend the scheduled session at the given location. 

Moreover, as an administrator scheduling these exams, you face the constraints of facility capacity and proctor availability.

Auto-proctoring enables your learners to get evaluated at a time and location convenient to them. You save them time and money while offering terrific convenience — very attractive benefits for your test-takers.

For an administrator, an on-demand auto-proctoring solution enables you to carry out a virtually unlimited number of tests.

 

What to look for in an auto-proctoring solution

Given the six major benefits to auto-proctoring we’ve described above, you may be wondering what factors to consider when shopping for a solution.

When working with prospective vendors, ask them the following six questions to help you make your decision.

 

1. How will the auto-proctoring solution integrate with my LMS?

As you explore auto-proctoring solutions with potential LMS partners, confirm which solution will integrate seamlessly with their system, and allow to view reports within the LMS as well as automate the processes. 

Once integrated, your auto-proctoring solution should be instantly ready for use at any time, for any number of test-takers.

Some Learning Management Systems, such as the uxpertise platform, integrate auto-proctoring for online exams which offers you an all-in-one solution. If, at the moment, you’re looking exclusively for an auto-proctoring solution, ask us about our special auto-proctoring package.  

 

2. What level of control and visibility into the test-taking process do you have as an administrator?

Your auto-proctoring control panel needs to offer:

• An intuitive interface
• High visibility into the proctoring process, i.e., what sessions are active, completed, cancelled, and which need to be escalated, etc.
• Session-review features that enable you to evaluate a record of the test-taking session as well as the flags raised, and view the multiple recordings and notes attributed by the proctor. 
• Multilingual interfaces for both the test-takers and administrators 

3. How is the test-taker’s identity authenticated? 

To ensure that the right person is taking the test, a rigorous two-step identification process will:

1. Confirm that the personal information of the test-taker, as well as the examination code, are identical to the profile in your records. 
2. Match the face of the test-taker with the photo on the piece of identification presented, and record this evidence.

 

4. How is the test-taker’s environment secured?

For your peace of mind, the auto-proctoring solution needs to thoroughly monitor the test-taker’s environment.

Many auto-proctoring solutions operate through an app that’s installed on the test-taker’s computer or device. The exam session cannot begin without the launch of this app.

To ensure that your test-taker feels comfortable downloading the app, it needs to operate in a way that respects all internationally recognized privacy standards, and only collect information when the application is in use and the student activates a session. 

Once installed, the app:

• Validates the physical and digital environment
• Detects and prevents the opening of new apps, windows or tabs.
• Stops unnecessary software from running.
• Verifies and controls if a virtual machine is used
• Records what’s on-screen, what the camera sees, and what the microphone picks up.
• Monitors if a second monitor is present
• Inhibits certain functions like copy-paste, screenshots, and picture-taking.

 

5. What kind of review/analysis of the test session occurs?

Firstly, AI features should verify the authentication of the person, and close all unauthorized softwares as well as ensure they are not re-opened throughout the exam session.

Once the session is submitted, the most effective auto-proctoring solutions will have the recordings reviewed by trained proctors who assess whether further investigation is needed. If there has been inappropriate activity, you’ll have all the evidence you need to support your next steps.

 

6. How reliable and secure is the auto-proctoring solution?

Naturally, you need to know that the auto-proctoring solution will be ready when you need it. Ensure that your Service Level Agreement (SLA) stipulates 99.9% uptime and that data is backed up and stored on a secure server.

You deserve peace of mind about testing integrity

With the right auto-proctoring solution, you can cost-efficiently protect the integrity of your testing and safeguard your reputation while offering your test-takers the convenience of any time, anywhere testing.

 

Want to learn more about auto-proctoring? uxpertise will be glad to answer your questions, or walk you through a demo to show how your organization can reap all the benefits of auto-proctoring.