The post-pandemic future is here.
For Canadian universities and colleges, that means that hybrid or blended learning has become an important part of the curriculum.
The pandemic set up a global demo for online learning with the following results: It enabled a vast number of students and faculty to see the advantages of adding more online learning to the curriculum.
Consider these findings from a survey of 96 Canadian public universities and colleges (Spring 2021):
- “Three-quarters (75%) of institutions agreed that faculty were more interested in teaching courses where instruction is partially in-person and partially online.”
- Compared to 2019, “75% of universities and 63% of colleges agreed that undergraduate students would be more likely to prefer online courses.”
As a leader of your institution, you like hybrid or blended learning because it enables you to meet the educational needs of an expanded student population, at less cost per student.
While there are various models of blended learning, with varying percentages of online instruction, online assessment of the student’s acquired knowledge and skills saves you costs and offers remote students flexibility while continuing to protect the integrity of your testing.
Reconciling the interests of your stakeholders
As an institution leader, you need to be confident that your online testing procedures will protect exam integrity as well as the credibility and value of your certifications.
How do you and your faculty choose the right solution for the varied online testing circumstances you face?
After all, tests have different stakes: a quick quiz for a first-year student doesn’t have the same stakes as a graduating student’s final exam for 100% of their mark.
Your faculty are looking for easy-to-use solutions that offer peace of mind about test integrity. Your students love scheduling convenience and have concerns about privacy. You’d like to meet these needs while also respecting your budget.
So what are your options?
The advantages of remote proctoring
For many institutions, remote proctoring has become the go-to solution. In remote proctoring, specialized software or a trained proctor, or a combination of both, monitor what the test-taker is doing in real time through the computer’s audio-video systems.
By using remote proctoring, your institution will benefit from the following actions:
- Testing knowledge acquisition remotely while monitoring exam integrity
To assess the knowledge and skills of your test-takers, on-demand, securely, wherever they are, and to rest assured that the session was rigorously proctored — this is remote proctoring’s most compelling advantage.
2. Streamlining costs and increasing your capacity
Eliminate the costs of renting, maintaining, administrating, and in-person proctoring the physical spaces where your learners can be tested.
3. Expanding access to your accreditation
Remote proctoring of online exams wipes out the commutes of test-takers who previously needed to get to a physical testing location.
4.Protecting the reputation of your certifications
You want to safeguard the value the world perceives in your certifications. They are, after all, one of the big reasons why students are applying to your institution.
5. Offer your learners valuable convenience
Through remote proctoring, your students save time and money as they enjoy the convenience of flexible test-taking sessions.
So which remote proctoring solution is best for the various test situations of your school?
This post will help you navigate the pros and cons of the top four remote proctoring solutions, so you can make the choice that’s right for you.
1. For low-stakes testing, consider the browser lockdown
The browser lockdown is the simplest form of remote proctoring, and makes sense when the test stakes are low (e.g., a quiz).
During a browser lockdown, the student takes their exam on a special browser that prevents them from completing certain actions such as opening a new URL, printing, copying or accessing other applications. Depending on the vendor you choose, you’ll have varying options for the features you can control.Your representative reviews the proctoring data for anomalies. The volume of testing will determine how time-intensive your faculty’s reviewing will be.
2. A high-volume testing solution
When you have a large number of test-taking sessions, automated remote proctoring may be the best solution. With this option, the software runs, observes, and records the test-taking session, based on the exam administrator’s settings.
As the stakes for your tests rise, you may want to take advantage of an option to confirm the test-taker’s identity. Some vendors offer you the option to verify the person’s ID card and face before testing begins. Other options offer flexibility on what you’d like to observe, lockdown, and record.
Once the exam is completed, your representative reviews the recordings and behaviors. Due to automation, your testing can include an almost unlimited number of test participants.
Since no online proctoring solution is perfect, some false positives may arise. This prospect may make some students anxious. To learn more about concerns and misconceptions regarding remote proctoring, see our post, “4 Big Misconceptions about Remote Online Exam Proctoring Dismantled.”
You can also ask the vendor to have the data reviewed by their trained proctors. Otherwise, the proctoring data has to be reviewed by your representatives.
3. When the test stakes are highest: Live proctoring
Some assessments have life-changing implications for the test-taker. These tests, like college entrance or professional licensing exams, also reflect on the perception of quality or accountability of the institution.
Given such stakes, your peace of mind may require live remote proctoring supported by monitoring software.
With this solution, a certified proctor monitors online the entire test-taking session. Should the proctor spot suspicious behavior, they can intercede.
The software supports the human proctor by flagging suspicious behavior and alerting the proctor to any inappropriate patterns of behavior.
Following the test, vendors offer you a range of reporting options that may include the complete time-stamped recordings, an overview of the test-taking with a variety of metrics, and the remarks of the human proctor on all software-flagged behavior.
On the upside, this human review saves your staff from reviewing many hours of video.
On the downside, a live proctoring solution requires the biggest investment among proctoring solutions and does not scale easily. Furthermore, you need to coordinate exam scheduling with the remote proctor.
4. The Goldilocks solution: Automated proctoring with human review
You may be looking for a Goldilocks solution: a just-right, middle-ground approach that responds to your needs for scale and cost-efficiency while offering the peace of mind of human intervention. This solution is called automated proctoring with human review.
It offers two layers of integrity control: software monitoring and trained human review of the monitoring data.
Using this solution, you save your team time reviewing exam sessions while benefiting from clear rulings and the information you need to decide the next steps on suspicious behavior. At the same time, your students benefit from the anytime-anywhere convenience automation offers.
How automated proctoring with human review works
Based on the settings you’ve defined, the automatic monitoring program manages the entire test-taking process.
For example, you can lock down the browser, prevent the use of other programs and shortcuts, restrict access to a second monitor, and keep track of activity on the desktop, camera, and audio systems.
Just before the test-taking session, the system captures the test-taker’s identity. Then, it monitors their digital and physical environments both before and throughout the test. A qualified proctor checks the exam session recordings after the test is over to make sure the test-taker is evaluated in accordance with the exam’s standards.
Then exam recordings, a report, and the certified proctor’s information are all made available to your representative.
Since hybrid or blended learning will be a significant part of your curriculum, remote proctoring will play a crucial role in how you manage your school’s online testing.
To protect your peace of mind and the reputation of your school, consider an option that is practical for everyone, affordable, and scalable — automated proctoring with human review.
If you would like to learn more about automated proctoring, contact our team for a demo of our uxpertise XP solution.
