Was cheating on tests ever an issue to institutions? What about now that education institution are now going online? What steps do you think teachers and professors should take to ensure students complete online exams honestly?
Academic integrity is not a new concern in remote learning and sure, we want to minimize cheating, but how far do you go? Perhaps, the thought of doing your university exams in the comfort of your own home might have seemed far-fetched a long ago.
SO, WHAT IS ONLINE PROCTORING?
Online proctoring occurs when an electronic assessment or review is digitally supervised and conducted through the internet and the web camera of the test-taker. Made possible by a combination of face-recognition AI software and an integrated web camera, it provides immense opportunities for online evaluations.
It means that online education and certification providers - who are already virtual teachers, will now be virtual invigilators, able to recognize and approve candidates remotely, no matter where they are located.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Online proctoring records every single examination session from beginning to end, and not just via video: it also captures images, desktop screen and chat logs which are one of the few safeguarding measures that protect both students and proctors.
Video-enabled surveillance automatically monitors and monitors the entire examination session including any non-standard occurrences such as a candidate leaving the room or leaning away from their web camera view.
WHAT ABOUT PROTECTING AGAINST CHEATING?
Enabling of proctoring methods and initializing of Wheebox Safe Web Browser provides a fair examination environment where a candidate is prevented from copying, pasting, taking screenshots, using of other applications, and accessing other websites, thus making cheating potentially difficult or to be rightly said, more difficult than getting a physical investigator in the examination room.
It allows a candidate to be remotely tracked and the contents of their Computer while performing an online examination, online proctoring verifies the identification of a candidate with AI-assisted facial recognition system and determine when a candidate may be violating the rules outlined in a test. This can include:
- Identification of when the applicant leaves the room
- Identifying whether there are extra people in the room.
- Tracking the eye and head movements of test-taker, so if they look down for a certain period of time, this would be flagged as an incident.
- Ability to monitor possible unauthorized use of a device during examination.
ADDITIONAL CONTROLS & FEATURES TO CONSIDER:
Depending on your situation, remote proctoring may offers capabilities that give you additional control and the ability to intervene in a test scenario.
- Auto proctoring: Highly supported by AI, this flags suspicious events and provides the vast ability to continuously track a larger number of candidates. The program can discover the occurrences on the screen and what is happening in front of the camera. For example, if a test-taker opens a browser and browses other website or application during the test, the remote proctoring system takes screenshots of this activity if it occurs without letting the candidate know.
- Live proctoring: Live proctoring offers the best of both worlds by incorporating a "real human" with the technology. An invigilator sits and controls the video feeds with live proctoring, and can interfere in real-time if necessary in a candidate's exam, giving the proctors an additional level of security and feedback to candidates as they go through a test or review. A live proctoring may be used along with either auto proctoring or AI-assisted notifications.
- Record and review proctoring: This proctoring method not only enables an additional protection but also provides flexibility to candidates who do not need to fix time and coordinate with the availability of the surveillant. Instead the candidates' audio-visual and screen-sharing feeds are recorded during the examination, a proctor then reviews the recorded exam, and flags any dubious activity if occurs.
Why Go Virtual?
Being able to meet candidates’ and invigilator's expectation for online learning, training, and evaluation of assessments anywhere anytime, is a big reason why online proctoring has become more common. The other benefits include:
- Cutting & Optimizing logistics costs which replaces the delivery of physical tests and transportation of papers and staff to and from test centers.
- Reducing turnaround time for marking and publishing results.
- Enter new markets, beyond geographical gap barriers.
- As a plug-and-play technology, online proctoring is designed to integrate with your existing infrastructure providing an extension to saving cost, and improves efficiency of an educational organization.
What about User Privacy and Data Protection?
We recognize that documenting your examination may feel invasive, and we aim to reduce the effect on you while still maintaining the protection of a typical examination setting. Recording of the test is solely for the purpose of finding a few individuals who are attempting to beat the system.
Before starting the assessment, a candidate’s identity will be checked and verified by an online proctor or administrator before you are allowed access to the online assessment. It is to ensure the person who is taking the exam is who they say they are.
At Wheebox, this transition becomes smooth and safe, there is no sharing of your personal data and your privacy is protected. We tend to use only the data obtained during a proctored test as part of our arrangement with the educational organization and individual students to ensure conformity with the test rules and academic honesty.
Where does Data reside?
It has always been our policy to never capture or store unnecessary personal data. Data, which includes Question bank and exam related information always gets encrypted and kept very safely and gets authenticated to avoid abuse of any kind.
It helps also to prevent manipulation of exams without legitimate credentials.
Necessary certifications by respective authorities to host Remote Proctoring Solution
Server Hosting:
This states that server to be hosted inside of the latency where the Remote Proctoring Solutions is hosted. Latency means the response time between the user of the site requesting an action. The further the server is, the longer the return time will be. Thus the server should be hosted in the same country where the solution is hosted.
Vulnerability of the application:
The certificate describes how robust the online examination system is! A candidate might attempt to hack the system while taking the exam. Implementation of AI based proctoring solutions almost removes threat of hijacking the exam and results in fair marking.
Data Retention Policy:
This certification defines an agreement between the Data Controller and Data Processor to establish data retention periods for the candidates. The client (individual or an organization) can define the time period to have the data deleted from the servers. Post the termination of the contract among parties, the client can request the data processor to delete the data from the server.
Look for Company Credentials on kind of clients before deciding
The clientele of an assessment partner certainly showcase a powerful and trustful existing relationship while this contributes in building trust in the potential partnerships too.
Our experience of working with more than 175+ large organizations & over 6000 small & medium institutions in both India & abroad depicts the flexibility of customization and level of robustness of our Online Assessment Platform which helps our potential clients to choose the right assessment for the right requirement.
A mix of large, medium and smaller clients describes the authenticity, level of customization & robustness of our Online Assessment Platform.
Why us, for Online Remote / Auto Proctored Exam Solutions:
Wheebox brings powerful and customizable solutions in time to help the delivery of any type of online examination in a secured manner which has been certified by CERT-In (National Agency for Cyber Security) for application security to provide educational organization “analytics” that helps to identify, & build cost effective online examination seamlessly with a higher accuracy in preventing cheating.
