1

To Proctor or not to Proctor? And What to do

if not? By Dr. Henrietta Carbonel, EDUDL+

https://www.securitysales.com/surveillance/western-digital-survey-surveillance/

EduHub Days 2021

 2

A quick survey

1. Has your institution use some form of

‘light’ proctoring (Zoom surveillance by
assistants, for example)?
2. Has your institution use an external YES NO
proctoring service (ProctorU, Proctorio,
Inspera, Questionmark, etc.)?
3. Has your institution used no proctoring at
all?
 3

How does
online
proctoring
work?
 4

Proctoring promises secure online exams

46%

99%

https://www.uis.edu/colrs/teaching/
Buolawini, Gender Shades
technologies/examity-pricing-guide/
 5

Cheating the system

• Tech hacks: Intercepting the video feed; adding a

screen, keyboard and mouse

• Virtual machine

• Analog hacks: notes or a second laptop on your

computer, wear sunglasses, eyes or people on the
wall behind you.

Source:
https://jakebinstein.com/blog/on-knuckle-scanners-and-cheating-how-t
o-bypass-proctortrack/
 6

Mixed evidence about online cheating

Harmon and Lambrinos (2008) found more cheating in

unproctored online exams.
However, Hollister and Berenson (2009) didn’t find any evidence
of more cheating when exams were not proctored.
Ladyshewshky (2015) didn’t find any difference in cheating
between supervised in-class and unsupervised online MCQ tests.
 7

Academic integrity is a pedagogical issue

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/
jan/09/austrian-minister-resigns-amid-
plagiarism-scandal

https://www.politico.eu/article/surgisphere-scandal-shows-perils-of-mixing-big-data-and-scientific-
research/
 8

Trusting relationships support learning

Invigilation, and other measures to prevent cheating, start from a default

position of lack of trust in students. Their use erodes the potential for
building trusting relationships between students and staff (Ross and
Macleod, 2018).

Trust is more likely to lead to:

 Interactions
 Taking risks and making mistakes
 Being open to feedback
 9

What works? What is desirable?

 Means and ends are

constitutively related in
education
 « the means we use contribute
qualitatively to the very
character of the goals which
they produce » Carr, 1992

Biesta, 2007
 10

Surveillance society
 Looking into students’ homes
 Recording their movements and
sounds
 How is the data managed? (who has
access, where is it stored, when will it
be destroyed…) How will it be used?

https://www.consumerreports.org/digital-security/poor-
security-at-online-proctoring-company-proctortrack-may-
Do watch one of these short films from the screening surveillance project. have-put-student-data-at-risk/
 11

Rethinking online assessment:

 Authorship?

 Closed book?

Also available in French and German: https://digitalskills.unidistance.ch/vade-

mecum-pour-levaluation-a-distance-des-etudiant%c2%b7e%c2%b7s/
 12

Break-out rooms: suggested questions

for discussion

1.What alternative assessment formats?

2.When should high education institutions use

external online proctoring services?
 13

References
 Ajjawi, R., Molloy, E., Bearman, M., & Rees, C. E. (2017). Scaling up assessment for learning in higher education. In D. Carless (Ed.), The Enabling Power of Assessment (Vol. 5,
pp. 129–143). Singapore: Springer Nature. Find on DiscoverEd.

 Biesta, G. (2007). Why ‘What Works’ Won’t Work: Evidence-Based Practice and the Democratic Deficit in Educational Research. Educational Theory, 57(1), 1–22.
http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/10.1111/j.1741-5446.2006.00241.x

 Carless, D. (2013). Trust and its role in facilitating dialogic feedback. In D. Boud & E. Molloy (Eds.), Feedback in higher and professional education (pp. 90–103). London:
Routledge. Find on DiscoverEd.

 Carr, D. (1992). Practical Enquiry, Values and the Problem of Educational Theory. Oxford Review of Education, 18(3), 241–251

 Draaijer S., Jefferies A., Somers G. (2018) Online Proctoring for Remote Examination: A State of Play in Higher Education in the EU. In: Ras E., Guerrero Roldán A. (eds)
Technology Enhanced Assessment. TEA 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 829. Springer, Cham.
https://doi-org.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/10.1007/978-3-319-97807-9_8

 Fawns, T., & O’Shea, C. (2018). Evaluative judgement of working practices: reconfiguring assessment to support student adaptability and agency across complex settings. Italian
Journal of Educational Technology, 27(1). https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5014-2662

 Harmon, O. R., & Lambrinos, J. (2008). Are online exams an invitation to cheat? Journal of Economic Education, 39(2), 116-121,123-125. Retrieved from
https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/scholarly-journals/are-online-exams-invitation-cheat/docview/235267116/se-2?accountid=10673

 Hollister, K. K., & Berenson, M. L. (2009). Proctored Versus Unproctored Online Exams: Studying the Impact of Exam Environment on Student Performance. Decision Sciences
Journal of Innovative Education, 7(1), 271–294. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4609.2008.00220.x

 Richard K. Ladyshewsky (2015) Post-graduate student performance in ‘supervised in-class’ vs. ‘unsupervised online’ multiple choice tests: implications for cheating and test
security, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 40:7, 883-897, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2014.956683

 Morris, S. M. and Stommel, J. (2018) ‘A Guide for Resisting Edtech: the Case Against Turnitin’, in An Urgency of Teachers. Hybrid Pedagogy Inc.

 Ross, J. and Macleod, H. (2018) ‘Surveillance, (dis)trust and teaching with plagiarism detection technology’, in. Networked Learning 2018, Zagreb.

 https://criticaldigitalpedagogy.pressbooks.com/chapter/a-guide-for-resisting-edtech-the-case-against-turnitin/
 14

Danke für die Aufmerksamkeit!

Merci pour votre attention !
Thank you for your attention!

Text