Online proctoring services are essential services during an exam being conducted online, it allows the examiner to invigilate the examinees during an online exam. Through these services, the examiner will be able to ensure that no cheating is being done by the students as they will be proctored through a webcam. Examiner will be proctoring the examinees present at the remote locations.
As the education system is also moving to online platforms, the main reason behind this shift is the currently prevalent global COVID-19 pandemic.
People are working from home, students are getting an education at home, in short everything is being done by the means of the internet to promote social distancing to prevent COVID-19 from spreading. You would have never thought about your kids giving their exams from home but it is happening.
What do you understand by remote proctoring services?
You can have an idea from the word remote that is present at remote locations far away from the exam center and proctoring means invigilating the students. In short, you can call it invigilating the students from remote locations. It is also known as online proctoring.
These proctoring services have become very important and are going to gain more importance in the coming future, as we could have an idea from the present COVID-19 situation. However, apart from the COVID-19 as a reason, it is more convenient and comfortable for both the examiners and examinees to conduct and appear in exams online.
However, in an exam, it is very important to ensure that none of the examinees is cheating. But the question is how it can be made sure. The answer to this question is the online or remote proctoring services. There are many ways by which a student can do cheating like from cellphones, computers, any persons sitting in the same room.
But proctoring services remove all possibilities of doing cheating as all the students will be being proctored and won’t be allowed to open any other window in their device and their rooms will also be checked. Furthermore, real-time authentication will also be done of all the students before they start doing their exams.
These services have made it possible for everyone to participate in global-level exams without going to any other country. There are many international courses that one may like to pursue but not able to afford the cost of living in a foreign country. But proctoring services have helped them.
You can have an idea from all the above points about the convenience of online proctoring services. But to ensure this convenience, you need to make sure that you are choosing the right type of proctoring services. But how can you make sure that the services that you are choosing will be right for you?
Don’t worry! We are here to guide you on the same. The points given below are the tips that will help you in choosing the right type of proctoring services:
- User friendly: The main reason behind choosing the proctoring services is to provide convenience to the examiners as well as examinees but what if the services or software that you have chosen is not easy to operate, neither for examiners nor examinees. There will be no use of such services. The services that you are choosing should be customizable and easy to use. These features will ensure that the proctoring services are being utilized to their best. In short and simple words, we can say that these services should be user-friendly. Therefore, before you pay for these services, you need to take a demo and observe the convenience of using these services. If during the demo, you find them user-friendly and easy to operate then you should go for these services, otherwise, you will have more options for these services.
- The type of the exam: Another important factor to consider while choosing proctoring services is the type of exam that you are going to conduct. There are various types of exams such as school-level exams, college-level exams, job-related exams, competitive exams, global-level exams, etc. Conducting different types of exams has different requirements. Therefore, you choose the proctoring services, you need to consider the type of exams that you are going to conduct. You still must be thinking about why to consider the type of the exams. Let us explain the situation. As you know if a student while being proctored does any extra or unnecessary activity like opening a book or using a calculator then the proctor will notice it and will cancel the exam on the spot. But if it is already an open book exam or an exam that would require the use of a calculator. In such a case, those proctoring services should be used that would be customizable as per the requirements. Due to these reasons, it is very important to choose these services depending upon the type of exams.
- Technical support: Another important tip is to consider whether you will be getting technical support along with or not. You should choose those services that will be provided along with the technical support. Let us understand the importance of technical services through a situation. Let’s say, you have conducted an online exam and proctoring the students through online exam proctoring services. What if due to any glitch, the software stops working and you have no knowledge about what to do. How the exam will be completed. In such a case, if you will have technical assistance from the service provider, you will be able to get the problem solved and continue to complete the exam.
- Scalability: It is also one of the important points to be considered. Scalability means the number of students that will be able to give the exam. During an exam, there will not be one or two students giving the exam, there will be a lot of students. If the scalability will be low then conducting an exam will become difficult.
These are the points that you need to consider while choosing online proctoring services.
