Online proctoring: Does anyone even pay attention?

[studyingfortests]

I've now taken several online proctored exams, through CLEP and SDC.

And I am beginning to wonder if the whole thing is just an illusion of proctoring, with a theoretical possibility that someone could be watching or checking the video later.

With SDC, everything is recorded, there's nobody live looking at your ID, your space, or you taking your test. It's all recorded and supposedly later somebody reviews it.  They tell you that if your ID is fuzzy, or your room scan isn't good, that they can invalidate your test, and likewise, if anyone does anything shady or looks like they are cheating that it's the same thing.

But does anyone actually watch the video?  My guess is no. The temptation to simply cut corners seems too great. Why pay a whole bunch of folks in some third world country to actually watch thousands of people sit in front of their webcams for hours?  Maybe they check the ID and scrub through the video.  Or maybe they do this only if SDC thinks that your score is too high or something.  Anyone have any idea?

And with CLEP... I had the fiasco with my at-home proctiring, which was supposedly live. The proctor did have me move the camera to show the room, and show my ID, and set me up to take the test... but then, when I had a problem, it took over 10 minutes, and three messages in the chat window, to get him to respond.  What if I was doing something shady or suspicious?  If he didn''t notice I was moving around and talking on the phone (to their phone support), would he notice if I was cheating?  And for that matter, who is overseeing the proctors or the people reviewing the videos in SDC's case? Are they actually doing their job? What motivation would they have to do so?

I am really wondering if the whole thing is basically a corporate version of giving plausible deniability.  SDC or College Board or UExcel or whomever can make the claim that there's proctoring happening, and if something comes up later, they can check a video... but I really wonder if, in routine circumstances, anyone is really watching?

Anyone got any experiences that confirm or refute the above?

[rachel83az]

My guess is that it's like random drug testing - you never know if/when you'll get caught. It's not like in-person proctoring is 100% guaranteed to catch cheaters either, so my guess is that they go with "good enough" while giving students the impression that it's even stricter than in-person.

[ROYISAGIRL]

So I think it like a 10% pull because I actually got contacted about my video once. My youngest decided that it was snack time at 2am (I take exams when my family sleeps) and ran into the kitchen yelling "figgy nunus". I was mortified lol. My test wasn't invalidated, but I was informed by email to not have anyone in the room or they could lol.

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[Vle045]

So I think it like a 10% pull because I actually got contacted about my video once. My youngest decided that it was snack time at 2am (I take exams when my family sleeps) and ran into the kitchen yelling "figgy nunus". I was mortified lol. My test wasn't invalidated, but I was informed by email to not have anyone in the room or they could lol.

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Because a toddler could totally give you answers for your college courses. LOL.

[ss20ts]

So I think it like a 10% pull because I actually got contacted about my video once. My youngest decided that it was snack time at 2am (I take exams when my family sleeps) and ran into the kitchen yelling "figgy nunus". I was mortified lol. My test wasn't invalidated, but I was informed by email to not have anyone in the room or they could lol.

Sent from my SM-G981V using DegreeForum.net mobile app

Because a toddler could totally give you answers for your college courses. LOL.

You don't think figgy nunus was an answer? LOL It's a secret code they created.

[bjcheung77]

Each and every exam, they have protocols in place. For PoctorU, I've been flagged 3 times and each time they say it's a "technical issue". One shouldn't have been as I was just "debating" with the proctor about having to present a second picture ID, my passport, and I also asked if the exam was open book or not. His notes indicated it's not, but SL's webpage indicated it was open book... long story short, no technical issue, he just wanted to be a fart-head and flag the exam.

I've taken numerous Study.com exams, in the bathroom, but never been flagged. RPNow should be much more users friendly as all they do is listen to the audio and review the video, they can do this at X speed, so a 2 hour exam can be done in 10 minutes of review. They charge each college, university, or institution a fee, they use that fee to pay a third party (from a developing country probably) to review them at pennies on the dollar.

[LevelUP]

A lot of the proctors use AI to detect cheating.  So certain things like looking away for a certain period of time can trigger an alert.  The AI is watching what your eyes are focusing on and it is pretty precise. 

They are paying someone in a third-world country to watch multiple people at the same time so that's why the costs are low.

[jsd]

Slightly different because this is through the university and not a provider like SDC et al, but as a TA I have definitely been tasked with reviewing flagged proctoring sessions. The ones not flagged by the system generally go unwatched.

Every institution is going to handle it differently trough.

[studyingfortests]

The AI thing makes sense. What I'm guessing is that the live proctors in third-world countries are probalby not very diligent, but that the AI that looks at recorded sessions is probably prety good at detecting people looking away from their screens.

I'm just hoping that the process is reasonably robust. There's so much rampant cheating (the recent articles about Chegg and CourseHero, for example) that it's really disheartening to consider that some folks "passing" classes may have little or no knowledge about the course they've supposedly passed.

[rachel83az]

Passing an exam does not mean that you know the material, though. Traditionally, students cram before a test and then you retain almost none of that the next day. Conversely, some people are really bad at exams. They know the material but the stress of an exam means that they'd still fail.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to any of this, even though schools want to stick everyone into the same mold.