In the nexus of integrity and surveillance: Proctoring (re)considered

Abstract

Background: The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted higher education in many ways, such as the move to Emergency Remote Online Teaching and Learning (EROTL), often including a move to online assessments and examinations. With evidence of increased academic dishonesty in unproctored online assessment, institutions sought ways to ensure academic and institutional integrity and reputation. In doing this, many institutions selected and implemented online proctoring solutions.Objectives: This article maps considerations of online proctoring solutions in the nexus between ensuring academic and institutional integrity and reputation, and addressing stakeholder concerns regarding invasive surveillance and the impacts on student privacy. Methods:The study involved a PRISMA-informed systematic review of three digital libraries, namely Clarivate's Web of Science, Elsevier's Scopus, and Springer's Spring-erLink, for peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings. After screening, a final corpus of 27 articles was analysed. Results and Conclusions:The findings include evidence that, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, higher education institutions were largely influenced by cost, usability and efficiency in choosing online proctoring solutions to ensure academic and institutional integrity. Student privacy was either considered in terms of data protection and transparency, or not at all. This article aims to provide valuable insight into the criteria used to select online proctoring solutions to ensure academic and

Trustworthy remote assessments: A typology of pedagogical and technological strategies

“…In the context of online proctored exams, different studies argue that students are concerned about their privacy (Duncan & Joyner, 2022; Khalil et al, 2022; Patael et al, 2022). According to prior research (Gonzalez, 2020), these concerns are related to some form of electronic monitoring—whether live or automated and archived for later retrieval, along with the capture of personal or sensitive information.…”

“…According to the study conducted by Patael et al (2022) in TAU, students opposed the application of automated proctoring technologies, even though the technology did not collect personal data from the students' computers. Considering that students might lack previous experience with proctoring technologies, it is key to explain how each technology works and describe what data will be shared with companies providing proctoring software (Khalil et al, 2022). Furthermore, Approach number 4 suggests informing students about the stringent procedures with respect to the storage, the use, and the deletion of the exam' recordings.…”

“…Proctoring is one way of accomplishing this (Dendir & Maxwell, 2020; Kauffman & Young, 2015), and with the increasing popularity of online courses ‐ along with the sudden shift to online education sparked by the COVID‐19 pandemic—digital proctoring has seen an increase in use (Kolski & Weible, 2019). Unfortunately, most of these efforts have focused on examining academic dishonesty rather than promoting academic integrity (Khalil et al, 2022), proposing technological solutions to monitor specific dishonest behaviours (Surahman & Wang, 2022). Thus, further work is required to improve trustworthiness in remote assessments from a technological and pedagogical perspective.…”

“…Currently, digital proctoring is the approach most used to reduce cheating due to their relative ease of administration to administer online examinations in a variety of times and places as per convenience (Conijn et al, 2022; Duncan & Joyner, 2022), scaling to many students with relatively little extra effort (Khalil et al, 2022). Duncan and Joyner (2022) define ‘digital proctoring’ as technology‐based methods for maintaining academic integrity on digitally administered assessments by preventing or detecting cheating behaviours (e.g.…”

“…In these lines, the results ofPatael et al (2022) showed that only half of TAU students thought that online proctored exams were the most effective type of assessment. Considering the lack of conclusive evidence of the benefit of online proctored exams(Khalil et al, 2022), Approach number 1 suggests to define what type of remote assessment method is most appropriate to measure specific learning outcomes, so as to prioritize the use of online proctoring only in such cases where students are geographically distributed (ideally in the same time zone); course content is ill suited to other types of assessment methods; and dishonest behaviours have been observed to grow in the targeted population(Duncan & Joyner, 2022). In other words, instructors and administrators should prioritize the use of online proctoring when strictly necessary (and check its compliance with institutional regulations).Considering the need to encourage alternative assessment methods,Surahman and Wang (2022) suggest the use of performance-based assessments, such as online oral presentations, written reports, e-portfolios, and student fact sheets.…”