Remote proctoring: Lessons learned from the COVID‐19 pandemic effect on the large scale on‐line assessment at Tel Aviv University

Abstract

Background:The global COVID-19 pandemic turned the adoption of on-line assessment in the institutions for higher education from possibility to necessity. Thus, in the end of Fall 20/21 semester Tel Aviv University (TAU)-the largest university in Israel-designed and implemented a scalable procedure for administering proctored remote examinations. This procedure is applicable to different kinds of examinations in diverse disciplines and to disparate degree levels.Objectives: This study aims to deepen the knowledge with respect to the design and adoption of remote proctoring at an institutional level Methods: First, based on lessons learned from the first semester of COVID-19, we describe the development and implementation of an institution-wide protocol for conducting on-line proctored assessment. We show the large-scale applicability of the protocol for administering examinations via Moodle with remote proctoring via Zoom.The accurately designed procedures that included careful consideration of all parties involved-academic staff members, students, administrative staff and proctorsenabled TAU to successfully assess the learning outcomes of its 25,000 students, while maintaining validity, compatibility and reliability of the assessment. Second, we report combined data from surveys of 4380 students and 188 faculty-members (18% and 12% response rate respectively), conducted at TAU following these examinations. Results and Conclusions:With over 90% of the students experiencing at least one, and 80% of faculty-members administering at least one proctored remote examination, these heterogeneous sources of data allow us to investigate a unique and complementary perspective of the process. Some of the significant findings consist of the over-all perception of the students' integrity by both groups surveyed; the discrepancy in the groups' perspectives of the adequate form of learning-assessmentwith the instructors preferring proctored examinations and the students-formativeassessment; and the influence of the pedagogical challenges on the perception of Smadar Patael and Julia Shamir contributed equally

Trustworthy remote assessments: A typology of pedagogical and technological strategies

“…ments suggest balancing formative and summative assessments (Alexandron et al, 2020;Rahim, 2020;Viamonte, 2021). In the study led by Patael et al (2022), although students did not experience formative assessment frequently (0.8% of the sample), 12 times more students (10.2% of the sample) thought this is the most appropriate mode of assessment for their curriculum, so faculty members were advised to switch to formative type of evaluation whenever possible.…”

“…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).…”

“…In addition to making data management transparent to students, it is also important to inform students about the consequences of dishonest acts that could be detected throughout the use of online proctoring technologies. For example, TAU students were required to sign an online Honour Code and Privacy Protection Statement when accessing an online proctored exam with a twofold purpose (Patael et al, 2022):…”

“…(2) serving as a moral reminder of what could be considered as academic cheating. Survey results showed that approximately 30% of the students rated the Honour Code and Privacy Protection Statement as the most effective method for ensuring the integrity of the exams and preventing misconduct (Patael et al, 2022). According to Chiang et al (2022), the consequences of dishonest behaviours should be clarified clearly, so that the necessary penalties can be taken to prevent future unethical behaviour.…”

“…Patael et al (2022) applied a survey to 4,380 students in Tel Aviv University (TAU) (out of 25,000 students), and 93.54% of them experienced at least one online proctored exam during fall 2020-2021 Duncan and Joyner (2022). also applied a survey about proctoring to 474 students and 49 teaching assistants in various countries all over the world (although the majority located in the U.S.), and most of them perceived proctoring as necessary to ensure academic integrity.…”