Back in mid-March life as we know it took a sudden and dramatic shift. We as a society of educators were required to pivot. In a moment’s notice we were faced with transitioning all residential classes to an online format. A major challenge numerous faculty faced was the loss of proctored exams for their face to face courses. Faculty explored a number of strategies for navigating this situation, some with greater success than others. This blog post describes the success story one faculty member had with using Zoom to replicate the Examity experience.
Divide and Conquer
The lead faculty met with his team and they investigated the strengths, weaknesses, and nuances of Zoom to see if they could created a proctored scenario for the remaining exams students would need to complete. They settled on the following strategy.
- The student roster would be divided among the TAs.
- Each TA would set up individual breakout rooms – 1 student per room
- The TAs would welcome students to the exam and after reviewing the ‘rules’ of the proctored exam, they would send the students to breakout rooms.
- The TA would access each breakout room and do a ‘security check’
- Students would have to show their ID to verify their identity
- Students would also show their testing space – the top of the desk, under the desk, a general view of the room to ensure no other individuals were in the room to help them during the exam.
- Students would then be given the access code to the exam.
Getting Help
The primary reason for having the TA’s create and manage the proctored sessions, was to allow the instructor to ‘float’ between all of the rooms and to help students when they had questions. The instructor and TAs used Microsoft Teams to communicate with one another during the exam. When a student needed help in the Zoom breakout room, they would raise their hand. The TA would be notified, and they would use Teams to send the instructor a message. The instructor would then access the Zoom room for the corresponding TA. The TA would then assign the instructor to the appropriate Zoom room and the instructor was then able to provide the student with 1-1 support while taking the exam.
How well did it work?
The instructor and TAs spent quite a bit of time in zoom, figuring out the settings and simply becoming acquainted with the technology. Once everyone was comfortable with Zoom, they were able to provide a near seamless proctoring experience for students.
Interested in replicating this experience?
An Instructor Guide for setting up and administering this type of proctoring solution is available on the Web Learning site.
