In light of the recent college admission cheating scandal, the web is abuzz with articles highlighting some of the deep-rooted biases and systematic failures of the educational system. These problems beg the question:
How can we create an educational system where fairness in all levels of assessment is inherent?
- Where students are accepted to colleges & universities based on real merit and not how deep mom & dad’s pockets are.
- Where “legacy” applicants aren’t given favorable exception over talented applicants.
- Where the points of failure (corrupt proctors for example) are make obsolete altogether.
Advances in educational technology can help.
Proctorio is designed to level the playing field for students by eliminating/minimizing the need for human proctors. It is currently the only solution on the market that achieves this. Proctorio is a fully automated, remote proctoring service that provides a scalable, cost-effective solution to validating test-taker identities, activity and originality during exams. Institutions who use Proctorio are helping foster an environment of serious scholarship and honest knowledge acquisition, which protects the reputation of educational institutions and enhances the value of degrees.
Proctorio leverages advances in cryptography & machine learning to create a system which is fundamentally incorruptible.
One of the highest stakes exams students will take throughout their education is the SATs. In light of the college admissions scandal, many people are questioning the fairness of the exam and what the College Board plans to do to make it more secure. Maintaining integrity for the SATs is crucial to leveling the playing field for students applying to college. Jeremy Singer, presidents of the College Board, which creates and administers the test, explains that the College Board was founded to address the inequity that is prominent. Issues like this are hard to prevent, however, with recurring issues over human error and bias.
Schools that issue high-stakes exams like the University of Colorado Skaags School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, are on the cutting edge when it comes to institutional and exam integrity. Recently, Skaags conducted a study to assess the effectiveness of implementing a remotely proctored, online exam process in terms of: academic integrity and student & faculty satisfaction. Unsurprisingly, the results suggested that moving to remotely proctored online exams does not put the academic integrity of exams at risk. Although students are for the most part upset about having to be proctored, the results indicated that students overwhelmingly prefer remote proctoring because of increased flexibility (students can take exams on their own time, 24/7).
In the case of the recent scandal involving bribed proctors who helped students get better grades on placement exams, it’s impossible to narrow the issue to a single point of failure. We have to take the 30,000 foot view and answer tough questions about how & why our society enables institutional exclusivity.
While educational technology companies like Proctorio are playing the long game to create a level playing field for students and help create more opportunities for increasing high-quality education, some institutions are finding ways to adjust the levers within the broken system to lean in the direction of integrity, equality and fairness. One easy way is by adding institution-wide automated remote proctoring to assessments using a scalable solution like Proctorio. Because after all, you can’t bribe a machine.
“Proctorio is credited with revolutionizing remotely proctored exams”