What are the 4 Ps of proctoring?

No matter how much times change, some things never will. The importance of learning and education, for instance, will always be paramount to the growth of individuals as well as societies. Examinations and tests will always be necessary to validate educational institutions and programs. And effective proctoring will always be necessary to lend credence and validity to these exams.

With so much resting on proctoring, it only makes sense for you as educators and training providers to be aware of what constitutes effective proctoring. To help you do that, we at uLearn have simplified the mantra for effective online proctoring by condensing it down to four easy-to-understand yet hard-to-attain pillars, or Ps of proctoring.

1.   Proctoring

The basic act of watching over the examination process to ensure integrity and fairness forms the essence of effective proctoring. While this statement may seem obvious now, it is not that clear when proctors actually engage in the act of proctoring, when maintaining the integrity of exams does not seem like the core objective from the actions they engage in.

Proctors and educators often lose sight of this objective and take things too far when they try to invade too much into test-takers’ personal spaces. A clear example of this can be found in the slew of cases where educational institutions have been accused of using unqualified third-party proctors to pry on test-takers through webcams, causing them great discomfort. Proctoring, online or otherwise, should have the central objective of maintaining the fairness of exams without affecting students’ performance in any way.

2.   Privacy

In keeping with the first pillar, the privacy of the students taking tests should be an area to consider while evaluating the effectiveness of proctoring. Ensuring the privacy of students entails collecting only the data that is necessary to maintain the integrity of exams and no more. Moreover, the data that is collected for these purposes must not be made accessible to unauthorized entities and must not be stored for any longer than necessary.

3.   Precision

A recent phenomenon that has closely followed the rise of online proctoring is the increase in false positives reported by proctoring systems. For instance, a recently held Bar exam made news when one-third of test-takers were alleged to be falsely flagged as violating exam rules by an online proctoring tool. Such examples clearly show that not all exam proctoring tools are ready to be used in exams of consequence. Proctoring systems must have precision built into them so that they do not cause major disruptions in examination processes and academic schedules.

4.   Performance

Having secured the first three pillars of effective proctoring, the performance of proctoring tools should also be evaluated and maximized, especially if such tools are to be used in exams involving large cohorts of students. Proctoring tools must be made highly scalable so that online education can become a viable option for both educational institutions as well as students.

uLearn is a proctoring tool that uses artificial intelligence to make all these four pillars an inherent part of online tests. And the best part is, it makes it incredibly easy for online educators as well as test-takers to conduct and participate in online learning.

To know more about uLearn: https://ulearn.io/