Abstract:

Online-supervised examinations (also called, “proctored exams” or “remote invigilated exams”) have received increasing attention in Europe in recent years. More and more universities and educational institutions want to gain experience with these types of examinations and are beginning to implement pilot applications.

Many reasons speak for the digitalisation of examinations: Over time, universities have moved a lot of learning content online and a large number of international participants complete entire course programs completely online. The exams, on the other hand, are still often held in the lecture hall. It is therefore prudent to offer an online exam with remote proctoring, especially for internationally distributed learners, for specific groups of students (e.g. students with disabilities), or for entrance exams.

However, the practical implementation at European educational institutions is not so straightforward: If a candidate is not willing to provide sensitive personal data, such as video streams of the face or audio recordings of the learning environment, European law requires that the student has to be offered a less data-intensive solution without negative consequences. This means that, in addition to the online examination at home, an examination room at the university must be booked.

In addition, depending on the individual examination regulations, a demo examination must be offered for practising a technically comparable test with the same conditions, and the students often have to be informed about the type of examination according to precise deadlines.
If an examinee does not have a suitable technical device, either a computer room needs to be made available or corresponding loan devices must be issued to individual students. This requires additional organisational effort, but it may prevent technical problems from arising during the exam.

In order to master the administration of Online Proctored Exams without major complications, the Technical University of Munich (TUM) developed detailed testing processes for different examination scenarios, based on several pilot tests of varying sizes. This makes it possible to take into account all necessary steps and milestones of the examination process, to minimise sources of errors as much as possible.

The presentation first introduces important basic features of Online Proctoring, as well as more advanced options. Afterwards, possible applications within the framework of the university will be presented. The focus is on practical processes and an overview for the use of Online Proctored Exams at European universities and educational institutions. The processes have already been successfully used and evaluated in several pilots, including an exam with over 350 students. In addition, the results of a student survey with more than 200 candidates of an Online Proctored Exam are presented and explained. The participants provide information about their experiences, fears and fraud attempts when using Online Proctored Exams. The presentation concludes with an outlook on the further development of Online Proctoring in Europe and a discussion of open points.

Keywords:

Online Proctored Exams, Exam Processes, Practical Concepts for Online Proctoring.