Abstract:

Online supervised exams have rarely been used in large numbers at universities in Europe in recent years, in contrast to many other countries in the world.

The reasons for the restrained use are different: On the one hand, the strict data protection framework of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) exists in Europe, on the other hand, universities have established their lecture hall examinations over many years and therefore, up to now, there has often been no real need for online examinations.

Due to the pandemic situation and the associated stricter infection protection regulations, many universities and educational institutions have had to rethink their approach, as large exams in particular could no longer be easily implemented in the lecture hall.

Online proctored exams offer the decisive advantage that they can usually be implemented more flexibly and scaled much more easily than traditional exams in the lecture hall. However, due to the limited time available, most European universities were hardly able to provide a large number of online-supervised exams from scratch, as the necessary concepts and practical experience were not available.

The Technical University of Munich (TUM) has been conducting research on Online Proctored Exams since 2018 as part of a strategic project. Various exams were piloted with Proctoring Tools and first concepts for the rollout of such exams were developed. Starting in February 2020, the already existing concepts were used and expanded to perform a larger number of Online Proctored Exams in summer 2020 as part of a rollout. Finally, between August and October 2020 about 60 Online Proctored Exams with cohort sizes ranging from 10 to over 1000 (!) participants were successfully conducted.

Some of these examination cohorts were evaluated with the help of an extensive online questionnaire to find out more about the examinees, their perception, reservations and experiences with such examination forms.

The article first gives a short introduction to Online Proctored Exams, their possibilities and target groups at universities and educational institutions. In addition, the possible applications of such exams are presented.

The focus is on the presentation and explanation of the concepts for the rollout of Online Proctored Exams at European universities, which have been developed over several years at the TUM. The article presents the preparation and implementation of the entire examination process during the study semester and then shows an exemplary hybrid (simultaneously at home and in the lecture hall) examination course in the Learning Management System of TUM. It shows the exact structure of the examination course with necessary legal information, demo examination, selection of the chosen examination form and the real examination.

Finally, an insight into the results of an extensive evaluation of the interviewed examination courses with several hundred accumulated answers of the survey is given.

Keywords:

Online Proctored Exams, RollOut, Online Exams in Higher Education.