Online Worldwide Student Services Community of Practice
Proctoring Subcommittee
Conference Call
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Present: Karen Bell-Dancy, Kristin Grosskopf, Lanyce Keel (Chair), Donna Menke, Hayley Patton,
Heather Rhinehart, Jessica Tschirren, Maggie Winnicki
Agenda:
1. The underlying reasons courses/instructors require proctoring
a. Which of these reasons are justifiable and which are personal preference but not necessary.
2. How many undergraduate and graduate online programs use proctors?
3. Who provides proctoring for students?
4. How much time and expense is involved in proctoring? For a student? For an instructor? For a
program?
5. What, if any, proctoring related issues exist for students, faculty and other campus units such as
libraries, testing centers etc.?
1. The underlying reasons courses/instructors require proctoring were discussed. Reasons that are
justifiable and, as such, will need to be addressed by the committee are tests in which students:
 are required to do calculations and/or where instructors need to see all the steps in a
calculation/process in order to give the student partial credit;
 need to use specialized software that is available at limited locations;
 may require technical support. Examples include tests that use software that “times out,”
and/or do not allow backtracking or changing an answer without having the test “reset” by a
technician or proctor;
 need to have identity authenticated; and/or
 are required to have access to course related materials blocked during the test.
2. The volume of undergraduate and graduate online programs using proctors was discussed.
In general, the need for proctoring is greater in undergraduate courses.
UNK: Volume is 4-5 classes per year, mostly for undergraduate business courses.
UNL: Volume is primarily quantitative courses, mostly graduate statistics courses, undergraduate
business courses, and “X” courses (term specific) - a variety use proctors. Maple TA is used for math
exams; it is good for math and analytical problems, as well as for specialized software requirements,
but still requires proctoring.
UNMC: Half, to three-quarters of Allied Health courses require proctors. All students are required to
arrange for a proctor. It is important for UNMC that computer screens are locked as students undergo
exams, and that proctors can see the screen throughout testing.
UNO: Volume is mostly undergraduate courses.
3. Who provides proctoring for students?
UNK: Students near Kearney use the E-Campus Testing lab.
UNL: EE&O has staff who provide proctoring. Three of the colleges on campus have testing centers.
UNMC: Students are informed in the application process that they need to identify potential proctors
and find their own. Prospective proctors must then be approved by Allied Health. For local students,
we do provide proctoring services in the School of Allied Health Professions.
UNO: Division of Continuing Studies (DCS) staff, Military students use the testing centers found on
the military bases where they are stationed. UNO is conducting a pilot with the campus testing center
this summer. The volume is growing to the point that it is taking too much time for DCS staff and
public libraries are turning people away.
4. The time and expense involved in proctoring was discussed from the perspective of the student, the
instructor and the program.
UNK: E-Campus staff manage up to 12 students who come in to be proctored; they are currently
managing things well. Students being proctored are not required to pay fees for this service as long as
they are enrolled at any NU campus.
UNL: Testing Centers are feeling stressed, due especially to the undergraduate online courses. The
College of Arts & Sciences is at capacity, the Colleges of Business Administration and Agricultural
Sciences and Natural Resources (CASNR) both added a testing center; both are already pushing
capacity. EE&O has proctors as part of their service, currently charging non-UNL students a $25 fee.
Academic departments who have proctors support them out of their budgets.
UNMC: Current system is working and is sustainable for anticipated growth. However, the labor
intensive process for tracking proctors outside of PeopleSoft is not sustainable. Students secure their
own proctors. Few, if any students pay for proctoring.
UNO: This is a major resource issue, everyone is stretched now, no solution yet. Students were using
public libraries in the Omaha area, but are now being turned away. Students who utilize proctors at
Offutt or on the UNO campus are not charged a fee.
5. Committee members identified key issues and potential solutions.
a. With the exception of UNMC, students are not adequately informed of the need for a proctor
prior to enrolling in a course.
Potential Solutions


Adding a field in the PeopleSoft course schedule webpage indicating proctor requirements.
This option was ruled out because it would require all seven campuses within PeopleSoft to
endorse the change in order for this modification to be made.
Create an icon or hyperlink by the course title in the PeopleSoft course schedule. The
icon/hyperlink would provide specific proctoring information.
b. Once enrolled, providing students with proctoring information at the beginning of a course where
it is required.
Potential Solutions



In materials that orient instructors to online teaching, stress the importance of including
proctoring information in an orientation to the course, the course syllabus and other locations.
If Blackboard online course templates are provided to instructors, include proctoring
information in the locations listed in the previous bullet.
Recommend campuses develop a standard process so there is uniformity in the information
about proctoring within a program/campus.
c. Coordinating proctoring between the instructor, the program coordinator and the proctor is
extremely time-consuming. The current process involves multiple emails and/or phone
conversations. As such, it could create a bottleneck when a program expands quickly or
dramatically.
Potential Solutions

Investigate streamlining this process. There are web applications developed to link proctors to
instructors. It was suggested that this might be a best practice we could use.
Discussion about Park University ensued, given their student military population and their reputation for
accommodating students in an online environment. Haley will have a discussion with her contacts at Park
to invite someone from there to showcase or demonstrate their proctoring services to our group in June.
d. UNL and UNO have capacity issues with distance education students who need to take proctored
tests on their respective campuses.
Potential Solutions were not discussed.
The group discussed using external proctoring applications. The consensus was that external solutions do
not address all of the issues proctoring presents. Additionally, use of another application would require
students, faculty, proctors and program coordinators to learn a new system and integrate data between two
systems. For these reasons the group put exploration of web based proctoring software on hold.