Online Proctoring: Lesson Learned & Success Stories from a Large University

The evolution of online proctoring at the University of South Florida (USF) is a common tale. It all began with a few early adopters brave enough to pioneer this uncharted territory we call online proctoring. Over the years, other faculty followed but selected different online proctoring providers. Before you know it, the university had 20 to 30 courses utilizing four different online proctoring solutions, each instructor convinced that “mine is the best.”  This is where we were in 2014, suffering from a hodgepodge of online proctoring solutions. This lack of cohesion created a number of issues including student confusion, faculty frustration, an influx of support calls, and no basis for measuring quality. Fast forward just two years to May of 2016. By this point, USF had successfully:

1) conducted a pilot evaluating 6 online proctoring vendors and selected a university-wide online proctoring solution

2) launched two training formats (fully online & “lab based”) teaching over 300 faculty participants

3) worked with the marketing department to strategize communication for all 4000 faculty and 48,000 students

4) developed digital content (multimedia & website pages) to inform and prepare

6) worked with the school newspaper (The Oracle) to write an article about online proctoring

7) built a foundation of student advocacy by collaborating with the student government and presenting at student organizations (i.e. student senate)

8) developed a continuous improvement plan through survey and interviews

9) and successfully conducted over 20,000 online proctored exams over the first semester (Jan - May 2016) with minimal issues.  

Attendees of this presentation will learn about each of the above items, specifically providing the lessons learned (challenges) and successes. We recommend this presentation to anyone wanting to know more about online proctoring, whether you are in the early phases or a have been using it for years.