CRADLE Seminar Series – ‘The remote proctored exams dilemma’ – 11 May, 2pm
19 April 2021
Please join us for our second online seminar for 2021 presented by CRADLE’s Associate Director, Prof. Phill Dawson – ‘The remote proctored exams dilemma’.
Date and time: Tuesday 11 May 2021, 2pm via Zoom webinar
Join us for Phill’s insightful take on remote proctored exams, a timely and growing area if interest in this era of digitally mediated education and assessment. Remote proctored exams are a type of digital assessment where students are monitored, usually by their webcam and microphone, as they complete a test. Remote proctoring has proliferated during the pandemic as it lets students sit high-stakes examinations in their own homes. Compared to unproctored online exams, students sitting remote proctored exams tend to get poorer grades, which proponents of proctoring often regard as evidence that proctoring reduces cheating. However, critics argue that proctoring is a form of surveillance, and it creates an adversarial, untrusting assessment environment.
Using concepts from assessment security, academic integrity and surveillance studies, this presentation puts remote proctoring under scrutiny and examines the evidence for and against. It offers suggestions for those who are using proctoring on how to minimise its potential harms and maximise its potential benefits. Finally, it sets out challenges for both advocates and critics of remote proctored exams on the sorts of evidence we need to make an informed decision about the use of proctoring.
Phillip Dawson is a Professor and the Associate Director of the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University. He leads CRADLE’s research into academic integrity and the security of online assessments. His most recent books are Defending Assessment Security in a Digital World (Routledge, 2021), and the co-edited volume Re-Imagining University Assessment in a Digital World (Springer, 2020).
For more information about this seminar, and to register, please visit the event page here.
