Online Education Challenges
In comparison with students’ examinations a generation ago, today, there are a lot of advanced ways for educators to assess a student’s academic honesty while taking exams at home. That’s why learning institutions are looking for robust solutions to ensure the high level of remote invigilation without undue hassle. Cheating is one of the main issues of remote proctoring. According to thesurvey conducted among 645 students, there is no significant difference between in-class and online courses; almost the same percentage of surveyed admitted cheating during taking the exams.
Over the years, online distance courses have been growing according to the research, where almost 30% of higher education students enroll in at least one distance institution. Therefore, with the increase of distance student enrollments, the tendency to online learning is gaining momentum more and more, which leads to the educators’ need to uphold the integrity of exams and reliable ways of data assessment.
Machine Learning as a viable solution to online assessment
With the emergence of cutting-edge technologies and the rapid growth of AI and IoT, online education is transforming public education, mainly affected by the lockdown amid the COVID-19 outbreak. The e-learning market size is forecasted to spur its growth toUS$319.167 billion in 2025, fostered by AI adoption.
Technological innovation, digitalization, and AI have made a quantum leap in the way education is supervised. Exam management systems have undergone paradigm shifts due to extensive opportunities both for invigilators and exam takers to optimize and enhance online education. With AI-enabled proctoring solutions, education institutions and learning centers are empowered with intelligent capabilities to eliminate excessive costs and undue efforts and obtain a high online valuation level deterring cheating or any other students’ misbehavior. AI-based proctoring tools have much more potential to conduct an effective and vigilant assessment in contrast with a human’s one. Utilizing machine learning in remote proctoring facilitates assessment security, educators’ feasibility, and students’ convenience.
So, how does this process look like?
Remote invigilation tools identify impersonation and suspicious activities of a person by scanning behavioral patterns and utilizing facial recognition algorithms, which generate alerts if there are any integrity breaches. Therefore, test takers need to be equipped with a microphone, camera, speakers, computer, or laptop to capture audio, visual, and voice signals that are automatically recorded for further review and processing by invigilators.
Win-win remote invigilation solution for Australia's education and training providers
The Engineering Institute of Technology (EIT) developed IRIS cloud-based software to ensure robust online and remote assessments. There are many benefits that Australasian learning institutions can leverage in their LMS systems to get valuable data analytics providing real-time in-depth insights into educational trends. It is worth mentioning that all recorded data during exams are saved on IRIS’s invigilation AWS servers. Let’s see what benefits the AI-powered IRIS software program can bring to educational enhancement and how it can amplify the effectiveness of assessment methods.
1. Elimination of administrative burden
There is no need to be overloaded with organizing test centers, planning and selecting questions, paper gathering and printing, reviewing and proofreading, etc. The intelligent approach toward exam management helps significantly optimize academic staff workflows, eliminate logistical issues, and streamline overall assessment procedures. With minimized tedious and time-consuming tasks, both educators and students save costs and enhance learning and teaching experience.
2. Reduction of examination stress
Electronic assessment technology allows candidates to have a stress free experience since they do not need to relocate and spend time to travel to the test center. Moreover, test takers will be more focused on actual content and subject matter during their exams when located in familiar and convenient surroundings.
3. No need to hire a fleet of educators
Thanks to machine learning algorithms, online assessment is scalable and cost-effective since it doesn’t require human involvement.
4. No need for extra hardware or extra costs
IRIS is a plugin extension featured on the Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers. All you need is a laptop, good internet connection, camera, and microphone.
5. Enhanced security with AI-driven algorithms
All exam assessments and materials are stored on the institutes Learning Management System (LMS), ensuring access only to authorized users/students. All recorded sessions and student data are stored on the institutes private server in Sydney, Australia. With smart invigilation software like IRIS, the process is transparent in terms of user data. IRIS will never share student data with a third party.
Why do you need online proctoring?
To put it simply, to maximize exam authenticity. Such invigilation software systems as IRIS are designed to deliver any type of exam assessment in a secure and seamless manner, significantly simplifying turnaround time for exam management. It can be easily integrated with your existing learning management system to ensure improved efficiency of educational procedures. From the student’s perspective, it is convenient and less stressful to take an exam; thereby, students can be more focused on their exams’ subject matter. Moreover, due to the COVID-19 lockdown, implementing online proctoring software in educational systems seems to be the most comprehensive solution.