It’s true an examination without unproctored services are less expensive and offers a greater flexibility to authorities with regards to the venue, timings, and the kind of tests. But proctored exams have their own advantages. Also, with unproctored examinations, there is increased chances of cheating and forgery.
How does an online proctored exam fares against unproctored exam? Cheating is a known disadvantage. Multiple objective tests have more chances of cheating. But, if it’s a mathematical question with a defined set of steps and calculations, exams are less susceptible to cheating. Tests that rely on self-report or judgment of answers or where candidates have to give as many reasons for a particular cause- have an even lesser susceptibility.
A lab conducted tests on how cheating dynamics work. The individuals were divided into a certain group of 4 members each in two distinct tests of either working alone or with a partner and in a timed/untimed manner. The results concluded that cognitive ability is increased exponentially when working in partnerships or cheating.
When a timer is added to the equation, cheating is reduced. The personality attribute is totally unperturbed or untouched by cheating factors at play. Working with a partner which is akin to cheating leads to poor scores in situational judgments when it is bonded by a timer. Without a timer, cheating does very little to situational judgments.
Test of knowledge is a dangerous territory. Something with an exact answer, let’s say- ‘what is the genomic material of human beings?’ has an easy and absolute answer. But a question like- ‘find ʃ x sin (x2) dx’ is a little difficult to answer. Besides, this one will require a step-by-step process to reach the final answer. If we talk about pre-employment examinations, used by government organizations as well as leading corporate houses, they don’t use knowledge-based questions, so it removes cases of cheating immediately.
According to a leading research, there is a little difference between a test conducted with the help of exam proctoring services and one without it. It claimed, individuals performed better in an online proctored exam. This comes as a surprise, especially in regards to the fact that people think it’s the vice-versa. The hypothesis for this anomaly is individuals are free of any distractions and perform better. Both the versions of examinations performed equivalently on different parameters of examination conduct like competitive drive, initiative, adapting to change, conscientiousness, resource management, empowerment, leadership, and teamwork.
For certification examinations or educational objectives, an online proctored exam is mandatory. Without a proper proctoring set-up in place, the usefulness and veracity of such examinations are gone. The employers might take such examinations to be dubious or without effective means. Another facet is maintaining the secrecy and security of test content. There are chances of it being leaked and exam proctoring services ensure that is not the case.
Do proctored examinations offer what they say? The answer depends on what kind of examinations are we taking into consideration.
Editorial Director & Publisher — Driving content strategy, creation and publishing excellence at BusinessToMark | Linkz.Media businesstomark@gmail.com
