Professors work to deliver online exams efficiently

With online course transitions and closures due to COVID-19, East Carolina University’s in-person proctoring services are now unavailable for use. Faculty are encouraged to develop creative ways for online course and exam delivery and some instructors have decided to implement more assignments, projects and video conference based tutoring.

Director of ECU proctoring center Greg Miller said there were a few different proctoring options for students who have taken online classes in the past. He said one of the options was to find a proctor through the University of North Carolina Online Proctoring Network, which is a resource of proctors around the world.

Another option would be to find an outside proctoring source who would then need to meet the UNC proctoring criteria and become approved, according to Miller.

“Now the big challenge is a lot of our students (who) were in the proctoring network were using proctors that did not charge, i.e. they would go to a public library. Well these public libraries are all shut down now as well,” Miller said. “So that creates a whole other set of problems.”

Now that times have changed and the ECU proctoring center is not in operation, Miller said faculty has been encouraged to come up with creative ways to deliver exams so proctoring is not needed.

Miller said multiple provosts have been working closely with faculty through things like WebEx conferences to help faculty who have never taught online. However, if this goes beyond the end of the semester, Miller said they will need to find a more permanent way of dealing with this.

Miller said the general administration is working to find alternative proctoring systems that would defer charges due to the situation.

“The reality of it is most of the UNC Proctoring Network that were doing the proctoring for free, since that resource isn’t there, they wanted, provost wanted to make sure faculty were doing anything and everything they could to be creative so students wouldn’t have to take proctored exams,” Miller said.

Mathematics Department Chairman Johannes Hattingh said some instructors within the department are still transitioning their courses, however, he said the UNC online system informed them that they were canceling online proctoring services.

Hattingh said if another online proctoring service becomes available, they will certainly look into using it. He said they are receiving information from the provost to start looking at different ways to deliver exams.

Since Hattingh won’t be able to proctor his final exam, he said he will slightly change the assessment and ask students to complete more assignments. He said he will also allow students to print the exam and fill it out and scan it back to him.

“And then we’ve also tried to do other things to help students. We have a tutoring center as well, of course that’s staffed by our graduate students. And what we’re trying to do now is you know, set up tutoring appointments with graduate students by WebEx,” Hattingh said. “So students can actually email the graduate students and ask for online tutoring.”

Mathematics tutoring director Joseph Bland said there are six to seven graduate students who are each responsible for tutoring certain math classes. He said they will be tutoring through either WebEx or Zoom sessions, both video conferencing applications, and have them open for each tutoring time frame.

The graduate student will begin a session, and the session links will be posted in blackboard and if students need help they can login with that link and it will take them to the personal room during that window of time, according to Bland.

“So you know if there’s a four hour window on Mondays, then that means if the student needs help anytime during that four hours they can just log in to Webex, use that, use his link, and then he’ll be in WebEx,” Bland said.

Bland said WebEx also has a whiteboard feature and the graduate students are able to use a pen and write out problems on there which is helpful for explanations. He said the math department tutoring services have never been appointment based, so for now the tutoring sessions will stay that way and students can just come and go as they need help.

“We’re trying to figure out the best way to make sure that there’s still tutoring available because you know with everything going online tutoring is, is going to be even more essential now,” Bland said.