Online Proctoring - Impact on Student Equity

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

A fundamental aspect of instruction is the assessment of student learning. The rapid response to move classes online in a pandemic has exposed concerns surrounding the practice of online proctoring. There are many online proctoring features offered by companies such as Proctorio, Examity, Honorlock, and Respondus. The methods that do not require a webcam include locking down the students’ browser so they cannot perform functions such as open another application or tab, use the toolbar, copy/paste, or print screen while taking an exam. The intrusive methods include requesting a photo ID, activating facial recognition, and a live proctor monitoring for sounds and motions. Sessions are typically recorded from the exam start to finish and a live proctor can monitor potential testing infractions as they occur. Proctoring services say exam videos and other data are securely stored. Some store videos in a certified data center server, and then archive them after a defined period of time in line with Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act​ (FERPA) guidelines.

According to a 2017 study, it is suggested instructors familiarize themselves with how the services work so they can anticipate students’ concerns. Instructors should identify students’ technical difficulties and try to address them by spending time familiarizing students with how to get ready for and ultimately take their exams. In this pandemic, we know many students lack access to computers and wifi, and the newly issued Chromebooks challenge students to operate another new device and establish wifi access. 

Online testing may seem to make things easier but it’s possible the transition to new technology, or the lack of access using current technology that doesn’t include a webcam, may complicate matters and lead to a significant level of discomfort with online proctoring. A survey of 748 students about technology and achievement gaps found about one in five struggled to use the technology at their disposal because of issues such as broken hardware and connectivity problems. Students of color or lower socioeconomic status encountered these difficulties more often. 

My colleague, Aloha Sargent, Technology Services Librarian, shared with me an article from Hybrid Pedagogy that asserts "algorithmic test proctoring’s settings have discriminatory consequences across multiple identities and serious privacy implications." When Texas Tech rolled out online proctoring, they recognized students often take exams in their dorm or bedrooms, and students noted in a campus survey “They thought it was big brother invading their computers.” Some test takers were asked by live proctors to remove pictures from their surroundings and some students of color were told to shine more light on themselves. That’s a disturbing request in my opinion. Many of our community college students occupy multi-family or multi-person residences that include children. These proctoring settings will "disproportionately impact women who typically take on the majority of childcare, breast feeding, lactation, and care-taking roles for their family. Students who are parents may not be able to afford childcare, be able to leave the house, or set aside quiet, uninterrupted blocks of time to take a test."

At the University of California, Davis, they are discouraging faculty members from using online proctoring this semester unless they have previous experience with such services. “It suggests faculty consider alternatives that will lower students' anxiety levels during an already stressful time, such as requiring them to reflect on what they learned in the course.” The following article highlights a University of Washington story about adopting Proctorio because of the COVID-19 rapid transition to online. Read the experience of one University of Washington student, Paranoia about cheating is making online education terrible for everyone. The students’ experiences “are another sign that, amid the pandemic, the hurried move to re-create in-person classes online has been far from smooth, especially when it comes to testing.” Live online proctoring is a way to preemptively communicate to students, we don't trust you. It is a pedagogy of punishment and exclusion.

In higher education, traditional exams represent the most appropriate assessment tool. There are ways to cheat on exams no matter what method is used to deploy them. Even a major “NSA-style” proctoring software is not “cheat-proof.” Their sales representative was very candid in showing me how it’s done.  There are alternatives to typical exam questions—often referred to as authentic assessment. According to Oxford Research Encyclopedia, “authentic assessment is an effective measure of intellectual achievement or ability because it requires students to demonstrate their deep understanding, higher-order thinking, and complex problem solving through the performance of exemplary tasks.” 

Given the limited timeframe, there will be limits to what you can use now. That’s OK. Consider using Canvas question pools and randomizing questions, or even different versions of the final. For example, replacing six multiple-choice or true-and-false questions with two short-answer items may better indicate how well a question differentiates between students who know the subject matter and those who do not. Or ask students to record a brief spoken-word explanation for the question using the Canvas media tool. Just keep in mind, there are a dozen or more ways to assess learning without “biometric-lockdown-retinal scan-saliva-sample-genetic-mapping-fingerprint-analysis.”

References

  1. Dimeo, Jean. “Online Exam Proctoring Catches Cheaters, Raises Concerns.” Inside Higher Ed, 2017.
  2. Woldeab, Daniel, et al. “Under the Watchful Eye of Online Proctoring.” Innovative Learning and Teaching: Experiments Across the Disciplines, University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing Services’ open book and open textbook initiative, 2017.
  3. ​Schwartz, Natalie. “Colleges flock to online proctors, but equity concerns remain.” Education Dive, April 2020.
  4. Swager, Shea. "Our Bodies Encoded: Algorithmic Test Proctoring in Higher Education." Hybrid Pedagogy, April 2020.

The Learning Never Stops: Preparing to Teach in an Emergency

Umbrellas

The Learning Never Stops: Preparing to Teach in an Emergency

Emergency power shut-offs.   Fire evacuations.   Pandemic quarantines.

The list of emergencies that could require you to temporarily move your course online seems to be growing every day. CVC-OEI provides a robust set of instructional resources for Canvas and online course design that can aid faculty, administrators, and instructional support staff with the transition of on-campus courses into the distance education modality.

Don't wait for disaster to strike - check out these resources and prepare now.

CVC-OEI Emergency Preparedness Resources: Planning for uninterrupted instruction and student support in the event on-campus courses need to temporarily move online.

Course Design Rubric: The CVC-OEI Course Design Rubric can be used as a checklist for instructors who are moving instruction from the classroom to the Canvas common course management system. The Rubric guides instructors on setting up a course with clear navigation, regular effective contact, effective assessments, and accessibility compliance.

Canvas Support Portal: This one-stop resource includes links to the CCC Canvas Home Base, a Canvas Community where users can access text and video user guides and post questions to the Canvas Community. 

Byte Sized Canvas Videos: These short, desktop video tutorials provide pedagogical and technological tips on the use of Canvas.

Student to Student Interactions This Pocket PD Guide shows instructors how to meet the student-student interaction requirement that is now part of the Title 5 Education Code for California Community College Distance Education courses (Instructor Contact, Section 55204).

Adoptable Courses: Colleges needing to quickly prepare faculty to teach online in the case of an emergency can download courses from CVC-OEI/@ONE and adapt them to use locally. Fourteen “CVC-OEI Adoptable” courses can be found in Canvas Commons, including Introduction to Online Teaching & Learning,  Introduction to Course Design, and Introduction to Designing for Accessibility.

 

Pages vs. PDFs: The Simple Way to Cure Accessibility Headaches

The HTML environment (meaning pages in a Canvas course) is the most user-friendly for both screen reader devices and mobile devices. On top of that, remediating Word, PowerPoint and PDF files to make them accessible is not something many instructors know how to do. In this episode of Byte-sized, we’ll show you the best way to resolve that dilemma.

Watch this short tutorial on how to do the "copy and paste to Canvas" method.

Student-Student Interactions Professional Development Guide

Make your own copy.

Learning is a social process. That's why active learning has long been touted as an exemplary instructional approach for college classes -- whether they're taught in a traditional classroom or online. It's also why student-student interactions are part of the CVC-OEI Online Course Design Rubric and are now part of the Title 5 Education Code for California Community College Distance Education courses (Instructor Contact, Section 55204). Peer-to-peer interaction is foundational to developing a sense of community in your online courses. But meaningful interactions don't just happen; they are fostered through effective course design and teaching.

Neuroscientists like Antonio Demasio have shown that thinking and feeling are not distinct processes. Rather, feelings directly impact human reasoning and behavior. Thinking and feeling are inseparable from one another. And if you apply that to the way you teach, you'll notice big shifts in your students' engagement. Research shows that online classes can make some students feel more isolated, which can further exacerbate the feelings of stress and marginalization that many community college students experience. Throughout their lives, many of our students have been informed through the media and other messages that they're not cut out for college. It's your job to let them know, "I believe in you. You've got this." Just like in your face-to-face classes, validating your online students and establishing that your class is a safe place are the first steps to establishing a sense of belonging for your students (Rendón, 1994).

Providing low-stake opportunities that enable students to draw upon the wealth of experiences they bring to your class is also key. Doing so demonstrates that you value your students' diverse experiences and perspectives, as noted in the Peralta Equity Rubric. As students share what's meaningful to themselves, they will feel more included in your class and will also recognize things they have in common with their peers. When names on a screen begin to transform into human beings with rich stories, your class is on its way to becoming a community.

To support you in your efforts to foster student-student interactions and build community in your online courses, CVC-OEI/@ONE has developed a Student-Student Interactions Professional Development Guide, which you'll find embedded at the top of this page. We've shared the guide with a Creative Commons-Attribution (CC-BY) license and provided it in Google Slides format to make it easy for you to copy, adapt, and re-use as you'd like. In the guide, you'll find:

Leave a comment below to let us know what you think and how you plan to use the guide or share your favorite strategy for fostering meaningful interaction in your online course.

Is it time to Zoom it up a notch with a klatch workgroup meeting?

In my previous post, I shared how I use ConferZoom in Canvas to conduct “Live” orientation meetings with my online students.  I call these meetings "klatche workgroups," which is a term I learned from Greg Beyrer, Cosumnes River College faculty and facilitator of the @ONE Introduction to Teaching with Canvas course. Are you ready to zoom it up a notch with a klatch workgroup meeting using ConferZoom?

klatch: a social gathering, especially for coffee and conversation

There is only one you…and you have lots of students, right? How can you use ConferZoom throughout your online course to provide the varying levels of personal attention your students need to synthesize the new concepts they encounter in your course.

Learning is variable. This means students process information at different rhythms and are better supported when content is provided in more than one modality. Zoom empowers me to meet my students where they are in the learning process… on their unique learning journey through nutrition or health.  Throughout my online course, I use ConferZoom to hold klatch work group meetings to meet students and support them no matter where they are in mastering our learning outcomes. In our klatch meetings, I check in with my students. Based on their needs, I can demo a required task or assignment by using a sample of current student’s work (with student permission) or work from a previous term to clarify what they need to do. When we start a new klatch workgroup, I will ask for students to volunteer to share their work. Students often jump at the chance to have their instructor view their work and receive feedback in a supportive atmosphere that allows them to ask for clarification on the spot. Once I have a sample, I share my screen in ConferZoom and we work together as a class to identify potential problems and find creative solutions.  The goal is to facilitate student mastery of the assignment’s objectives, while encouraging peer to peer interaction and support (which aligns with the CVC-OEI Online Course Design Rubric, elements A-3 and B-4).

ConferZoom interface showing a presentation slide defining a "Basal Metabolic Rate" and a small image of the instructor.

Tips for arranging your klatch workgroups

Here’s are some tips to help you get started:

  1. Sign up here for your ConferZoom account if you don’t have one yet, refer to the help guides for assistance in getting started.
  2. Decide the amount of credit you will assign for attendance.
  3. Identify when you should schedule your workgroup klatch meetings to best support your students throughout the assignments and projects. (I will have a regular day and an alt-klatch day). I schedule my workgroup klatch meetings at critical points to provide scaffolded support for assignments or projects. For example, in my Nutrition class, the first project my students complete is a diet analysis self-assessment project that is comprised of 4 components. A critical stage in the project is the point at which students are required to perform several anthropometric measurements. Students can become discouraged, as many students view any mathematical equation as a daunting task, no matter how useful the information will ultimately be to them. I head this off with a scheduled klatch work-group, I offer 2 meetings on different days and times. Students are required to attend one of the meetings with the calculation worksheet in hand. They are required to have a calculator and scratch sheet of paper ready. Students are informed that we will work as a team in the workgroup klatch to use current and previous student examples and solve each equation together. By the end of the klatch, students have solved all of their anthropometric measurement calculations required for their project.  
  4. Send out invitations to your students using the Canvas inbox in the invitation message make sure students know what will be covered and what they need to bring to the work group (worksheet, scratch sheet, rough draft, research topic), and specify any content they will need to review or flipped classroom task they will need to complete before the klatch. If you want students to volunteer to share their work in the klatch, include that request in the invitation. My meetings for the term are posted in unit zero as you can see in this video. I also have the meeting broken down by modules
  5. Send a reminder. An hour before the meeting I send out a reminder message through the Canvas inbox with a recap of the items students need to review or bring to be prepared for our session.
  6. Have your workgroup Klatch!  Use ConferZoom’s built-in Record function to ensure you have an archive of your work-group for students who are unable to attend.
  7. Promote the next workgroup klatch. Don’t miss this opportunity to be sure your next meeting is on your students’ calendars and be sure it’s on your Canvas course calendar too.
  8. Include all students.  for students who are unavailable to attend, provide the option to view the recording and share 1-2 things they learned. This ensures students aren’t penalized if their schedule does not allow them to be present.

Tips for a successful klatch workgroup in ConferZoom

Once your klatch workgroup is arranged, consider these tips for a successful experience:

  1. Adapt to your students’ needs. Have an idea of the topics you plan to cover and how much time you want to spend on each of them but adjust your plan to support the needs of students who attend. For example, if you plan to cover a topic, but discover the students in attendance don’t need it to be covered or the students want more time with another topic, adjust your plans. Be sensitive to what the class needs and adjust your pace to accommodate the needs of your students. If the class is picking up the concepts quickly, speed up. If they aren’t, slow down. 
  2. Encourage participation. Use pauses to encourage students to contribute.  Often, when you ask a question and wait silently, a student will reply.
  3. Encourage students to help each other. By setting the tone you will not be the first to jump in with the answer. Instead, when students ask questions, open them to the class whenever possible. These prompts are helpful: “Can anyone help Joe?” or “Does anyone want to try and answer Maria’s question?” This facilitation tactic can foster students’ connections with their peers and also provide you with a clearer picture of who has mastered the objectives. Klatch workgroups help gauge what students understand at particular points in the term.
  4. Use the archive to support learning. Encourage students to set aside time during the week to review the archive as they go to complete any work left unfinished

How are you using ConferZoom to support your students? Let us know by sharing a comment below!

It's Time to Rethink Feedback

Instructor presence is crucial to student success, perhaps especially in an online learning environment. Offering regular, meaningful feedback is an excellent way to contribute to student learning and to make your presence in the course known. Let’s look at some ways Canvas can help you create connection through feedback.

Zooming to New Heights of Student Engagement

A colorful welcome sign.

I was a college student during the Stone Age of online education…you remember it, right? The age of mile-long content pages where, if you were lucky your professor would include a link back to the top at the half-mile marker on the page! Well, online education has changed a lot since then and there are now more ways to improve our students’ experiences.  For California Community College (CCC) faculty, one way is to  “zoom” to new heights by using ConferZoom in Canvas.

ConferZoom is the CCC-branded version of Zoom, an easy-to-use video conferencing tool that is provided at no cost to CCC educators by CCCTechConnect. Using ConferZoom changed the dynamic of my online Nutrition & Health courses by providing a way for my students to interact more organically with me and each other.  We know that retention rates increase when students feel connected to their professor and/or classmates.  Zoom provides a way for this connection to occur. Since I started using ConferZoom, I have observed increased student-student and student-instructor interactions, which are key to supporting students to  complete the course successfully.

What do I do?

klatch: a social gathering, especially for coffee and conversation

At the start of the course, I have an orientation or klatch meeting, a term I adopted from my favorite online CVC-OEI/@ONE instructor, Greg Beyrer.

In my welcome letter I invite students to my klatch online Zoom meeting and provide three meeting times from which they choose one to attend: one meeting time during the weekend prior to the first day of class and two meeting times on the first day of classes. What I have found is that some students will attend more than one of the meetings. The icing on the cake is that the klatch fulfills Section B: Interaction - Instructor Contact and Student-to-Student Contact of the CVC-OEI Course Design Rubric.

Want to give it a try?

Follow these steps:

  1. Send out your welcome letter before your class begins.
  2. Include the dates and times of the orientation meetings. It is important to let students know attending one session is mandatory and they will get credit. (My orientation is worth 20 points, more than any other week one assignment.)
  3. In your message, encourage students to join from a computer with a webcam or a mobile device so you can see and hear one another. If you are aware that a student requires live captioning as an accommodation, contact ConferZoom support in advance of your meeting.
  4. When orientation day arrives, have your klatch meeting from a computer with a webcam.
  5. Launch Zoom and share your desktop.
  6. Meet and greet your students in real time!
  7. Take your students step-by-step through the basics of your course’s navigation.

You have now demonstrated to your students how useful klatch meetings will be going forward. In a coming blog post I will share how I use the recording feature to Zoom it up a notch!

Laying out the welcome mat

UsingConferZoom for my course orientation not only sets the table for my students to get a taste of what’s to come, but it also allows me to more easily create learner-centered content throughout the term, as students can ask questions and let me know what they’d like to learn about. Their input helps me guide the klatch in the direction the students deem necessary, as opposed to being completely instructor led. I also fulfill regular and effective contact in a more substantive way.

Since personal bonds are developed through shared experiences, we can easily see the significance of bringing students together live as they are entering your virtual classroom. Ensuring the session is meaningful and provides opportunities for social connections is essential. I want my students to know that I am here and available to them, both now and going forward. I also want my students to know that we are on this virtual nutrition or health “journey” together.

ConferZoom empowers me to take the anxious feelings that online students have at the start of a course and turn them into a promise of a shared learning experience. Through this experience, students are more likely to relate to me as their guide, mentor, and comforter. They also relate on a personal level with their peers. Thanks to ConferZoom, we have faces and personalities for the names we see on the screen and our shared journey toward a healthier life.

When We Empower Students to Become Experts

Join Chelsea on a tour of this assignment in the 4-minute video above.

How might you blend research, group work, video creation, and friends and family into an empowering and equitable learning experience for your students? In the 4-minute video below, Chelsea Cohen from Laney College, will show you!

Chelsea’s students, who are English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) learners, engage in a multi-stepped project, beautifully scaffolded into managing meaningful chunks. Each step of the way, students collaborate and increase their knowledge of a particular topic. Chelsea will demonstrate how extending discussions beyond the classroom or Canvas and into a students’ circle of family and friends can foster more diverse dialogue that situates a student as an expert. Can learning get more meaningful than this?

3 Steps to Becoming an Expert

  1. In groups, create a video using Adobe Spark based on your research paper.
  2. Share and discuss your video with friends and family (Extension: share the videos with your Twitter communities).
  3. Reflect upon the experience with your classmates in our class discussion. Summarize the ideas that came up with your friends and families and how it felt for you to facilitate the conversation.  

Accessibility tips! If you have a student in your class that uses a screen reader to navigate the web, you will need to provide an alternative to Adobe Spark Video. Also, if you have a student with a hearing impairment, have at least a few students caption their videos before sharing them with the class. To caption an Adobe Spark Video, download it from Spark, upload it into YouTube, and edit the auto-captions.

We suggest surveying your students in week one to let them know about your multimedia project plans and ask if they will need any accommodations. They'll appreciate your efforts to support them!

Screencast-O-Matic for Easy & Accessible Video Creation

I am the Instructional Technologist at Cañada College and I work a lot with faculty who are motivated and excited to improve their online and hybrid courses and make them more engaging for their students. One thing that gets my faculty most excited about improving their courses is being able to make videos for their students, whether it’s a short course introduction video, a set of lecture videos, or an informal check-in video.

But I also find that video can be very intimidating for those who have not yet used it . I personally was horrified at the way my voice sounded and at the facial expressions I made while recording my very first video. So horrified, in fact, that I re-recorded it approximately 56 times and then just gave up and deleted it all together. But being able to record tutorial videos is essential for the work that I do, so I tried again and kept going. And, surprisingly, I got more and more comfortable talking to my webcam over time.

Getting more comfortable with recording yourself just comes with time and practice and a lot of patience. However, the technical side of video, which includes recording, editing, and captioning, has gotten a lot easier for me since I started using Screencast-O-Matic. I started out using the Free version, which allows you to record videos up to 15 minutes in length. Then at the beginning of 2018, we purchased a site license for the paid version and it came with some very simple, yet robust editing, captioning and uploading tools that made my video workflow so much smoother. So I’m excited to share with you my recommended recording workflow using Screencast-O-Matic. If your institution does not have a site license, educators can purchase an upgraded account for a monthly price that is about the same cost as a cup of coffee (link to: https://screencast-o-matic.com/plans#solo).

Recommended Recording Workflow

I put together a Recommended Screencast Recording Work Flow and a Recommended Face-to-Camera Recording Work Flow for faculty at my college and I made the video below to demonstrate the steps. These steps allow me to make videos quickly and relatively painlessly, but feel free to experiment with other ways of making your videos until you find what works for you.


The Screencast-o-matic
features illustrated in this video are included in a Solo Deluxe account.

Additional Resources

It can be overwhelming to know how and where to start when you are ready to try making a video for the first time. Whether you are using Screencast-O-Matic to record your videos or another tool, here are my tips and areas to focus on for the different kinds of videos you may want to make.

What’s Next

It’s my hope that you feel a little more prepared to tackle video making if you’ve never done it before, that you learned something helpful if you’re a seasoned video maker. I encourage you to test out the free version of Screencast-O-Matic and get started with making videos. Or if you have another tool at your college or one that you’re familiar with, jump in and experiment with that. The tool you use is not as important as putting the time and energy into learning and practicing the skill of video making.

Leave a comment below, or contact me via email at hughesa@smccd.edu or on Twitter, if you have any questions. Feel free to even just share your thoughts and experience with making videos, I’d love to hear how you’re doing!

An Equitable Ice Breaker Using Google Maps

https://youtu.be/_zfhCgZxW9M

Does your online ice breaker need a refresh? Chelsea Cohen has a great idea that will get your students connected and take the edge off the start of a new course!

In the 4-minute video embedded above, she will take you on a tour of her course and show you how she blends a Canvas Discussion with an interactive Google Map to create a 2-part assignment. Her students, who are English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) learners, drop a pin on a Google Map that designates their home town and add a photo of that location. As you will see, the map transforms into a contextual representation of the students’ backgrounds, inviting them to share meaningful experiences.

If you use Google Maps in your course, include a link to Google's Accessibility in Google Maps page to ensure all your students can engage with the content. And offer an alternative pathway for students to contribute their content if they experience challenges.

Let Chelsea be your guide -- click the video above and enjoy the ride!

What No One Tells You About Canvas Notifications

Canvas notifications is an automatic way to stay abreast of activity in your courses as well as contributing to regular effective contact with your students. But there are a few in’s and out’s to using the notifications tool well that you and your students might be missing. Let me elucidate you!

UPDATE: Since I first created this episode, Canvas has added the ability to set course-specific notifications. Good on ya, Canvas!

Two helpful Canvas Guides to share with your students:

Learning from Students Who Use #EdTech

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In November, a group of five college students representing the California Community Colleges and California State University systems participated in a virtual panel at the annual Directors of Educational Technology in California Higher Education (DET/CHE) conference. Projected on a screen in front of hundreds of educators, students shared their candid reflections and experiences with technology in teaching and learning.

I had the honor of moderating the panel with support from J.P. Bayard, Director for System-Wide Learning Technologies and Program Services at the CSU Chancellor's Office. As always, listening to student experiences inspired me and reconnected me with the reasons I do what I do. As technology plays a more expansive role in teaching and learning, we must make efforts to center what we do around the real experiences of the humans at the other end of the screen. I also find myself reflecting on the courage it took these students to volunteer to participate and be candid about their experiences. And that is also something all of us can learn from.

I hope you listen to the 30-minute recording and let the students' messages inform your practices as you start the new term ahead. Leave us a comment below and share a takeaway -- we'd love to hear from you!

https://youtu.be/tjEf6SDtvqk
30-Minute Archive of a student panel from the 2018 DET/CHE Conference.

Quick Links

Don't have 30 minutes to listen? Here are the 5 questions the students were asked and a video quick link to their responses.

List of Panelists

View student bios here.