At the end of each academic semester, students “knowledge of the teaching material is checked through final examinations and cumulative assessments. With the participation of college students in online courses and the rapid increase in this number, the number of exams taken in online learning environments is also increasing. Due to the potential to compromise academic integrity, many faculty are reluctant to include exams in their online courses. [Sources: 0]
Justice is one of the biggest considerations for online education, as students do not have the same resources as their real-life peers. Virtual live video conferencing, such as virtual live video conferencing, may be a solution to this problem, but not necessarily the solution for every student in the classroom. [Sources: 0, 8]
While some colleges and universities offer courses partly or completely online, the basic technological infrastructure is in place in case teachers are instructed to work digitally. It is particularly difficult to shift K-12 education to online, as it is particularly difficult for young students to reinvent teaching and tasks in remote environments. Given that Americans have difficulty controlling the spread of the coronavirus, it is enough to know about infections and deaths in the US to move on to online teaching. [Sources: 8]
In short, online education ensures that students who are at home in school and those who work in the world have a certain level of professional supervision and support. Online teachers can teach courses in their entirety and encourage parent involvement, so that students develop the strong learning skills needed to succeed in online learning. Parents of home children can also turn to online courses to help students get early college loans. [Sources: 5]
Online schools are subject to clear quality standards, and while professors try to balance the desire to continue teaching students, some institutions have gone to great lengths to catch students cheating with quick adjustments to distance learning. Yet the students “experience is a pandemic, and the process of setting up an online class is far from smooth, especially when it comes to testing. [Sources: 3, 5]
Many of these tactics are short-term solutions, but they show that the transition that began long before the pandemic began requires increased digital monitoring of students to replicate old test standards. There are many examples of colleges operating almost 100 percent online, institutions wanting to sell their most important campuses, and hundreds of colleges failing to meet their admissions and testing requirements. But the wheel has turned, and the tactics have shown that this transition must begin long after the “pandemic.” [Sources: 3, 7]
Offering more online courses is only the biggest change, because the hybrid perspective is not just about classroom teaching, says David Hirsch, managing director of higher education practice at Deloitte. [Sources: 7]
K-12 schools and community colleges are rethinking how to ensure that students who don’t go to college are better prepared to enter the workforce. Massive Open Online Courses are online courses that are often filled with hundreds or even thousands of students, focus on academic topics and are not normally counted towards college credits. When online students have to take supervised exams, online schools work closely with them to find local proctors to ensure academic integrity is maintained. [Sources: 1, 7]
In response to the COVID 19 pandemic, colleges across the country were forced to replace face-to-face courses with distance learning. Many professors with remote experience try to repeat their personal experiences and finish the semester by giving lectures online via video conferencing software. The opposite of asynchronous, synchronous classes requires students to log in – and at certain times. [Sources: 1, 6]
These developments have brought the issue of the cost and quality of online education to the national spotlight and provided an opportunity for policy makers to develop a deeper understanding of online education and to take into account the safeguards needed for students taking online courses. Online proctoring services allow students to take exams from anywhere, but they must maintain honesty about the learning environment. This becomes all the more important because a fundamental aspect of teaching is the assessment of students “learning. Students can take an exam at any time of the day or night, regardless of their location. [Sources: 4, 6]
Students in fully online courses take their exams online and are therefore monitored remotely, but they take them in traditional classrooms or in a test centre under the supervision of a personal authorised representative. [Sources: 4]
After the coronavirus pandemic that drove Harvard students out in their first week of online teaching, faculty say they have confidence in the college’s code of honor and are wary of the temptation to Google in the middle of the exam. [Sources: 2]
Several teachers have decided to shift the remaining exams in their courses from closed books to open books, allowing students to view textbook notes during exams. For example, students can now take notes for the open book on the first day of the online course and on the second day. [Sources: 2]
Sources:
[0]: https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/educational-assessment/fourteen-simple-strategies-to-reduce-cheating-on-online-examinations/
[1]: https://www.learnhowtobecome.org/career-resource-center/student-success-online-college/
[2]: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/3/27/harvard-coronavirus-online-exams-academic-integrity/
[3]: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/4/21241062/schools-cheating-proctorio-artificial-intelligence
[4]: https://open.lib.umn.edu/innovativeteaching/chapter/under-the-watchful-eye-of-online-proctoring/
[5]: https://www.onlineschools.org/high-school/
[6]: https://www.thirdway.org/report/what-we-know-about-the-cost-and-quality-of-online-education
[7]: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/weekly-education-coronavirus-special-edition/2021/01/25/how-the-pandemic-forever-changed-higher-education-792939
[8]: https://www.geekwire.com/2020/universities-schools-going-online-amid-covid-19-outbreak-hurdles-face/