Turn Zoom into an Online Proctoring Tool

a person using online proctoring tools

If you’re an invigilator or a teacher taking an exam, you know that finding the right online proctoring tool can make all the difference. You want to ensure your students are in a cheating-free environment, without distractions and access to other tools like email or social media. Most importantly, you need to ensure they are taking their tests when they say they are. If you’re using Zoom for your classroom, then it can also be used as a tool for proctoring—here’s how! 

Proctoring is supervising test-taker to ensure they are taking the exam in a secure, quiet place and not cheating. 

Problems with online proctoring

A person giving a test

With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, schools shifted to an online mode of teaching and testing. Online testing came with a lot of challenges, some of which were: 

  • Unfair means: Students used unfair means to gain an advantage on the tests, which left educators worried because there was no way to distinguish between students performing well and students who copied. 
  • Learning gaps: Students who cheated did not study their material efficiently, leading to many learning gaps. These learning gaps hinder the students’ academic growth further on in their life. 
  • Lack of IT support: Many teachers lacked the technical know-how to set up a secure online proctoring environment for their students. 

These problems compounded on Zoom, with no accountability on the part of the students and easy avenues for cheating openly on their laptops. So, there was a need for additional tools that could help track students’ live in any situation. We built Lens to solve that.

Features for online proctoring in Lens

A person writing something on a notebook before a laptop

  • During exams, teachers can check the tab on the student’s laptop. If the Zoom tab is focused, the student cannot find solutions to the questions on the online exam. Teachers will immediately know if the student switches tabs, and they can warn the student in that case. 
  • Another feature that will revolutionize how online proctoring works for your school/business is that you can force screen sharing from a person who is giving an exam so that you can see what the student is looking at. This will help teachers prevent cheating through social media platforms, search engines, or documents stored on the laptop.

How does it work?

  • One you download Lens on your laptop, there’s an icon on the top of your Zoom screen
  • You can open the “Student” tab on that icon and check which student keeps the Zoom tab on focus.
  • If the student switches to another tab, the icon beside their name with turn grey and you can nudge them or call them out during the exam.

(Yes, it’s that simple!) 

We also worked hard to bridge the gap between e-learning and physical learning processes so teachers can have the best of both worlds.

Other features of Lens

a bunch of paperwork on the table

Lens can be a useful tool in your online classes for other reasons as well:

  • Participant talk time: You can measure participant talk time analytics in real-time, sending nudges to participants who are not interacting as much. 
  • Class in focus: Students mindlessly browsing the web or watching YouTube while attending online classes is one of the educators’ biggest problems. However, we at Lens have got you covered! You can check for the students who have the class in focus and those who have navigated away. 
  • Gamify online classes: You can use tools such as polls and class leaderboards to gamify your online classes and make them more interesting and engaging. 

 

We’re excited to be able to help students take their exams online. We aim to make this online proctoring process as easy and seamless as possible, and we know this will be a great new tool for students. We also hope that professors can feel more comfortable allowing their students to take exams remotely by providing such a tool. You can check out Lens here[link]!

Uttiya

Uttiya

A lifelong writer and communicator, Uttiya writes about core education products that fascinate her. She like following pedagogy and recent research on online education

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