The Center for Assessment and Testing is located in University Center Building C, Suite 1200.Over the past several years, the number of FSU students taking courses at a distance has been rising steadily.
This fall, over 900 course sections are offered online; this is up 10% from last fall and more than double the number of online course sections offered in fall 2005.
The impact of this increase is felt across the board: Departments put greater emphasis on developing strategies for teaching online and FSU resources and infrastructure are being expanded to meet increasing needs for technical support. Academic and Professional Program Services offers increased telephone and electronic trouble-ticket support and is posting timely information on the Blackboard Support tab.
One major challenge of online education is ensuring its academic integrity. The University must ensure that all work for an online course is actually done by the student who is enrolled, including assignments and exams. High-stakes exams such as midterms and finals that typically account for 20% or more of the final grade are especially critical in this context. In order to ensure the security and integrity of these critical exams, instructors of online courses collaborate with the Center for Assessment and Testing (CAT) to have their high-stakes distance learning exams proctored in professional testing centers. In order to be able to manage an increasing number of proctored distance learning exams, CAT has been implementing electronic solutions that make the process more efficient and reduce errors and delays.
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Proctor Qualification
- All suitable exams were converted to be administered via the Blackboard exam engine
- Those exams that were not compatible with the Blackboard exam engine are being transmitted in electronic format (e.g. PDF) to the proctors via a secure Blackboard organization and returned either via a Blackboard assignment or an email to the instructor. In most cases, students can type their answers into an MS Word document, but even in those cases where the student’s hand-written responses or notes must be submitted, there are electronic solutions: Proctors can either scan in the student’s responses and submit the resulting file, or – in rare cases – can submit the hand-written exam portions via fax directly to the instructor.
The first step was to implement a distance exam proctoring qualification process to ensure that all available proctors meet the technical and procedural requirements to serve the needs of FSU distance students. The resulting list of proctors is posted on our website (PDF 244 Kb) where students select exam proctors each semester. This speeds up the process of selecting a qualified proctor and minimizes the effort on the part of the student.
Electronic Exam Formats
In the past, paper versions of exams were sent to the proctoring sites via courier services and returned to CAT for distribution to the instructors. This process was not only costly and resource intensive, but was also error prone and delayed the timely return of exams.
Online Proctor Designation Form
Finally, CAT recently implemented an online form that students use to indicate their proctor selection. This reduces the possibility of errors and speeds up the process. The form is currently being field tested and will be available for use in the spring 2010 semester.
For more information about proctored distance learning exams, please see Proctored Exams for Distance Learning Courses on this web site. For questions, please contact Anna Ledbetter (645-2728).
