Leading Proctoring Company Drops AI-only Services

Plus, the administrative and emotional burden of policing misconduct. Plus, cheating companies undermine open educational resources.

Issue 28

Remote Test Proctoring Company ProctorU Will Stop AI-only Proctoring

ProctorU, one of the largest remote test proctoring companies, announced this week that it will no longer sell test proctoring that does not include human proctors. They’re doing away with the proctoring that uses only computer analytics to flag or score a test session, passing those sessions along to professors.

The news was covered in no fewer than seven education news outlets but it’s likely to be bigger news than that in the long run. That’s because the AI-only proctoring systems are a problem and it’s a big deal that a company that sold them is willing to say so. The company CEO said in ecampusnews,

Depending exclusively on AI and outside review can lead to mistakes or incorrect conclusions.

The company also said that the AI-only versions of proctoring increase instructor workload and that very few of the AI-flagged test sessions were ever reviewed - by anyone. ProctorU said just 11% of the sessions that used AI alone were subsequently reviewed at all. If that’s true - and other reports have found similar results - then AI-only proctoring is both dangerous and largely useless.

Happen to remember that girl crying on Tik-Tok because she was flagged for cheating and failed her test? At the time, people incorrectly used the incident to criticize proctoring in general when in reality, that incident exposed a flaw in AI-only proctoring. The AI flagged her and her teacher did not review it. The professor took the AI flag alone as proof. That’s bad.

In short, the AI-only thing does not work. Or at best, it does not work well. Schools and students would be better off if other companies followed suit and put AI-only proctoring on the shelf for good.

On the “Administrative Load” of Cheating

Times Higher Ed (THE) has done more honest reporting on academic integrity than anyone.

As an example, THE ran an opinion piece from Amanda White, “an education-focused academic at the University of Technology Sydney’s business school” titled, “We ignore the administrative load caused by cheating at our peril.”

That’s entirely true.

In fact, the burden that preventing, detecting and dealing with academic misconduct places on faculty and staff is uncounted and enormous. It’s expensive, time consuming and emotionally depleting. Moreover, as cheating accusations become more litigious and more complex and more consequential, those costs increase. Ultimately, as White writes, the costs negatively impact students as well.

On that topic - the hidden costs of dealing with cheating - Rick Robinson and Jason Openo of Medicine Hat College (CAN) gave a compelling and important presentation at the most recent conference of the International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) on why faculty are often so reluctant to report integrity violations. According to research, only about 1% of violations are reported. Their summary says:

When students commit academic integrity violations and faculty report them, it reverberates throughout all of the faculty’s relationships.  This study explores how reporting academic integrity violations impacts faculty relationships with students, colleagues, and the institution

Here’s that presentation:

Cheating Companies Undermine Open Educational Resources (OER)

David Harris, editor in chief of the leading OER provider, OpenStax at Rice University, did the “3 Questions” series at Inside Higher Ed this week.

The so-called “tutoring and textbook solutions companies” of Chegg and Course Hero came up. Harris has been rightly critical of their corrosive role in teaching and learning.

Harris starts by citing the inequity that these paid cheating providers create,

Not a day goes by that we don’t hear about students facing food and housing insecurity. For example, how is it fair to financially struggling students that some students in their course get to pay to get an A on their homework by getting the solutions in as little as 30 minutes?

He continues that the push to reduce the influence of these cheating marketplaces by switching to more formative assessments is good but also “challenging and time-consuming for faculty” and “expensive.” And that even new, formative assessments are subject to easy, profitable exploitation by these companies.

Harris again,

participating in an ecosystem that builds an appreciation for learning and academic integrity is critical for the entire network (students, educators and industries hiring graduates). To date, it’s difficult to see how these sites build an appreciation for learning or academic integrity. 

True. Selling answers to test questions and homework assignments, or selling the tests and assignments themselves, may be profitable business but it’s antithetical to education. It just is.

In the next “The Cheat Sheet” - VICE, whose coverage of academic integrity has been awful, discovers that contract cheating exists. Plus, Course Hero is hosting another “academic summit” in July. I asked questions and cannot believe the answers. Plus, more cheating.

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