Students needing to schedule a proctored online exam may now take it within 15 minutes of logging on to ProctorU, thanks to a new feature called Take it Now. Normally, students are asked to create an exam appointment when using ProctorU. Now, students can log in, create an appointment, and take their test in the next 15, 30 or 45 minutes, depending on availability. Keep in mind that during periods of high volume, all three time slots may not be available. Check back soon for more updates!
The president made headlines recently with with remarks on the state of American higher education. In his state of the union address, President Obama announced that he would put colleges on notice and unveiled the details of this mantra during another speech at the University of Michigan.
The president’s policy aims to reduce the cost of college tuition by tying it to three main factors:
Setting a responsible tuition policy
Providing good value to students
Enrolling and graduating large numbers of low-income students
While this plan will likely be debated and somewhat marginalized as a campaign tool, we at ProctorU always welcomes an initiative that aims to make higher education more accessible.
ProctorU executives are on their way to Washington D.C. today to take part in a panel discussion about technology in education. President Don Kassner and Vice President of Business Development Jarrod Morgan will be on hand at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Friday for the President’s Forum, hosted by the U.S. Distance Learning Association.
ProctorU specializes in online proctoring and identity authentication. Each and every time a test-taker shows up for an exam, they must pass the tech firm’s three-step authentication process. Below is a brief description of how it works.
February 1, 2012 is Digital Learning Day, a nationwide campaign developed to raise awareness for online education. Next Wednesday, a virtual national town hall meeting will be broadcast live from Washington, D.C., and will highlight four to six satellite locations. Both California and Alabama, the two states in which ProctorU operates online proctoring centers, are supporting the event with their own celebrations. Alabama will spread awareness for the entire month of February and will present a video showcasing its progress in online education during the national town hall meeting. California will host celebrations with iCalifornia and the California Writing Project.
“While we acknowledge the benefits of our modern world in February, let’s not let the passion for digital learning pass with the month. Use this month as a springboard for innovation. Today’s students are curious, and eager to learn. Their desire, coupled with today’s technology, equals immeasurable learning opportunities,” Dr. Tommy Bice, Alabama’s superintendent of education said in a press release.
Two well-known Internet brands will host protests against a controversial law tomorrow.
Wikipedia will stage an online protest to a proposed anti-piracy law by shutting down the English version of its site for 24 hours and Google’s homepage will include a link declaring its opposition. The moves are in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which threatens eCommerce and free speech on the Internet. ProctorU also opposes this legislation, for multiple reasons listed on a previous post. Most importantly, ProctorU management believes SOPA will unfairly censor legitimate websites and could be used to invade individual privacy.
The internet is brimming now with studies showing the growth of online education and the momentum the industry is gaining as a credible source of academia. One of the newer studies, put together by the Babson Survey Research Group, shows that over 6.1 million students were enrolled in at least one online course in 2010 compared to 1.6 million in 2002. The same study shows that online education accounted for 31 percent of fall 2010 enrollment. The report, entitled “Going the Distance: Online Education in the United States, 2011″, also shows that 51 percent of chief academic officers that participated in the study said that online education was the same as face-to-face class r0om instruction.
Services like ProctorU, which promotes academic integrity in online education through proctored testing, helps increase the value and credibility of online education by making it more difficult to cheat on exams. For more information about academic integrity, please watch our webinar from 2011, here.
ProctorU joins a growing number of Internet businesses opposed to a proposed law that many believe will negatively affect commerce online. The educational technology firm’s management team agreed that opposing the polarizing piece of legislation would be in the company’s best interest, specifically because of its potential impact on e-commerce and individual privacy.
The Stop Online Piracy Act, also known as SOPA, proposes to crack down on illegal use of copyrighted material, as the name implies, but is written so vaguely that many opponents fear the law would open the door for future regulation and invasions of privacy. While fighting piracy is a legitimate cause, ProctorU management feels that this law is not the appropriate tool to accomplish the job. The proposed bill makes way for more restrictive legislation in the future and harshly punishes organizations that may be unknowingly linked to piracy websites. Additionally, the proposed law does little to challenge web pirates, who would simply repost their sites under different URLs within hours.
Opponents of the bill argue it could impose on individual privacy by potentially requiring Internet Service Providers, or ISPs, undertake a process called deep packet inspection. In order to target suspected pirates, ISPs would use the inspection process to monitor every bit of information sent and received by a particular computer. The bill would also give the government the ability to tamper with search results by filtering out suspected piracy sites. The proposed law would also threaten open source software that is deemed an aid to pirates.
ProctorU joins the following companies and organizations in opposition to SOPA:
60 Minutes aired a very compelling story about the college student that charged high school students thousands of dollars to take their SAT exams.
Sam Eshaghoff currently attends Emory University, is a 2010 graduate of Great Neck North High School in New York and allegedly charged his classmates up to $2,500 to take their SATs. He is accused of taking the exam at least 16 times, even posing as female students.
The story has been covered extensively since the scandal broke last fall, and this particular piece shows that all a student needs to take the SAT is a photo ID.
All students proctored by ProctorU are asked to complete a quiz that authenticates their identity using challenge questions. The quiz is generated from public records based on the student’s address and is full of information that could span a test-taker’s lifetime. For more information about how ProctorU works, watch this video.
LSU Shreveport‘s NPR affiliate, Red River Radio, recently spotlighted ProctorU as an online testing option for its students. Check out the full story in the link below:
