Technology-driven proctoring: Validity, social justice and ethics in higher education

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to rapid change, unprecedented in higher education. One such change has been the almost complete shift to online assessment. The simultaneous employment of online assessment and proctoring has not enjoyed the rigorous academic debate and research traditionally associated with such shifts in academia. This engagement is essential and this article aims to discuss aspects of social justice, ethics and the validity of digital proctoring to the burgeoning debate. Digital proctoring is a lucrative industry (Coghlan Miller & Paterson, 2021), notwithstanding the admitted opportunities for cheating, irrespective of the intensity of overwatch. Digital proctoring is marketed and has become entangled with issues of institutional reputation and the legitimacy of qualifications. The student seems to be a secondary consideration compared to the technocratic digital proctoring arena. However, the introduction of online assessment, specifically with digital proctoring, impacts the assessment’s validity by introducing intervening variables into the process. The drive to detect and prevent online cheating has led to algorithmic proliferation. This technologically driven approach has embedded social injustice and questionable ethics and validity into the assessment systems. This article examines the social justice, ethical and validity issues around technological proctoring under the grouped themes: Emotional factors; Racial and/or skin colour; Digital literacy and Technology; and Disability. However, the COVID-19 pandemic driven shifts have provided the unprecedented opportunity to elevate assessment from recall to critical thinking and application based assessment. An opportunity to ensure that our assessment is valid, assesses higher-order learning, and truly evaluates the concepts we wish to assess.