Can you cheat in an online proctored exam?

Have you ever heard of proctored exams? Or ever thought of how online tutor offer their exams and curb cheating? The most probable answer is yes. You may be wondering how your tutor will tell if you cheated on a test you are supposed to take online. Technology got all that covered. Proctored exams are scheduled before, and you do the tests while your computer, webcam, and audio. The data is later sent to the proctoring software for analyzing. Online proctoring has been accepted and massively used by institutions in the past years. Everything always has its benefits and limitations. The most significant benefit of online proctoring is that the institution has no need to building established sites and saves the student time, which could be used in traveling to an exam center. The availability of such software has greatly relieved both the students and institutions.

Online proctored exams are also faced with several challenges, such as:

1. It isn't easy to provide proctored exam centers as per the student's choice.
2. Finding a qualified proctor or a good quality proctor is usually tricky.
3. There have been cases of cheating in online exams where the students may consult textbooks, friends, or even impersonation.

Can you cheat in an online proctored exam?

Just like many other technological advances, online exam proctoring was challenged, and many doubted its effectiveness. Many didn’t see how that would correctly work without their regular proctors. They still thought that students always had the chance to cheat. And actually, they were right. This is how students still cheat even on online proctored tests:

1. Screens mirroring or sharing- it has been discovered that some candidates are cheating on exams through screen mirroring. This is a wireless display that is used to share what is on the phone, monitors screen.
2. Use of cheating devices- many of the online students have been caught using these devices. For example, very tiny Bluetooth devices that cannot practically be detected. Since proctoring is a high technology, candidates also have found some hi-tech devices to counter proctoring and help them cheat.
3. Using mobile phones to cheat. Smart phones allow you to store answers and also search the web and also let others see the answers.
4. Impersonation- getting someone else to take a test may sound too hard and out of this world, but if you are remotely sitting for your online exam, it is quite possible. Many people in the past have used brainy people to complete their IQ tests and other tests.
5. For programming students, the use of auto-coding software in cheating has been prevalent in the past years.

How proctored exams tell if you cheat.

As students continue adopting new cheating methods, technology keeps improving and upgrading their software to enhance its effectiveness in online proctored exams. Impersonation is the first technique that students adopted in cheating. Online proctored exams have a way of curbing this, proctoring software has been updated and now can use the two-factor authentication and geotagging to authenticate a student. It may use facial and voice recognition simultaneously. This software is used to match the voice and looks and tell if it is the right person sitting for the test.

Cheating using hi-tech devices can be prevented by opting for live proctoring, which records the students' head and eye movement, keystroke and can also detect different voices from the candidates. This can be used simultaneously with the auto-proctoring device.

In programming those who use auto-coding software, there have been invented several plagiarism checkers that help identify if what the candidate keys in is available elsewhere on the internet. This makes sure the candidate doesn't get away with cheating.

Online proctored exams software has upgraded their software to detect gadgets like mobile phones using image recognition technology. If the phone is out of sight, the auto proctoring software can discover if there is any activity happening around that computer where the student is logged in

Finally, with the increased number of institutions offering online courses, proctoring software has come in handy in helping gives students exams online. The students have been made to study and work smart since the loopholes left for them to cheat are slim; hence the student is graded for what he has studied. This technology has made an incredible change in the online education field.