Bolstering Academic Integrity in the Online Classroom

The need to ensure student identity and academic integrity is paramount across education sectors. Although this issue is not new, it has been brought to the forefront by the continued expansion of distance learning. Academic integrity is critical for the accurate assessment of student learning. It protects the integrity of an institution and ensures compliance — the Higher Education Reauthorization Act of 2008 requires institutions to verify that the student who registers for a course is the same student who completes the coursework.

In accordance with this mandate, The Ohio State University needed a tool that ensured the integrity of its online programs, promoted sustainable growth of the online program, integrated with Ohio State's academic integrity toolkit, and enabled transparency around student costs at the time of course registration. However, Ohio State wanted to go beyond the implementation of a virtual proctoring solution. Our distance education team saw this as an opportunity to educate faculty on authentic assessments. The goals were to include more-authentic assessments across Ohio State course offerings and to ensure that faculty were not employing virtual proctoring as the sole solution for academic integrity but rather as a tool within their assessment toolkits.

The Search for a Virtual Proctoring Tool and Effective Training

We are currently in the process of selecting a virtual proctoring solution and have an open request for proposal (RFP). In seeking a tool, we are prioritizing a full integration into the Canvas learning management system (LMS), which Ohio State uses. Beyond this integration, the university community has requested an on-demand, software-based, no-scheduling-required solution that does not have a live proctor component; a live proctor was seen as "creepy." (This was the prevailing sentiment among pilot participants across campus.)

When the virtual proctoring solution is selected, it will be deployed enterprise-wide. With an eye toward authentic assessment education, training will not be deployed for the tool alone. Instead, we'll develop new academic integrity training for the campus community. The new session will be broken into three parts: academic integrity principles (such as authentic assessment), the Canvas quizzing tool, and the virtual proctoring solution. The new workshop will be offered via face-to-face and virtual media and will share authentic assessment techniques already deployed across some of the fully online programs at Ohio State.

Next Steps: Introducing Mobile Devices and Facilitating Key Conversations

Adding intrigue to the academic integrity initiative is the deployment of the Digital Flagship Initiative at Ohio State. This initiative was announced in fall 2017, during our proctoring RFP process. The initiative will provide all Ohio State undergraduate students with iPad Pros that include the Apple SmartKeyboard, the Apple Pencil, and a suite of iOS apps, starting with first-year students in autumn 2018 and for each subsequent incoming class. Currently, however, there is no full-scale remote-proctoring solution available via Apple's iOS platform. Ohio State is striving for one remote-proctoring platform that can be used across all devices in the future; with this goal in mind, the university will work to facilitate conversations between virtual proctoring vendors and Apple.

Of course, the technology landscape is in constant transition. Yet with our selected virtual proctoring tool in conjunction with education offerings, we will have laid a strong academic integrity foundation across the institution despite challenges. Our team is confident that this important groundwork will allow Ohio State to continue to meet the demands of a fast-paced and adaptive education environment.

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Jacob Bane is a Senior Instructional Designer and Outreach Coordinator at The Ohio State University.