Proctored in Person or via Webcam: Is There a Difference?

Abstract

This study uses data from a Principles of Microeconomics course taught in online format. For the cumulative multiple-choice final exam, students were asked to select one of two proctoring formats: a traditional proctor in an in-person classroom, or proctored at home via a webcam proctoring service. Learning outcomes are predicted from a model with independent variables of student characteristics common to the literature. The authors expect the prediction model to have the same explanatory power for both proctored exam formats. If there is a significant difference in explanatory power of the two models, this can be attributed to unobserved factors such as cheating or anxiety related to the proctoring format. This study is a follow-up to an earlier study on the comparison of the proctoring formats of the traditional an in-person classroom proctor and an unproctored online exam.