E-Proctoring Tools: Is It a Necessary Inconvenience

Abstract

One of the challenges all institutions faced during the COVID lockdown between March 2020 and 2021 was keeping the academic integrity of online assessment. E-proctoring tools became a convenient option, although their effectiveness and efficiency were uninvestigated. The authors of this study utilized the fraud investigation frameworks and focused on the element of opportunity in the context of E-assessment. The quantitative study on grades and testing times between E-proctored and non-proctored online tests revealed significant differences in both academic performance and testing time. Students performed significantly better and used remarkably more time when proctoring tools were not used. The findings strongly indicated cheating behaviors when students took advantage of not being caught for their misconduct. The drastic variances also indicate the deterrence effects of E-proctoring tools on students’ testing behaviors.