Online Proctoring Manager

PROWIDE

Further education program for supporting digital transformation at higher educational institutions (HEIs)

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has reignited a debate about equal opportunities, accessibility and flexibility in the delivery of (online) higher education. While universities have mastered the transition to digital learning and teaching, online examinations, especially online proctoring, are still in their infancy across Europe. The reasons for this are manifold: data protection, compatibility with education law, insufficiently qualified online examiners, lack of awareness among internal university stakeholders such as university management, teaching and administrative staff and students.

Ziele und Inhalte

The aim of the PROWIDE project was to support universities in the transition to high-quality remote examinations. The introduction of online proctoring services requires joint action by various university stakeholders (such as university management, teaching staff, education and examination offices, IT), led by a specialist - an Online Proctoring Manager (OPM) - with an interdisciplinary qualification profile (including data protection and education law knowledge, technical know-how, communication skills, management skills). The qualification and recruitment of OPMs at universities is crucial for the transition to high-quality online education. Training solutions and qualification opportunities for this type of specialist have not yet been available.

With this in mind, PROWIDE pursued the following objectives:

To strengthen the capacity of higher education institutions to implement holistic online proctoring strategies;
To sensitize stakeholders to online proctoring services;
To promote new employment opportunities related to the management of online proctoring services in different sectors with a specific focus on higher education institutions.

To achieve these goals, an online training programme and a qualification profile “Online Proctoring Manager” was jointly developed by four higher education partners from Germany, Italy, Latvia and Turkey and the company Proctorio, which specializes in the provision of OR solutions and services. The training program was tested with around 90 international participants from PROWIDE partner countries. 17 people completed the training and received an “Online Proctoring Manager” certificate. The highlight was that module exams and the final exam were held as proctored exams using Proctorio software. This allowed course participants to learn both theoretical and practical aspects of online proctoring.

After the test phase, the training program was adapted to the non-formal learning context and is now available to all interested parties.

Project result

In addition to the online training program “Online Proctoring Manager”, the actual core of the PROWIDE project, further accompanying materials have been developed in PROWIDE national languages and in English. We are happy to make these available to all interested parties to get to know, download and use.