Covid-19 — Paradigm shift to virtual exams
Virtual is the new normal for assessments
At Rosalyn.ai, we are constantly discussing the Covid-19 virus pandemic. We talk about how our assessment technology can best help organizations adapt their training and assessment programs to the new reality of global social distancing. This highly regarded article, Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance suggests that the epidemic suppression strategies of limiting public gathering, school closures, business closures, and travel restrictions are likely to be employed worldwide for a sustained period. Nobody is going to take a test at a center any time soon. Over one million US high school students have already missed taking the SAT this year. Assessments of all kinds have to move to virtual delivery fast or we’ll have huge disruptions in the workforce. The public safety measures may only be in place for weeks or months, but the impact of them will reverberate for far longer. What we do now to preserve our lives, health and economy will continue after the emergency has passed.
Organizations that were taking tentative steps towards distance learning and remotely invigilated assessment will have to accelerate their efforts. They are moving with a great sense of urgency to transform their delivery model to mainly virtual exams.
Rosalyn’s end-to-end platform can be the catalyst for this transformation. We solve the thorniest problems in assessment and let you blitzscale your certification program. Rather than a piecemeal patchwork of point solutions, Rosalyn’s platform is designed from the ground up to deliver secure virtual exams. The core of our platform is remote invigilation by human-in-the-loop artificial intelligence. We complement this key technology with an end-to-end platform that simplifies and streamlines the creation, marketing and delivery of assessments and gives you invaluable data and analytics to drive the growth of your certification program.
Technical issues play a huge role in the success of virtual exam programs. Early efforts at virtual testing ran into bandwidth challenges that limited their reach. Rosalyn’s experience in delivering exams globally in areas of limited bandwidth forced us to develop technology to deliver tests into internet connections as small as 300kbs/s. This extends your reach to every corner of the planet.
Going from test centers to online proctoring presents huge risks to exam security and integrity. Remote human proctors, on their own, can’t come close to the security provided in physical test centers. Rosalyn’s human-in-the-loop AI remote invigilation, however, secures the test session better than any human proctor could.
Instead of a paradigm shift, most virtual exam programs are a continuation of the methods used in test centers. As anachronistic as a faster horse in the age of the automobile, most virtual assessment programs rely solely on remote human proctors for invigilation. This protocol immediately runs into problems of scale. There aren’t enough proctors. It takes more human proctors to watch remotely than you’d need in test centers. Even if you have one proctor for every 16 test-takers, the cost and availability of human proctors are going to limit your testing. Even more so, as every organization moves to virtual at the same time.
Candidates were never too hot on test centers in the first place. The experience is stressful. We think that is a bad thing. Unless you’re testing secret agents, you want to test for ability, competence, and mastery, not psychological resilience. Here, our AI invigilated virtual testing can make a difference as well. Taking a test in the comfort and convenience of your own home or office should be less stressful. Except that being constantly watched via webcam adds that stress right back in. Rosalyn’s human-in-the-loop AI invigilation means that unless a candidate is caught violating the exam rules, nobody is watching them. Only when the AI alerts to suspicious behavior does a human arbiter review the data feed and video for real-time arbitration. Test-takers have no interaction with the AI and only a human arbiter takes action on their test session.
We developed our technology in collaboration with industry leaders in training and certification. We aimed to be the next generation of virtual exams. That generational shift has been forced on all of us faster than anyone expected. We’re thankful that we can provide this vital resource right now. If you are moving towards virtual exams, you should talk to us before making any decisions. Rosalyn’s end-to-end assessment platform solves many logistical problems simultaneously. Our platform may help you avoid pitfalls and technical debt as you advance towards a fully virtual solution. Please reach out at your earliest convenience. We are launching our platform in early June and have a limited number of spots for early adopters.
To your health and wellness,
Noor Akbari
