University Business - September 2012 - (Page 44)

sponsored web seminar digest From lecture capture to remote proctoring: Athens State increases student flexibility A University Business Web Seminar Digest • Originally Presented on July 19, 2012 Athens State University—like many institutions of higher education today— is grappling with the challenges of a growing segment of students who take classes online. In fact, 51 percent of the two-year school’s student body takes classes exclusively online. To best serve those students by providing them with the flexibility to view course content anytime, anywhere, Athens State uses Tegrity lecture capture. However, that’s not where Tegrity’s benefits end. Today, the university is preparing a large deployment of Tegrity’s remote proctoring feature, which allows students to take exams in their own homes, while still ensuring the integrity of the results. GALE: Athens State University is the oldest higher education institution in Alabama. We currently have 3,300 students and our average student is a 31-year-old working mother. Ninety-six percent of our students take at least one online course and 51 percent take their entire course load online. We went with Tegrity in 2005 because we were trying to meet an accreditation requirement that our distance education classes be equal to our traditional face-toface programs. We also wanted to address the fact that our faculty were feeling disconnected to online students. Tegrity has helped create more of a relationship between students and instructors than what can come across in emails and assignments online. We use Tegrity in a number of ways, including encouraging instructors to record 20- to 25-minute mini lectures that include anecdotes, storytelling, and other elements that don’t appear in texts but occur “on-thefly” during lectures. Other key uses are in science and technology programs where recording complex problem solving is more effective than describing it in a text, and improved access to guest lectures for remote students. HEMINGWAY: While Tegrity has helped us transform the distance learning environment into a classroomequivalent setting, the missing piece has always been testing. Testing with distance learners has many challenges: Finding times to take the test, students may have to pay for their own proctors, proctors must be vetted. So when Tegrity came up with remote proctoring, we thought we would give this a pilot test. The test has been so successful, we are implementing remote proctoring for the entire Accounting Department in the fall. Tegrity 2010 already has the ability to capture students in testing mode and to review the results of the testing. And the functionality is free. We set up tests in our LMS and then it is just a few clicks in Tegrity to set up the remote proctoring component. We give students detailed instructions—we did both video instructions and written instructions and Tegrity also gives you the option of adding your distance testing policy, such as “any cheating will mean a loss of privileges and all future tests will be required on campus. This is definable by the instructor. And there ” are university-wide policies that can also be displayed. GALE: The student is required to accept the policies before starting the test. Once that’s done, the recorder will pop up. If they have never used it before, it will automatically be installed. Many times in your online classes, you may never see your students face to face. You may have no idea what they look like. In this case, before they start the test, they hold up their photo ID next to their face and take a still photo that remains with the test recording so we can determine that they are who they say they are. This is the most sure-fire way we have found to ensure the identity of the test taker.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - September 2012

University Business - September 2012
Contents
Editor’s Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Viewpoint
Independent Outlook
Financial Aid
Virtual Viewbooks: Ready? Or Not?
Technology Changes Everything
Connecting Learners, On Campus and Off
The Changing Face of the CIO
Efficiency Greats
The Administrator's Bookshelf
Oceans of Data
Education Innovators
Internet Technology
End Note

University Business - September 2012