The Effects of Implementation Barriers In Remote Online Proctored Examination: A Randomised Field Experiment in Dutch Higher Education

In this field experiment, students were randomly assigned to virtual proctoring or to traditional on-campus examination to evaluate the effect, nature, and timing of implementation barriers for online proctoring in higher education. Virtual proctoring technology is credited to increase the accessibility of exams by enabling students to participate in exams at any time and place. The results show that the uptake in the traditional examination setting in this study was six times higher due to technical hurdles that students experienced with the virtual proctoring software. When alleviating these implementation barriers by offering all students the chance to participate in an unproctored retake, students initially assigned to virtual proctoring still showed a significantly lower uptake rate. Students disengagement could not be related student characteristics, such as performance levels and motivation.