Not many of our readers know this, but my first job after college was a Middle School teacher. One of the policies we had, and I have seen this replicated in many institutions, is that when a student has to use the bathroom during an exam, the faculty member must allow them to leave the test session and return whenever they…let’s say finish their business.
While this policy is never really all that loved by faculty, we all get it. You can’t force a student to sit through a bathroom emergency. Even though it opens up so many security problems that are blatant and obvious. Well, one school in Jolly-Ol-England has created a solution. They are sending proctors to the bathroom (Loo, as they say) to proctor students in case they try to use their phones on the potty.
That’s right, you can go to the bathroom during your test, as long as you take a proctor with you and leave the door open.
Is this what we’ve come to, people? Aren’t “we” better than this? Personally, I think this tactic will work. Do not confuse that with supporting it, but I firmly believe it will stop students from going to the bathroom stalls to look up answers on their phones during tests. That is one result of multitudes of negative ones to come.
Let’s be clear about one thing: sooner-or-later one student will have a bathroom emergency during a test, which will grow into a lifelong traumatic episode. One which maybe only years of therapy might help, for both the proctor and the test taker.
One of the beautiful things about the ProctorFree online testing structure is how testing is on-demand. This just gains in significance when we compare it to a scenario like the one above. A student can plan accordingly and use the bathroom before their test session begins. But what if it’s a really long test? Well we have a back-up plan for that.
The ProctorFree software even allows for the test designer to break up the test by section and insert breaks into the exam. This way you can test for an hour on one topic, give the student a 10 minute break, then begin the next section. No bathroom emergencies, but more importantly, no bathroom proctors.
For more on ProctorFree’s cheating detection and reporting, check out our site.
And here’s the link to the original story in the BBC NEWS.
