How often does incoherent proctoring via OnVue occur?

[Tess Sluijter]

G'day all.

I've been hearing reports of incoherent and unpredictable proctoring by OnVue employees for a few years now. Never to such a degree that I thought it was happening in huge amounts of cases, but one could reason that anything over 0.5% of the exams is already egregious.

The latest thread on Reddit is getting raucous responses ->

Proctors are often perceived as overly strict, focusing on making students "fail", giving students contradicting instructions of even (intentionally) giving instructions that would normally break rules.

This matter is something that has a lot of students worried for their exams and they actively blame CompTIA for it, all the more so because CompTIA and PearsonVue will point fingers at each other when the affected student tries to dispute the aborted exam.

I'd love to hear from CompTIA how they handle quality control with PearsonVue.

 

[Jill West]

After a bad Pearson Vue home test, I now have a policy of going to an exam center for every test and I recommend so for all of my students. For me, the problem was on the Pearson Vue side and I tried rescheduling my exam 5 times over two days and it never worked. And yes, there was a lot of stress involved because I was leaving on vacation the following day.

In the end, I found a Pearson Vue testing center while I was on vacation and had to take the test then. It was a mess

Thankfully, my experiences weren't this bad, but wow--sorry you had to deal with that. And I can totally see something like this happening, given how strict they're being on every detail (which is understandable to a degree), and when something goes wrong, there's little recourse for remediation.

 

[Steve Linthicum]

I have a weird tendency to silently move my lips, mouthing what could be perceived as words while taking exams. This drives the onVue proctors nuts. Oh well....

 

[Jeremiah Minner]

Thankfully, my experiences weren't this bad, but wow--sorry you had to deal with that. And I can totally see something like this happening, given how strict they're being on every detail (which is understandable to a degree), and when something goes wrong, there's little recourse for remediation.

Jill,
You are exactly right. There was no room to do anything other than the standard process. The upload of the photos of my room would not work (Pearson Vue issue) and they couldn’t accept the photos any other way.

 

[Tess Sluijter]

Continuing where we left off, there's yet another big-ish complaints thread on Reddit.

This time, some are going as far as outright claiming this is a tactic of PearsonVue's, to earn more money. As in: "if we make X% of test takers fail the exam, they will buy another one and spend more money!".

Yes, that stuff is unfounded. And yes, it's all anecdotal.

The only thing I can tell them is to explicitly bring up their concerns with CompTIA. If they truly believe that CompTIA's exam vendor is not acting in the best interest of either CompTIA or the student, they should be complaining loudly. I doubt that they will though.

I for one would be very interested to see the official statistics for CompTIA exams! Not the pass/fail rate, but the take/abort rate. How many tests are taking hourly/daily/weekly/monthly and out of those, how many are ended prematurely by the proctor based on claims that the student did not stick to the rules? Plus how many are ended prematurely, based on "technical difficulties"? And also, how many of those exams ended by the proctor are then contested by the student?

 

[jasoneckert]

Continuing where we left off, there's yet another big-ish complaints thread on Reddit.

This time, some are going as far as outright claiming this is a tactic of PearsonVue's, to earn more money. As in: "if we make X% of test takers fail the exam, they will buy another one and spend more money!".

Yes, that stuff is unfounded. And yes, it's all anecdotal.

The only thing I can tell them is to explicitly bring up their concerns with CompTIA. If they truly believe that CompTIA's exam vendor is not acting in the best interest of either CompTIA or the student, they should be complaining loudly. I doubt that they will though.

I for one would be very interested to see the official statistics for CompTIA exams! Not the pass/fail rate, but the take/abort rate. How many tests are taking hourly/daily/weekly/monthly and out of those, how many are ended prematurely by the proctor based on claims that the student did not stick to the rules? Plus how many are ended prematurely, based on "technical difficulties"? And also, how many of those exams ended by the proctor are then contested by the student?

I can verify that my students (and students in other campuses of my college) who continue to take remote exams with Pearson very frequently have the same negative experience with rude and overreaching online proctors. Consequently, we've formally noted to our student body that "we recommend taking all certification exams in a physical test centre to ensure the highest quality experience" since 2020 (after all, they have enough stress right now as it is - they don't need anything to add to it).
Personally, all 8 of the certifications I've written since last fall have been in a physical testing centre and it was awesome

 

[Jarrel]

I can verify that my students (and students in other campuses of my college) who continue to take remote exams with Pearson very frequently have the same negative experience with rude and overreaching online proctors. Consequently, we've formally noted to our student body that "we recommend taking all certification exams in a physical test centre to ensure the highest quality experience" since 2020 (after all, they have enough stress right now as it is - they don't need anything to add to it).
Personally, all 8 of the certifications I've written since last fall have been in a physical testing centre and it was awesome

I agree with the recommendation.
As much as possible, take the cert exam in a test centre.