How to Use Live Proctoring in Formative Assessment Processes with Remote Learners

Some of the essential daily questions that classroom teachers ask are, “What do my students know, not know, and need me to do next?” Even in a normal school year, these questions can be challenging to answer moment-by-moment. But for those starting the year in remote or hybrid environments, it can feel especially overwhelming. 

We now know that many districts are returning in remote and hybrid teaching modalities. We also know that researchers and policy recommendations alike point to formative processes as a key component to accelerating learning.

Fortunately, Illuminate DnA customers already have a tool at their fingertips to help restore visibility into student learning in-the-moment, so that every teacher can continue to make the most of each instructional minute. In this blog, we'll explore a bit more about Live Proctoring.

What is Live Proctoring? 

Live Proctoring is a classroom tool that can be used as part of your daily formative processes to guide instructional next steps. Teachers can use it both onsite and remotely during video conferences. With Live Proctoring, you can monitor student progress, gauge individual and classroom needs, and reteach in the moment.

Download our Live Proctoring 101 infographic.

How Does Live Proctoring Help You Accelerate Learning?

Research suggests the students may return this fall with up to 2-4 months of learning loss, with the greatest losses in K-2—a result of the spring closures due to COVID compounded by the typical “summer slide” we are used to seeing each year. Educators nationwide are working to accelerate learning throughout the year, or recover lost learning while also moving new learning forward. 

To do so, teachers will need first be able to assess for gaps in standards and skills. Those gaps could be elements of learning that were missed in the last few months of school, or areas in which they weren’t able to actually put in front of students and track real-life data. 

From there, teachers will need to be able to monitor growth for all students throughout the year with both clarity and specificity. That constant visibility into learning—the ability to know instead of guess where students are and what they need—is what enables us to continually recover lost learning and support new learning. That's part of the role that Live Proctoring plays: frequent checks to gauge where students are, whether they're ready to move forward, and what they need us to do next. We simply can't wait until our interim assessments to check in on learning, and with Live Proctoring, we don't have to.

How Does It Help You Teach?

Beyond using Live Proctoring as a formative process tool, you can also use it as an instructional tool by turning Illuminate content into activities, rather than just items. Teachers can select a standards-aligned item and use it to teach the lesson itself. They can then pull up a second standards-aligned item and use it to check whether students have mastered the content—all within DnA. These activities can be an interactive component to daily routines in which students enter the (onsite or remote) classroom and see a Live Proctoring screen that prompts them to get engaged. 

Tips for Your Remote Classroom

So, how does all of this work in a remote environment? Overall, it's fairly similar to an onsite classroom.

1. Integrate Live Proctoring into your current and future learning cycles to highlight content in real time. During your video conferences, try first introducing standards using your district curriculum, and then allowing Live Proctoring to be the guide toward mastery. Use Live Proctoring to ensure students understand the concept before moving on—just like you would in an onsite classroom—or as an entrance or exit ticket. Choose standard areas you are working on for the week, and cycle back to standard areas you are reviewing for your particular unit of learning. 
2. Include PRAs after each assessment or activity. PRAs are online, personalized resources for students that are deployed after students are done with an assessment, based on how the student performed. It’s a very user-friendly way for teachers to provide online activities. These activities can be geared towards furthering learning or reviewing standards around the assessment that was just taken.
3. Leverage pre-built assessments from Inspect. Writing your own assessments is time-consuming and tricky, even in a normal school year. In remote classrooms, where our instructional opportunities are often limited, we need to save time when we can. If you have Inspect installed in your Illuminate instance, you have several options available: interims, checkpoints, quick checks, performance tasks, and comprehensive assessments (e.g., SBAC Mirrors). For K-2 students, there are specific early literacy and numeracy assessments that are colorful and interactive. 

Would you like to learn more about Live Proctoring? Register for our upcoming webinar!

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Illuminate Education equips educators to take a data-driven approach to serving the whole child. Our solution combines comprehensive assessment, MTSS management and collaboration, and real-time dashboard tools, and puts them in the hands of educators. As a result, educators can monitor learning and growth, identify academic and social-emotional behavioral needs, and align targeted supports in order to accelerate learning for each student. 

Ready to discover your one-stop shop for your district’s educational needs? Let’s talk.