What We Learned: Unizin 2021
The world might still be bouncing back from the pandemic, but that didn’t stop higher education institutions from gathering (virtually) in April 2021 for thought leadership and presentations at Unizin. This year’s conference, geared towards learning analytics and its transformative power, was especially impactful. Now more than ever, it’s important to listen and learn as we all work our way back to normal. The Examity team is proud to have taken part in this year’s event. There were a wealth of presentations and contributors. Here’s a snapshot of what we took away from this year’s Unizin conference:
For one thing, students are more than demographics. Tanya Joosten, a Senior Scientist and Director of Digital Research and Development for Academic Affairs at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, led a session to specifically highlight this. She honed in on the fact that to better understand the user experience, it’s important to consider aspects of the testing process outside of test-takers’ demographics. This includes barriers to taking exams, cognitive and non-cognitive traits, social support, home environment and overall workflow. It’s critical for any organization that conducts exams to remember that students are people first. Design your processes and user experience in a way that is natural for the test-taker and accounts for accessibility.
You need more than just quantitative data to make a successful testing platform: you also need an open line of communication with users for their qualitative feedback, which can then be married with numerical data. This is something that the Examity team always works to incorporate into our product updates. Otherwise, products adopted to boost the learning experience become more of an obstacle, frustrating test-takers further. Live support capabilities are an absolute must, not only so users can be assisted efficiently and effectively, but so patterns can be identified and any hangups can be rectified.
We also appreciated commentary from Kenneth Koedinger, LearnLab and METALS Program Director and Carnegie Mellon professor, around learning by doing. In research, this method has consistently shown to be the most effective form of education. Thus, hands-on learning for retention is vital to consider when working with test-takers. That’s why we offer free practice exams for automated proctoring. Not only does this help test-takers get acclimated to the process, but it also helps them feel better prepared come exam day.
Share your takeaways from Unizin with us and find out how Examity can apply them to your online proctoring approach. Chat with us via email at [email protected], or over the phone at 855-EXAMITY.