The Dynamics of e-Assessment in South African Higher Education: Narratives for and Against Proctoring in Higher Education During Covid-19 and Beyond

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 triggered a paradigm shift from in-person to online teaching, learning and assessment procedures to ensure the continuity of academic activities. Generally, the shift to online learning forced higher education institutions to become particularly innovative regarding online assessments. Securing online assessments against academic misconduct was a major concern as the online assessment practices conducted in the sector during the Covid-19 lockdown were questioned in many research studies that drew attention to the issues of quality and integrity in online assessments. Therefore, proctoring software was used frequently during the Covid-19 pandemic, as most universities shifted temporarily to online learning. However, remote, online assessment and the use of proctoring software are unlikely to disappear completely, even though most students have returned to in-person learning at universities. For the study on which this chapter was based, journal articles and book chapters that were focused on the use of proctoring software in higher education were reviewed to answer two research questions raised in the study. To ensure in-depth research, 10,136 journals articles we searched and six reports were identified that satisfied the criteria for inclusion. The findings of the analysis of these studies showed that institutions of higher education are relying on the potential of technologies to proctor online examinations. However, there are still some challenges relating to the process of online proctoring. Based on these findings, some recommendations are made.