Rob Reynolds:

Greetings everyone. This is Rob Reynolds, I’m the executive director at TEL Education. And I’m joined today by Don Kassner from MonitorEDU. Monitor is a partner of TEL’s and provides exam proctoring for our students in our courses. And we’re big fans of Monitor, and we’re just delighted to have Don on our show today. And I’m happy to be talking to you, Don. I know you’ve got such a diverse and long background in the educational technology space and you’ve been a good partner to us as we’ve been growing our footprint. And so, it’s great to have you and I look forward to our conversation.

Don Kassner:

Great. Thanks, Rob. Yeah, it’s great to be here today and it’s great to be speaking with TEL. It’s been a longtime partner for MonitorEDU, so we’re pretty happy to speak with you and discuss proctoring in general.

Rob Reynolds:

Yeah. So Don, let’s take just begin to give people some context. Let’s just talk about your personal journey and how you got here, but through the general, the educational technology space, got into proctoring, et cetera. And so, what that journey was like for you?

Don Kassner:

Sure. Thank you. Yeah. I think like most people, what you plan in high school and what you plan in college, it doesn’t necessarily work out that way. Life has opportunities that throws at you and you find yourself in an industry really by chance or happenstance. For me, it all started when I finished up grad school and got the opportunity to begin working with the department that I had finished my degree at San Jose State University as a grad assistant, and then got the opportunity a couple of years later to start teaching. Was an economics professor and really enjoyed the classroom experience. In the mid, early 2000s, I got a chance to get involved with some investors who had just taken over a university in Birmingham, Alabama, called Andrew Jackson University. And the opportunity came to move to Alabama and take that over the university as president, which was something I had never planned.

Don Kassner:

And suddenly I was in the middle of academia, getting involved with the different facets, getting involved with administration, with regulation, with all the different areas that involved with education and higher education. Through that process in the late 2008, 2009 with online education, really moving quickly, one of the big areas that were lagging was testing. I had a famous call with one of my students who said, Don, I love this online education. I love the fact that I can do my coursework anywhere, but the big issue is testing. When it comes to test time, you make me go somewhere. You make me leave my kitchen table and go to a test center. And I’d really like to be able to take my test from home.

Don Kassner:

We heard her, we decided to grab a couple of webcams, start playing around with the process. And one thing led to another and suddenly we were in the remote proctoring business. And from there, now it’s been almost 14 years. It’s been quite a ride for me, started one of the first large proctoring companies called ProctorU, left there in 2016, and then had the opportunity to do things slightly different with MonitorEdu in 2018, based on some trends I saw in education and remote proctoring, and things that I’m sure we’re going to discuss in detail today.

Rob Reynolds:

Yeah. No, we are. And that was a great recap. And I appreciate that. I think it’s important to point out here when you talk about your journey, that journey that really started you as a university student and a grad student then a faculty member, and then onto an administrator. I think that’s so important, and unfortunately, we see less of that in some areas of educational technology, because what that gives you obviously, is a great deal of perspective. You’ve seen what is important in a higher education university. You know it from an instructional perspective, you can really understand personally and from experience, the needs and the thoughts of faculty members, students, administrators, as they go into all of this. I know that’s been a big help, but I think that’s one of the things that I think that you bring to the table, that’s so important.

Don Kassner:

Okay. Yeah, it does. Thank you. It’s that balance, it’s looking at it from all those different perspectives, allows me to help develop solutions that make sense for everybody. And it also allows me to adapt when an issue comes up because I have an understanding of where that issue is coming from. If you only saw it from one side, you’d only really see that side. And the nice thing is I’ve walked in the shoes of most of the stakeholders. And so that definitely gives me the ability to evaluate any issues that come up and helps me plan changes that we might make as we move forward.

Rob Reynolds:

Exactly. So let’s talk about proctoring, let’s dive into that a little bit. And again, you were with ProctorU, you were really the forefront of what most people think of in terms of proctoring here in the U.S, with one of the big large companies that really was there toward the beginning, as we were all starting to do partnerships with companies. So you talked about how you really got started, but let’s talk about what you’ve seen the transition from the beginning, what you felt like the focus was in 2009 and moving toward today, how you think that shifted and how that landscape is really morphed.

Don Kassner:

Sure. And when we first got into it, our initial goal was to create a product that really replicated what we saw in the classroom, was to bring that classroom experience to the kitchen table. And we really defined it three ways. We said, we need to be able to see the student, we need to be able to see what they’re doing and then we need to be able to know who they are because those are the three things that we accomplish in the classroom. Our goal really from the beginning was to administer the test, to make sure that it’s a fair test, and then all students were operating under the same ruleset. It really wasn’t about catching cheaters. People have this idea that people online cheat more than people in the classroom. And that’s just not true from my experience.

Don Kassner:

If you provide the proper supervision, you try to replicate or make it comparable to the classroom, then you’re going to see students putting their best efforts. The truth of the matter is, it’s a very, very small percentage of people that actually cheat if you provide them with all of those rules, guidance, and proper supervision through that process. And so when we first started, the idea was to replicate that and we wanted to make it as simple as possible. Had a large amount of success in the early 20 teens. And like any industry that’s growing, people start to take a look at it and try to figure out ways to improve it and to start to provide technology and apply technology. And so, in the mid 20 teens, we saw a lot of entrance into the industry trying to use technology as a way to solve those issues.

Don Kassner:

And somewhere along the line, 2014, 2015, the focus changed from what my initial vision was, which was to replicate the classroom, to try to create what they call cheating the Texan technologies. And so the focus of proctoring a student from home was not to do all the things that I just mentioned, but the primary focus was to make sure that they didn’t cheat. And then to catch people who are cheating and so they started to use different technology and different techniques to uncover that. And we started to see a lot of people in the industry talk about how many events they were catching, how many different students that they were catching, how many items were at risk? That was the focus, it was a lot more on the data and the collection and the statistics, than it was really on the student and the student experience. So it was a really an interesting transition. In many ways, it was a good thing, but it also, many ways it’s a double-edged sword. There’s a lot of bad things that came from it as a result.

Rob Reynolds:

Yeah. I mean, it’s always interesting because in one sense, as you say, there are many good things. We’ve all benefited from having more data related to our student performance and what students are doing so we can help them. Data really does give us some sense of where they’re at, how we can do that just in general, how the data is used and what is used for, that’s where some of the challenges come in and some of the problems arise. I think it’s interesting that in parallel with what was happening in proctoring, and two comments here. One, we had the rise of groups, like Turnitin, et cetera. And so we saw it, not just in proctoring, but some other educational technology were now. As more people started moving to online classes, institutions and people were doing more online learning, a major concern at most institutions, or I’d say the institutions but among faculty, et cetera, many of whom were resistant to online learning, cheating became something that you would throw out there. And this is a little bit of an op-ed for me.

Rob Reynolds:

I felt like we were asking questions about online courses and online learning many times that we weren’t even asking, or we should’ve been asking in our face-to-face classes, but we weren’t. And so there was a lot of that going on and people would ask me about, how do you prevent cheating with your online students? I say, well, first of all, you get to know them, so you know their work and what they’re really capable of. And that becomes pretty obvious. Same way it would be if they gave you a paper that you were sure they had written and they were in your face-to-face class. And the second is design assignments and things that make people have to study in different ways and do it so cheating is less likely, those kinds of things.

Rob Reynolds:

And then, what I look at proctoring as is a couple of things hey, it’s to help students because they do sometimes need help if they’re online and they’re getting it. And I know that Monitor’s great at providing that support. And then second, you’re right, the number or percentage of people who actually are cheating is very, very low. What this does, like anything we would do, sitting in the classroom if I were in a classroom, my students were taking a test and me not leaving the classroom. It’s just to keep the people who might be tempted honest, and it’s to make sure that percentage stays at the percentage that it probably always is. But I think the support is really important. And I want to then jump into Monitor. Can you talk a little bit about what makes the Monitor unique? And now that you’re on the second cycle of this and what you’ve done and what you like about it and how you differentiate it?

Don Kassner:

So it’s interesting as you were, with your little op-ed there, talking about education and talking about getting to know students, it’s that one-on-one experience that really is so critical and gets lost in technology and different things. It’s interesting, I started out teaching in the classroom and then transitioned to teaching online. And I used to tell people, the best thing about teaching online was I got to know every student. In the classroom, I’d have 30 students sitting there and maybe three or four would come to my office hours. And I would get to know them. I got to know faces, but I didn’t get to know people. In the online world, I got to know people, not necessarily faces, but I got to know people because I dealt with every student. And really with MonitorEDU, that’s the same focus that we have.

Don Kassner:

It’s that individual one-on-one experience online education gives you, and that we’re bringing to the table. And so our proctors, it’s a live proctor. It’s a person that’s going to greet the student. It’s a person that’s going to be empathetic to the stress that, that student’s going through. None of us likes to take tests and so we want to be able to assist them through that process and help answer any technology unknowns or any concerns they have so that we can get them into the test and they can start testing. And you’re right, just like the classroom, we’re there, they know we’re there.

Don Kassner:

That, in and of itself, eliminates most of the games that people might play with cheating. It’s never going to eliminate all of it. People have tried ways or came up with ways to game the system and we always joke about if they spent more time studying, as opposed to planning on cheating, maybe they would do better. But really it’s that one-on-one experience, getting to know the student. And we carry that over with our online proctoring philosophy, which is really the human intelligence, the human supervision and the human support. And that’s really what MonitorEdu is all about.

Rob Reynolds:

I know that in our use of TEL, MonitorEdu, one of the pieces of feedback we constantly get is that how helpful it is because the students there and for… I’m assuming that a lot of people listening to this may not have used MonitorEDU. The student experience is really great. First of all, I’ll just give you a little bit of advertisement for you here. There’s no downloading apps, it’s available 24/7, when a student’s ready to take an exam, they take the exam. They log in, they get going, they click on our exam, we have an integration with you and it just works. And there’s somebody there to help them. So as that’s loading up, as they’re getting into it, if they have a question about something in terms of how the technology works, et cetera, there’s somebody right there.

Rob Reynolds:

And we find, whether it’s with our high school kids, homeschool, or just our independent college kids, it makes such a difference to have that human support, but to have it right there at the ready. So in one hand, Monitor is probably to me, the most non-invasive thing that students do from a proctoring perspective. And yet at the same time, it can be very intimate and it’s there when the student needs it. It’s not intruding, but as a student needs help, something’s going on when they’re taking the test or they have a question, there is that help there. And I think that’s a wonderful blend, Don.

Don Kassner:

Yeah. Thank you. I mean, that was our intent and we wanted to focus on that, that classroom experience. We wanted to focus on privacy. I could see things changing in the late 2016s and 2017s, with all the privacy laws in Europe and the laws in California. And we knew that privacy was going to be a big issue. And so, not downloading something onto their computer or their mobile phone. Not collecting data, giving them the assurance that this is just a real simple video call. In the last year and a half, all us have gotten very familiar with video calls. It’s just a simple, one-on-one web RTC connection. It just runs off the browser. And so there’s no connection. It’s like a phone call, once it starts, we’re able to communicate with the student and once it’s over, we hang up. And that’s all it entails from a proctoring standpoint.

Don Kassner:

So it really respects the individual’s privacy. And in terms of, yes, we’re on video and yes, we can see them, but they choose where to test. So if they’re comfortable in their kitchen or they’re comfortable in their study, some are even comfortable in their bedroom. They make that choice, it’s on them. We just have some requirements in terms of making sure that they don’t have unauthorized materials out. We make sure that they’re following the rules. And so, that’s their choice as to how they present themselves to us. And that makes it a very clean experience that respects their privacy.

Rob Reynolds:

And I think that’s so important. And when you hitting on privacy, that’s one of the biggest, I wouldn’t say complaints, but certainly one of the areas of discussion that’s been going on. And certainly not just with proctoring technology, but we get it again for things like, even with our learning management systems, we had the recent cheating case where the institutions using Canvas and they were using some of their technology to try to analyze the data to see if students had done certain things. And then there’s a question, well, how much are our institutions and faculty and others getting into my business and how much is the technology invading me in my privacy and getting into my private sphere and what rights do I have?

Rob Reynolds:

And I think you’re right, the best way to solve that is to not go down that pathway at all. And say, we’re not in the business of trying to get real deep and understand everything you’re doing, and every move you’re making and analyze it, and then reanalyze it and share it. It is a simple solution that involves live proctoring and a camera and doing it. But to your point, you have multiple ways to protect your privacy, besides what we’re not collecting, you also get to choose your space and you do those things. So it really is a much more, I would say, student-controlled experience than a lot of other technology out there.

Don Kassner:

Exactly. I mean, the focus really should be on the test, right? The student’s performance on the test it’s what matters, right? They’ve got a hundred questions, how many of those questions did they get incorrect? All of these other things are superfluous to it, right? They don’t add any value. So when we start to try to analyze data on personal movements or personal whatever, their mannerisms. Any of that other data or data that’s on their computer, or the way that they’re doing keystrokes, all of those things, aren’t things that are relevant to the score of that particular test. It’s really about the performance. When I sat down in a classroom and I had a scantron form and I had the test in front of me, when I bubbled those in, that ran through the machine and gave me a score.

Don Kassner:

And in a sense, that’s where we want the student to be at the end of this. We don’t want to take a look at some other report that evaluates some other types of behavior and say, well there’s some flags here that make us think that the results should be different than they are. If you provide that safe experience, that experience that replicates the classroom, you’re going to find that 99.7%, 99.8% of the students are fine. There’s not going to be any issues. And that very small percentage, that three out of a thousand, those are outliers. And those are things that honestly, that’s not what we’re focused on. We’re focused on the 99.7%, 99.8%. And 997 out of a thousand, that want that good experience and want to be able to trust that everybody else that’s testing is testing under those same conditions.

Rob Reynolds:

Now I know there are a lot of proctoring services out there. I’ve certainly been contacted by a good swathe of them over the past several years. And they offer different things, but a lot of them, you can just tell by their technology, what the emphasis is. And a lot of it is on cheating. That is, we’re here to prevent cheating and this fancy way. We have AI looking at this, et cetera. And again, you’re doing that. And again, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. It’s not the approach I would take, but you can tell by the core technology, what their philosophy is around learning and education. And I think Monitor’s really set itself apart. That said, have you been received the same? Do you find there are certain types of institutions where Monitor is having more traction in and where others would even prefer a more, I wouldn’t say invasive, but a more high-tech AI-driven solution? Are you finding patterns there in your own growth, Don?

Don Kassner:

We are. I mean, our experiences at the institutions or partners that are really focused on that experience, on the validity of the exam, those are the ones that tend to migrate to us because they know how important it is that their students or candidates can test when they’re supposed to test. The most frustrating thing is to sit down and be ready to test, and then the technology or the process or your behavior or something else gets in the way. And you can get very frustrated because you’re already stressed. And so the organizations and schools that care about that student experience, but still want to make sure that those tests are fair and valid because again, every student needs to be able to rely on not just their score, but their score relative to everybody else. And they want to make sure that they have the same opportunity.

Don Kassner:

And so, those are the schools and institutions whose primary focus is those areas that rely on us as a partner. We see other organizations who really like the technology, they really like the data, they’re data-focused. They want to look at those particular things. There’s this misperception that it’s a cost issue, and that’s really not that true. The truth of the matter is, we think that live online proctoring the way that we do it is very cost-effective. And we also understand that the indirect costs that are associated with it, if you use a product that’s going to flag 30% or 40% of your tests, then you have to review those. You have to take a look at that data, you have to analyze and evaluate it. And so there’s a lot of work that has to be done by the institution, after the fact to determine which tests to count and which tests to throw out.

Don Kassner:

Where with us, it’s all, in the moment. We know at the very end of the test that, that student has presented themselves, that they have followed the rules and they’ve submitted the test, just like we would in the classroom. And so, from that standpoint, the costs are comparable. So it’s really a matter of institutions that really like the data and the technology, and that’s their focus. We feel like it’s the institutions that aren’t as focused on the customer and the learning and those types of, what I would call, traditional factors that are associated with education.

Rob Reynolds:

I think that’s so important. And I would just add for the people that listen to this, that when you look at TEL Education and our students that are using MonitorEDU, you have to realize that our students are not the traditional college students, and universe college and universities are really what made proctoring a big educational technology component and a trend. We deal mostly with high school students, summons down in the 9th grade, a lot of 10th graders, 11th, 12th graders, and across the complete spectrum of diversity, socioeconomic differences, educational backgrounds, et cetera. So we have a really good test case of some who are not very sophisticated technologically, don’t have as strong of an educational foundation, et cetera, that are younger and cross homeschool, high school, et cetera.

Rob Reynolds:

And we find Monitor just to be a perfect solution for all of those students because it is simple. We’re about lowering the barriers to entry. And I will tell you, Monitor does that, whether you’ve got a Chromebook, whatever you’re using, you just pick your test, you’re ready to go, and it’s consistent. And I think that is the real winner for us. And I know for you and the people who use you, you are focused on learning, giving the student experience, giving students control of that, but it just works. And it really lowers all the barriers and based on our clientele and the diversity and the widespread diversity of our groups, we can say, we’ve got a categorically. This is a really smooth and simple solution. That to your point, it’s not a cost thing. It is really just about what you’re focused on, what your philosophy is in education? And that’s why we’re so happy with it because it serves our students so well.

Don Kassner:

Yeah. And that’s a great point. In fact people might think, I came out of higher ed and you’re right, ProctorU and the original remote proctoring models were all focused on higher ed. But the truth is, we have a much more business from the high school market than we do from higher ed. And it’s for all the reasons that you just talked about. It’s the simplicity, it’s the low tech needs, it’s the flexibility of being able to be used on Chromebooks and other devices. It’s the fact that all of our proctors are based here in the United States. They’re all employees in the company, and they all go through significant training, they’re professionals, they look at proctoring as a career. These are all new things that we’re bringing, and it makes a huge difference to this marketplace where you’ve got stressed students, you’ve got stressed parents. And we’re there to assist, to help, and to make sure they get through a very stressful time.

Don Kassner:

And that makes such a big difference in the experience. And it’s why we’ve had a lot of success, not just to TEL, but with a number of other institutions and organizations that cater to the high school market and that age group, that 9th grader, that 15-year-old to 18-year-old, we’ve even worked with kids that are younger than that. So we’re very sensitive to that market and we know how to make sure that you’re successful. And we’re real happy to work with TEL.

Rob Reynolds:

And we’re happy about the partnership as well, Don. I want to thank you for joining me and going through this. I think people hear the word proctoring, and they just think it’s all the same thing. It is a pretty wide, increasingly wide spectrum of what you get and what people’s emphasis is that you’ve talked about. And it’s really helpful to have you come on and help people see that it’s not all the same and there’s a real difference in what Monitor offers and what your focus is. Before we sign off, Don, is anything in particular or last thoughts or something you’re thinking about in the future, et cetera, you want to share with us today?

Don Kassner:

I think all of our focus is just to continue to do what we do. We’re very happy with that human interaction that we’ve got. And that’s the key component of our product. And we’re always looking at ways to make sure that we make that experience even better. So, because it’s simple, there’s not a lot of extra bells and whistles that you’ll see on top of what we do. You’ll see just our commitment and our focus on that one-to-one experience to make sure that students can test.

Rob Reynolds:

That’s great. Don, thank you so much for joining me today. This was really great. And for those of you listening, again, Don Kassner, MonitorEDU. Don has been in the industry for a long time now, great background, but really brings a, what I would think is a real different and differentiated approach to this, and it’s one that really works for our students. So thank you everyone for listening today.