Proctoring

Your distance education course may require one or more proctored exams. Please check with your instructor and read the course syllabus closely. Santa Barbara City College provides in-person proctoring services for students enrolled at institutions in the CVC-OEI Proctoring Network and following the criteria required for the Proctoring Network. If you are not part of the Proctoring Network and your course requires an exam to be taken in a proctored physical location setting, please see the options available at ncta-testing.org or consult with your instructor for recommendations and options. 

For SBCC students, you may be required to take an online proctored exam. Proctorio is the officially provided service for SBCC students. Proctorio is a remote proctoring service software that works within your Chrome web browser to monitor test takers for suspicious behaviors. Please check with your instructor to determine if they are using the Proctorio service. If Proctorio is being used, it will be integrated into your class within Canvas. 

We are required by both the Federal government and our accreditation agency to perform student verification, particularly in our online classes, and the use of proctored exams is one such method for verification. 

The services provided by Proctorio are the official online testing tool available for all 114 California Community Colleges and its 2.1 million students. The tool was vetted and selected by the Online Education Initiative of the California Community College Chancellor's Office. 

Proctorio is a Chrome-browser plugin only. It will only have access to your Chrome profile, not your entire computer system, and is only active when an exam is taking place within Canvas. The extension is clearly marked in the browser when it is active. Furthermore, the Chrome extension can be manually disabled or removed at any time by the user. 

I encourage you to watch this video to learn more about the plugin and to also visit the Student Privacy Pledge website that Proctorio is a participant. In addition, here are a few responses to some common questions. 

  • No.  If your institution requires video, audio, or screen capture, Proctorio will store that data and provide an automated suspicion report to your instructor. No Proctorio employee has access to this data.

  • Proctorio uses zero knowledge encryption technology that ensures your information is encrypted when it leaves your computer, is transferred, and then stored in the cloud.

  • Never.  Proctorio does not and cannot collect any personally identifying info on any user, so there’s no information to give to third parties.

  • Proctorio only runs when you’re active in an exam, and will display a shield icon in the browser once it has been activated.  Since Proctorio runs in the browser, you can rest assured there’s no separate program collecting your data.

  • Only authorized school officials can unlock and view the exam recordings, not Proctorio.  Additionally, our state-of-the-art double encryption technology ensures that all of your exam data is safe from hacking attempts.

  • Proctorio never holds unencrypted academic records. All data that enters our system has been encrypted by the learning management system (LMS) and can only be unlocked by authorized users within the LMS. Proctorio utilizes the LMS to gain information about the user's role. This restricts information from being shared with users who do not fall under the "School Official" role. The entire process is transparent to the end-user, but prevents Proctorio and unauthorized individuals from accessing to student data. Proctorio will never hold any personally identifiable information (PII) and institutions can feel confident in extending their FERPA liability to Proctorio. Proctorio delivers all content via SSL (TLS 1.2) and our servers are compliant to many standards including FERPA, PCI, and HIPAA.

Note: Proctorio implements a zero-knowledge encryption scheme to keep your information safe.