Dutch education technology startup ProctorExam announces the closing of its seed funding round. In total, the Amsterdam-based startup raised € 500K. It happend during company’s debut in the UK market. ProctorExam is already active in the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium and France.
Daniel Haven founded the company in 2014 after taking a MOOC – online courses – at Harvard. He as a student wondered why one would be able to attend an online course, but not have the exam taken online as well. And he started to act. With the help of Startupbootcamp and EIT Digital Haven is set to change the world of examination from an offline to a more secure and ‘user friendly’ online one. “ProctorExam enables exam takers to schedule their own exams and take them from the comfort of their home. Many universities come to us for help because they lack the equipment to safely handle the heavy volume of digital exams. We secure the students’ own laptops to overcome the shortage of usable computers on campus,” describes Daniel. He thinks that 80% of all exams will be conducted online by 2020.
ProctorExam has developed rapidly since going live. Its launching customer – the University of Amsterdam – used ProctorExam primarily to facilitate distance education programmes. After a very successful pilot the university opted to continue partnership in 2016 and include on-location exams. Currently, universities in the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria are already using this digital surveillance platform.
ProctorExam works 24/7 at any location. It creates a digital surveillance room in an exam taker’s home or office. A webcam monitors the exam in real time, capturing audio as well as video. Optionally, the exam taker can also connect his smartphone or tablet with the ProctorExam platform to add a second camera. This provides the security of 360-degree audio-visual monitoring. A proctor, a trained exam monitor, keeps track of the exam takers online and takes note in case of any suspected fraudulent activity.