OHIO Testing Services reopens with new digital workflows
OHIO Testing Services transitions to enhanced, new digital workflows to provide timely and modern services to the OHIO community.
The University’s pandemic response resulted in the shift to remote and digital teaching, learning, and testing, leaving Testing Services closed until Spring 2021. The University’s renewed focus on digital transformation, coupled with budget reduction implications for OHIO Testing Services presented an opportunity to make scheduling proctored exams online more streamlined and efficient for OHIO students and faculty.
Testing Services enlisted the support of the Digital Workflow service to help digitize and automate three previously manual processes: requests from instructors to have exams proctored, requests from students for the approval of off-campus proctors, and requests from students for testing with accommodations processes. The changes will eliminate thousands of emails annually and replace several paper interactions for students, faculty, and staff. By modernizing these processes, Testing Services provides a more seamless and efficient experience for students, faculty, and staff.
Georgia Thomas, a first-year pre-nursing student, said the new process made it easy to schedule her HESI A2 exam, a test required for entrance into the nursing program. “It is pretty self-explanatory,” she said. “Not only that, but it was also easy to do through my phone, unlike a lot of other sites that require you to access through computers only.”
Darci Wagner, an assistant professor of instruction for the applied management program, used the new service to provide students the option to take their exams through OHIO Testing Services or using the online proctoring tool, Proctortrack. When she requested proctored exams via email in the past, she did not have a guide of what details to include, but she said the new form makes it clear what information to provide. “It’s quick, efficient and seems pretty seamless to me,” she said.
James Petrik, professor and chair of the philosophy department, agreed that the new process was easy to use. “In using the center in the past, I have been consistently impressed by the efficiency and reliability of their work,” he said in an email. “In fact, they have caught more than one mistake I was poised to make! I'm really pleased that they were able to open in a socially distanced format this semester so that students have an alternative to the on-line proctoring service.”
These improvements were made possible by OHIO IT’s Digital Workflow service, which supports the University’s digital transformation strategic initiative by aiming to “increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our workforce by redesigning processes, infusing new ways of working and collaborating into our practice and automating activities that do not directly enhance the student experience." OHIO IT will meet this goal by offering digitization of forms, innovation and automation of business process and workflows, and digitization and indexing of paper documents. If your office has paper forms and manual processes you would like to digitize, submit a service request for Digital Workflow support. For more information on how the Digital Workflow service can help your team, check out the Digital Workflow web page and join the Digital Workflow Advisory Community.
The Testing service provides test scheduling and proctoring for high-stakes exams, test scoring, and access to standardized tests through OHIO Testing Services (located at Bromley Hall) and the online proctoring solution provided by Proctortrack. Athens campus Testing Services follows the Presidential Health Directives and OHIO’s interim policy 44.102 for community health requirements and is operating at reduced capacity. Faculty who would like to create authentic assessments as an alternative to high-stakes testing can learn more from the Office of Instructional Design’s authentic assessment resources.