Most disputes about online exams turn on what happened after a flag fired: who looked at it, what they saw, what reason they gave and who made the final call. An exam office that cannot answer those questions from the record ends up defending a result with recollection and screenshots.
This whitepaper describes an evidence standard for online exams that holds up in front of an appeal panel, a regulator or an internal audit. Its criteria are vendor-neutral, with notes on how Proctorly applies them.
What you’ll learn
- The four questions appeal panels ask, and the record each one needs
- The minimum contents of a defensible case record: identity checks, flags, nudges, clips, reviewer decisions and audit entries
- Why every reviewer decision needs a written reason, and how required reasons make inconsistent calls visible
- How to keep camera, microphone and upload failures apart from suspected misconduct
- How to set retention periods that cover your appeal and reconsideration windows
- A one-page checklist to test your current process before the next exam season
Who it’s for
Controllers of Examinations, registrars, malpractice and appeal committee members, and the legal or quality teams who advise them. It is also useful for certification boards and admissions offices that publish ranked or pass/fail results.
Inside the whitepaper
Why online exam appeals turn on the record
Why disputes now center on process instead of technology, and what changes when a result feeds a degree, a rank or a license.
What an appeal panel asks
The questions panels actually put to exam offices, drawn from the way committees work through a case.
Evidence standards: what a defensible case record contains
A field-by-field description of a case record, a tamper-evident audit trail and a one-export evidence pack.
Signals, decisions and reasons: separating the flag from the finding
How to treat AI output as a prompt for review, never a finding, and why no automated flag should impose a sanction.
Technical gaps are not misconduct
Handling dropped connections and failed sensors fairly, so a technical failure is never treated as misconduct.
Setting retention around your appeal window
Keeping evidence long enough for an appeal without keeping it longer than the purpose needs. Retention is the institution’s decision.
Appeal-readiness checklist
Twelve questions to run against your own process, with space for owners and dates.
The download includes the full whitepaper and the appeal-readiness checklist as a printable page. For the product view, see human review proctoring and what we can and cannot see.