An Update from UNIwise a Month into The Corona Pandemic

Since educational institutions and universities’ physical campuses have shut down around the world, we have been running fast to ensure that WISEflow can be mitigated and adapted to the radically changed circumstances. Read the latest update on our work here.

Business at UNIwise has and will continue as normal throughout the Corona Pandemic and we carefully follow the guidelines issued by the Health Departments in the various countries of operation. Since educational institutions and universities’ physical campuses have shut down around the world, we have been running fast to ensure that WISEflow can be mitigated and adapted to the radically changed circumstances.

We continuously work closely with our customers to find appropriate solutions for them and we have fast-tracked released new features to accommodate off-campus exams. Furthermore, we have experienced a great interest in WISEflow during these social distancing times and we are delighted to announce that we at record speed have signed and begun onboarding new universities and schools in France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Bahrain, and Malta.

Mid-March we posted a blog on how institutions could answer frequently asked questions about how to completely move exam and assessment online, which becomes especially relevant in times like these. If you have not checked it out yet we strongly encourage you to do so here, as it provides an extensive overview of the possibilities for conducting digital exams from a distance.

We would like to highlight one of our newly developed features, released in early April, that has piqued great interest among our users: The automated proctoring feature. The feature monitors students by collecting data from the student’s webcam during the exam session and process it by a deep neural network model. Biometric data are then used to authenticate the student’s identity and the deep neural network assists in indicating foul play and misdemeanours.

This feature undeniably holds great potential but also forces institutions to reiterate procedures concerning security, cheating and GDPR. In some regions, the debate amongst educational institutions and universities centre around whether using this tool is too intrusive in the private homes and lives of the students. In other regions, the debate is oppositely concerned whether the level of surveillance provided by the feature is sufficient enough to ensure that the exam aligns with the quality standards. No matter the circumstances institutions and their DPOs have to secure the legality of processing biometric data and ensure the solution provider can guarantee the processing sufficiently.

We listen to all of our customers’ experiences and collaboratively try to find solutions that fit both national regulations and the individual universities and have sought guidance from our partner AWS and EU’s High-Level Expert Group on the use of AI. If you would like to further discuss how WISEflow could be used to support you and your students at this time, please reach out by using the contact information below.

Contact information

UK: Simon Hardaker, simon.hardaker@uniwise.co.uk, +44 07940 759432 

Norway/Sweden: Amir Ebrahimi, amir.ebrahimi@uniwise.no, +47 91145582

Denmark/EU: Steffen Skovfoged, steffen@uniwise.dk, +45 60533033

Please visit the WISEflow Support Centre for guides, support articles and information.