The Growing Opportunity of Online Course Proctoring

By: Justin Ferriman • December 11, 2017
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Online courses and distance learning have opened up new business opportunities. One of those opportunities is online proctoring.

Countless of organizations and educational institutions rely on e-learning to delivery course content. Of these there is a large contingency that administer exams that award continuing education certificates when passed. It stands to reason that these institutions would be interested in some component of online facilitation.

This segment isn’t anything new. In fact, I wrote about it once before. However, it is continuing to grow.

There is a pretty big issue with this kind of service from a consumer perspective, and that is cost. Currently only really large organizations (be it training companies or higher education institutions) have the budget to afford such a service.

I reached out to a few of companies anonymously regarding pricing. None of them would share price details and all insisted on scheduling formal sales calls. I suspect this is because there are varying costs depending on how often the service is used and how many learners are on the system. I also got the impression that there was an initial set-up fee as well in order to integrate with whatever learning management system you were using.

The fact that these companies are targeting big-ticket clients is probably indicative of what it takes to be profitable in this space. It also highlights that mid-market and small business are under-served in this space. If someone can figure out a way to offer online proctoring and still break even in these segments then they would be poised to make a lot of money.

Despite the growth of online proctoring I can’t help but feel like it’s only going to be relevant for a short period of time. Each year we are coming out with better and more secure technology. I have to believe that innovation in the cheat-prevention space will eventually replace the need for human monitoring. Not in the immediate future, but eventually.

Justin Ferriman

Justin started LearnDash, the WordPress LMS trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major universities, training organizations, and entrepreneurs worldwide. He is currently founder & CEO of GapScout. Justin’s Homepage | GapScout | Twitter