We’ve been getting questions from instructors who would like to use Zoom to conduct online exam proctoring, for up to 800 students. I mean. Golly. That’s just not a great idea. Aside from the philosophical issues involved with using a videoconferencing tool to surveil students during an exam, there are technical issues. How would 800 streams of video be recorded? How would that be viewed?
Also. The video feed isn’t necessary trustworthy. Not quite to the level of Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun, but definitely something that shouldn’t be trusted 100%. Even if the software was able to fully lock out the feature, there’s nothing to prevent someone from using a doctored input as the source for their video. At the simplest level, here’s what’s possible directly within Zoom:
And, an enterprising student could use hardware to alter a video feed and use that as the “webcam” source on their computer to feed to Zoom (or to webcam-enabled online exam proctoring tools).