Employee Spotlight: Kendrah Wick

What motivates you to wake up every morning and make an impact at Honorlock?

I love EdTech, I love making the day to day for students and faculty easier and more streamlined. I have an awesome team that motivates me to stay on top of the operation and make sure we are meeting our goals! They are strong, hardworking individuals who are a joy to work with!

What are your main responsibilities at Honorlock?

 My main responsibilities include leading a team that is a positive first touch for prospects, and that we are vetting highly qualified prospects for our Sales team. We provide support and collaboration to both Sales and Marketing and are charged with building relationships and making prospects into partners.

What has been your favorite project so far?

 Starting this department from scratch has been a privilege. To be trusted by our Executives to hand-pick a team and watch them grow has been so cool and rewarding.

What’s something most people at Honorlock don’t know about you?

 I am a work-hard/play-hard kind of girl! I love to travel, try new and different foods, I’m a nerd for British crime shows, March Madness and chilling out with yoga. I can be go-go-go at work, but after hours, I am pretty laid back.

What do you love most about being part of the Honorlock team?

 I love that we have a staff of experts in their field – from Product to Sales and Marketing, Customer Success and IT, we have people who really know their stuff and know that it takes a village to create and maintain a stellar product and services.

How has your career grown since starting at Honorlock?

 I used to lean heavily on the Executive team for direction in terms of goals and growing the team. At Honorlock I’ve been given the confidence and autonomy to make decisions about the direction and growth of our department. I’ve really been able to put my experience in EdTech and Sales Development into play here and it’s made me even more dedicated and invested.

What are you most excited about in your future with Honorlock?

 More growth! So excited to add to our awesome team and watch this team continue to reach and crush their goals. I am also looking forward to expanding our collaboration cross-departmentally as we continue to create an outstanding Honorlock community!

OMNIA Partners and Honorlock Partnership Provides Participating Agencies Direct Access to Exam Proctoring Solutions

woman on laptop using online proctoring for an online exam

The partnership allows Honorlock to efficiently serve OMNIA Partners participating agencies nationwide

BOCA RATON, Fla. (May 20, 2021) – Honorlock, an authentication and academic integrity platform, has been awarded a contract for Proctoring Solutions: Live and Automated by the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), available through group purchasing leader OMNIA Partners. This OMNIA partnership contract provides higher education, state and local government and non-profit agency participants with quick and easy direct access solutions to the Honorlock online proctoring platform in order to help create an equitable learning environment.

OMNIA Partners connects thousands of public agencies and educational institutions across the U.S. with world-class supplier partners. Adding Honorlock to the portfolio of offerings creates a direct connection between Honorlock and organizations looking to offer secure remote exams. 

The pandemic highlighted an existing need for remote exam proctoring that honors and supports the test-taker experience while protecting the integrity of academic and enterprise institutions. Honorlock’s leading online proctoring platform is designed to support remote assessments while creating a fair and equitable environment for all learners. 

Allan McCombs, SVP of Public Sector Sales & Account Management for OMNIA Partners, said, “We are excited to add product offerings from Honorlock to our portfolio of contracts. This agreement offers a great solution for live and automated proctoring services to our primary and higher education, state and local government and non-profit agencies.”

“Learning is no longer a static activity. We’ve seen through the pandemic that students are able to access learning through various platforms, from anywhere in the world,” said Michael Hemlepp, CEO, Honorlock. “By creating an inclusive and equitable environment for testing, Honorlock protects the integrity of the institution, the instructor, and the student. It also opens up opportunities for more people to access learning.”

About OMNIA Partners

OMNIA Partners, Public Sector is the nation’s largest and most experienced cooperative purchasing organization dedicated to public sector procurement. Our immense purchasing power and industry-leading suppliers have produced a comprehensive portfolio of cooperative contracts and partnerships, making OMNIA Partners the most valued and trusted resource for organizations nationwide.

About Honorlock Online Proctoring

Honorlock is revolutionizing the way academic and enterprise institutions enable equity in online courses and exams. Our purpose is to uphold honesty and integrity. We focus on reaffirming the trust we have in students while assuring integrity for the institution, each instructor’s knowledge and value, and the exams themselves. 

Employee Spotlight: Leon Campbell

What motivates you to wake up every morning and make an impact at Honorlock?

My family is my primary inspiration and motivation to wake up in the morning and do my best.

What are your main responsibilities at Honorlock?

I mainly take part in Live Proctoring, which involves monitoring exam taker sessions in real-time. One responsibility involves proactively interceding in a session if an exam taker is attempting academic dishonesty, while another is simply helping an exam taker improve their testing environment such as slouching or accidentally using materials that are not allowed.

What’s something most people at Honorlock don’t know about you?

I’m the youngest child out of three brothers and three sisters including myself, and my parents immigrated from Jamaica.

What do you love most about being part of the Honorlock team?

The people of Honorlock have been wonderful and the culture is quite welcoming.

How has your career grown since starting at Honorlock?

I began with Honorlock in a support position, since then I have been promoted to a senior proctoring role. I’ve learned quite a lot since my short time here and I look forward to my continued career growth!

What are you most excited about in your future with Honorlock?

The potential for growth and the possibility to truly impact the future of the product and the company.

Employee Spotlight: Alice Cifuentes

What motivates you to wake up every morning and make an impact at Honorlock?

A big motivator is being someone my team can depend on to ensure our goals are met. I love knowing that I am contributing to the incredible growth Honorlock has experienced. It is also motivating to work alongside genuinely great people who make being part of Honorlock that much better.

What are your main responsibilities at Honorlock?

As Marketing Manager, my main responsibility is to be a flexible tool in the marketing department. Outside of managing conferences, social media, and website functions my goal is to support my team and tackle new projects and challenges in the department.

What has been your favorite project so far?

I enjoyed working on the Employee Value Award program! Honorlock has done a great job recognizing the importance of celebrating employees and it was a privilege to have the opportunity to develop this program.

What’s something most people at Honorlock don’t know about you?

I love growing orchids and have around 20 of them to date.

What do you love most about being part of the Honorlock team?

I love being part of a team that is passionate about what they do. Despite being remote, I feel we are all incredibly connected.

How has your career grown since starting at Honorlock?

I have been incredibly lucky to get to lead some new projects and get involved with architecting solutions at Honorlock. Even in t

Since starting with Honorlock in August of 2019 I have been able to exponentially grow my skills and abilities within the marketing department. In response to the pandemic, my responsibilities significantly broadened. I was given the opportunity to work on new and unique projects such as contributing toward the creation of our first Zoom client testimonials, hosting our highly attended webinars, and building awareness emails so schools across the country could learn about the benefit of a tool like Honorlock (just to name a few)! I am grateful to work alongside excellent people who share their wealth of knowledge and I look forward to my continued growth with Honorlock.

he short time I have been here, I have definitely been pushed technically, and am super thankful for the continued growth.

What are you most excited about in your future with Honorlock?

I am excited to continue my growth professionally in a rapidly growing marketing department! I am eager to see the expansion of the team and how it will impact our reach to schools not only across the country but globally.

Employee Spotlight: Sarah Gulledge

What motivates you to wake up every morning and make an impact at Honorlock?

Gratitude. At first, it was gratitude that there was a paying, safe job hiring during the pandemic. Then it was gratitude that I would be working with people that were hard workers but fun to talk to. My gratitude now is for a job that could become a career and for a team (and often clients) who appreciate the work I do and the person I am.

What are your main responsibilities at Honorlock?

My main responsibilities are assisting professors with any errors they might encounter. This can be anything from introducing them to our product, troubleshooting real errors, or helping them to better understand the LMS that hosts their course.

What has been your favorite project so far?

So far, my favorite project has been training the new hires for the Admin team. I have always loved teaching and training and was grateful to be allowed to help in the training process for new admin team members.

What’s something most people at Honorlock don’t know about you?

I have dyed my hair every color of the rainbow and then some. Fairly conservative with my hair now, but I have had some funky dos.

What do you love most about being part of the Honorlock team?

The team. It’s weird working and developing relationships with people that I have never seen in real life but my team definitely makes the job that much better. We seem to be a diverse team, with multiple different life experiences/paths and that has allowed for some invigorating conversations.

How has your career grown since starting at Honorlock?

I started with Honorlock in September of 2020 as a contracted Student Support agent. In November of the same year, I was asked to move over to the Admin team as a full-time employee. Just last month, I was able to assist with the training of two new Admin agents.

What are you most excited about in your future with Honorlock?

I think the growth potential. I feel very valued for the work that I do with this company and truly believe that if I continue to work hard that I can have an upward career path in Honorlock. I would have never thought that this would be the work I would land in (my family has expressed some shock, as well) but am excited to see a job become a career.

WEBINAR: How to Become a Transformational Leader in Higher Education

Dr. Marc Hardy, former Director of Nonprofit Certificate Education at the University of Notre Dame, shares insights on how to make the transition from educator to leader through a transformational approach to leadership.

What is Transformational Leadership?

It’s a leadership style focused on inspiring and motivating others to create change that will grow and shape the future.

Dr. Hardy will cover:

  • How you can make the transition from educator to leader
  • Characteristics of transformational leaders
  • How to inspire and motivate the people around you to drive positive change

Speakers:

Dr. Marc Hardy

Dr. Marc HardyAssociate Teaching Professor in the Management and Organization Department at the Mendoza College of Business

Dr. Marc Hardy retired from the University of Notre Dame in 2020 and is the former Director of Nonprofit Certificate Education at Mendoza College of Business. In addition, he was an Associate Teaching Professor in the Management and Organization Department at the Mendoza College of Business, and a Faculty Fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Global Development in the Keough School of Global Affairs.

He holds a Ph.D. in Philanthropic Studies from the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University. His doctoral research was on the early history of community foundations and he has taught nonprofit leadership and management at Indiana University, Butler University, and the University of Notre Dame. In 2007, he was voted the “Outstanding Associate Faculty of the Year” at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Indianapolis. He has also created 6 online certificate courses in nonprofit leadership and management.

He has led several nonprofit organizations and was the Executive Director of a private family operating foundation, the Fourth Freedom Forum, for seven years. He has served on grant proposal committees for the Kelly Cares Foundation and the Indiana Arts Council. Marc has served as a board member of several nonprofit organizations, including a term as President of the National Speakers Association of Indiana and Past President of the Indiana Theatre Association. Dr. Hardy presents programs on leadership, public speaking strategic planning, board development, and grant proposal writing through his consulting company www.SharingFire.com.

Employee Spotlight: Bilal Qureshi

What motivates you to wake up every morning and make an impact at Honorlock?

My motivation comes from the desire to want to make a difference in the online education space. As more schools transition to online-based curriculums, the need for preserving academic integrity on online exams is more prevalent than ever. However, I want to emphasize that to me it’s not just about preventing students from cheating on exams, but about ensuring that students are actually seeing improved learning outcomes and focusing on maximizing the intrinsic value of their diploma upon graduation. 

What are your main responsibilities at Honorlock?

Being fortunate enough to start working at Honorlock very early on in the company’s history, and having a background of working on my own entrepreneurial ventures since I was in college, I try my best to carry multiple responsibilities across various facets of the organization. More specifically, I strive to be a liaison and ally to Customer Success, Support, Sales, QA, Engineering, and several other departments within the company. I work daily towards refining business requirements and eliminating various blockers for the Engineering team. I regularly assist the customer success team in the onboarding and integration of Honorlock on institution-wide LMS instances. I also make sure to keep my eyes and ears open to the feedback from Support and QA to ensure the product quality is in good health and able to meet the demands of our users. I monitor, analyze, and assess both direct and non-direct competition within the Educational Technology industry. Lastly, I collaborate with members of the Product team to conduct user interviews and research studies, facilitate the delivery of new features and product enhancements, bug fixes, UI improvements and meet accessibility, privacy, and security standards. 

What has been your favorite project so far?

My favorite project so far has been developing the Honorlock Universal feature to allow instructors to set up Honorlock proctored assessments on an increasing number of third party educational platforms. While this is still an ongoing project with various challenges to overcome, giving our users more robust capabilities and flexibility with how they use our product is very important to me.

What’s something most people at Honorlock don’t know about you?

I did not always intend to work in the technology sector. I went into college wanting to be an educator and researcher, particularly in the fields of Philosophy and Psychology. My passion for working in tech developed later in college, after attending various computer science and entrepreneurship boot camps/hackathons and co-founding my own tech start-up. 

One of my primary goals is to collaborate with people of every race, religion, ethnicity, and gender on various philanthropic and humanitarian causes. I am passionate about working with those who are in need to become educated, reduce poverty, promote mental and physical health, and bring peace and stability to themselves and the world at large.

What do you love most about being part of the Honorlock team?

What I love most about being part of the Honorlock team is being able to work with incredibly talented, passionate, and genuinely good people on a daily basis. 

How has your career grown since starting at Honorlock?

I feel very fortunate that my career has grown in conjunction with Honorlock growing as a company. I joined the company soon after graduating with a Bachelor’s degree from Florida International University. I started in technical support, followed by being given an opportunity to establish the QA department and run it solo for several months while being supported by what I consider to be world-class engineers. Eventually, as the company grew we were able to recruit excellent QA talent, and I was again fortunate enough to have the opportunity to transition into the Product department. I started as Jr. Product Manager and worked my way to Product Manager, which is the position I currently hold at Honorlock. 

What are you most excited about in your future with Honorlock?

I am very excited to continue learning how to improve as a product manager, critical thinker, problem solver, engineer, and team member for Honorlock every single day. I am eager for us to expand existing markets while also diving into new markets and opportunities. I am also looking forward to playing my part to ensure that our product continues to innovate, evolve and adapt to deliver maximum value to both existing and new users. Most importantly, I am excited to keep working with amazing people on Honorlock’s journey to becoming the industry leader in Online Proctoring.

Employee Spotlight: Americo Stellato

What motivates you to wake up every morning and make an impact at Honorlock?

Coffee aside, providing for my family is the biggest motivator, as well as being someone our clients can rely on day in and day to make sure their needs are being heard and met.

What are your main responsibilities at Honorlock?

To keep it simple, ensuring every day that our clients have everything they need to be successful using our tool. This includes overseeing the customer journey from onboarding, training, troubleshooting, maximizing product usage, and advocating on their behalf.

Plus, the occasional Photoshop. 

What has been your favorite project so far?

It’s crazy to say this, but my favorite project (that is still ongoing) was the team’s quick ability to scale to meet the CV-19 rush. Every department played its own important role, but the CSM team onboarded and trained 150+ new clients in record time, often within a 24-hour span without flinching. 

What’s something most people at Honorlock don’t know about you?

I like to rebuild and modify cars in my spare time and have owned somewhere around 30 cars. 

What do you love most about being part of the Honorlock team?

In general, there is a lot to love but I need to single out the CSM team in particular. We’ve got an amazing group that is always willing to collaborate and do what it takes to get the job done. Even if we’re flat out exhausted from the Inbox avalanche we’re sometimes buried under, we still find a way to crack jokes and laugh. 

How has your career grown since starting at Honorlock?

When I started at Honorlock four years ago, you could count the number of employees on your fingers and about half were full time. During those days, no one had heard of us and every second was spent trying to change that.

On paper, I was one of two sales reps (shout out Andres) but during that time we did everything. This included signing any school that was willing to take a chance on an unproven company, hosting training sessions, managing accounts, organizing conferences, and creating the “marketing materials.” Since then, the company has grown exponentially as well as the career opportunities which has allowed me to focus my efforts and grow within the CSM team for the last two years. 

What are you most excited about in your future with Honorlock?

We are in a perfect spot to really disrupt the market and to set a new standard for what remote proctoring should be. Personally, I am excited to continue my growth within the company and the new challenges that come with that. 

Academic Integrity in the Online Era

At Honorlock, we pride ourselves on helping educational institutions preserve their academic integrity. Most of you, whether students, faculty, or administrators, will be aware of this phrase. Some of you will have thought deeply about academic integrity, while others may think of it only in passing. A few may have come into stark awareness of academic integrity only after being accused of violating it on an examination or a written assignment for a class. In part because of those circumstances, perhaps too much discussion of and emotion about academic integrity centers upon negative behaviors and instances when individuals fall short of the ideal.

In contrast, the International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) exists to focus on and champion the positive values associated with our intrinsic drive to do good, not just do well. These fundamental values, honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage, each warrant a look when considering what remote proctoring solution a school administrator chooses, how faculty members create assessments for their students (and indeed how they produce their own research), and how students approach the pursuit of their degrees and their education. They also play an integral role in how Honorlock operates as a company.

Honesty

Honesty is not just the proverbial best policy, ICAI notes that it’s an “indispensable foundation of teaching, learning, research, and service, and a necessary prerequisite” for the five other fundamental values. Institutions need to be clear that dishonest behaviors in an academic community are unacceptable.

Honesty and honor are closely related. The temptation to take short cuts during one’s academic career can be overwhelming, and whether it’s due to stress or disconnection, or “nobody will know,” an extensive and recent ICAI academic integrity survey paints a troubling picture of the percentage of students who admit to betraying their honor at some time or another when completing an assignment.

What can remote proctoring software do in this environment? The answer is help schools limit the temptation, by providing effective deterrence for those who may be tempted to put short-term gains ahead of their own, and their institution’s academic integrity. 

Fairness

Humans have a compelling need to feel that they have been treated fairly. “Life” may not be fair, and, in a competitive economy, things may not always break our way, but we still demand that others deal fairly with us. Our educational communities can be fortified by “predictability, transparency, and clear, reasonable expectations,” as ICAI puts it.

Students want their grade evaluations to be impartial and accurate, and fairness in this sense is what builds trust between them and their instructors and institutions. Honest students need to feel confident that their peers are not gaining an unfair advantage by acting dishonestly. For courses with high stakes online midterms and final exams, Honorlock’s AI, backed up by live human proctors, performs a vital service in ensuring fairness for all.

Respect

“Respect in academic communities,” ICAI reminds us, “is reciprocal and requires showing respect for oneself as well as others.” For the individual, respect means “facing challenges with integrity.” For the group, making sure each member both shows and feels respect is everyone’s responsibility.

When students behave with integrity, they demonstrate respect to themselves, their peers, their families, their teachers, and their school. They also show respect to the alumni who have come before them and whose ranks they hope to proudly join having maintained their school’s good name.

Honorlock was founded by students, and we respect the commitment that everyone in the academic community makes for maintaining academic integrity with our 24/7/365 support. We appreciate our opportunity to contribute to an environment that fosters respect by ensuring that remotely proctored exams are conducted both conveniently and fairly. 

Responsibility

Here is the ICAI on responsibility:

Academic communities of integrity rest upon foundations of personal accountability coupled with the willingness of individuals and groups to lead by example, uphold mutually agreed-upon standards, and take action when they encounter wrongdoing.

Schools are taking on a wider responsibility for the education of the population by expanding their reach through distance learning, and part of that responsibility is ensuring the fairness of their remotely proctored assessments. Schools that successfully shoulder this responsibility engender credibility with the world at large. 

Courage

ICAI highlights courage last because it is less a value than a “quality or capacity” that allows us to act according to our values. Courage is “an element of character” that helps students hold themselves and each other to the highest standards. 

It takes courage to act with integrity when fear creeps in, or when stress derails us. But, in a way similar to intellectual capacity, ICAI concludes, “courage can only develop in environments where it is tested.” 

Protect Academic Integrity with Honorlock’s Remote Proctoring Software

Take courage as you make the most of your experience as a student, faculty member, or administrator. If you’d like to learn more about how Honorlock’s remote proctoring software can help preserve your institution’s values of maintaining academic integrity, request a demo

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How Does Honorlock Protect Student Privacy?

Are midterm or final exams on the way in your online courses? Is your university or college normally on campus, but has migrated to distance learning due to the global health crisis? If the answer is yes to either of these questions, your students are likely to bring up concerns about their privacy when taking remotely proctored exams. We clarified many of these student privacy concerns about the privacy of students in a previous blog addressed to students, but are revisiting and extending our responses here for school administrators who may currently be researching online proctoring services for their institutions

Here are common questions about student privacy and our answers:

1. Is Honorlock FERPA Compliant?

Yes. Certain student information and records are covered by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Institutions protect the information and records in accordance with FERPA privacy rights and other applicable laws. Honorlock is prohibited from using student data in any way except to carry out online exam proctoring services. The information transmitted belongs to each school.

2. Does Honorlock Sell Student Information to Third Parties?

No. Honorlock will never sell or monetize student data. 

3. Does Honorlock require that students provide a picture of a photo ID to verify their identity? Is this information saved/stored?

Honorlock does not require that students provide a photo ID, however, most academic institutions choose to enable this feature. Honorlock encourages the primary use of a University/College ID and that is what schools usually recommend. However, any photo ID that has an image of the test-taker and their name on it will work for the purposes of confirming and documenting that the student that is supposed to take the online proctored exam is the student that actually does so. Your information is protected in accordance with FERPA privacy rights and other applicable laws. Honorlock is prohibited from using student data in any way except to carry out online exam proctoring services. The information transmitted belongs to each school.

4. Does Honorlock monitor the test taker’s network and secondary devices?

Honorlock does not employ any technologies to allow the detection of secondary devices connected to a student’s local/home network used during the online test proctoring session. No agents or applications are downloaded to these secondary devices to initiate any type of surveillance activities. Other users connected to the local/home network during a student’s Honorlock online exam can process personal or confidential information at the same time without fear of the student’s Honorlock session monitoring or eavesdropping on secondary device activities. In addition, our software is not capable of intercepting local/home network communications from devices connected during the student’s session.

We do monitor the quality of the internet connection of the specific test-taking device to ensure its quality and to document the network connection stability during the proctored test, so as to be able to troubleshoot situations in which the test-takers internet connection becomes unstable.

5. What data is tracked/recorded from the web browser extension and how is it handled?

Our Chrome Web browser extension allows Honorlock to interact with the student and the exam content during proctored exams for online courses. This includes launching the webcam window and interacting with student behavior within the exam. During the proctored online exam, the following data is captured, analyzed, and stored:

  • Webcam video, including audio
  • Recording of desktop activity
  • Student information presented by the learning management system, such as student name, course number, exam name, etc.
  • Pages visited during the examination session
  • Specific student behavior that may indicate academic dishonesty, such as copy/paste into search engines

6. Who has access to student data?

Only appropriate school personnel have access to student data. Key staff within Honorlock will have access, if needed, in order to provide quality control and support for your instructors. Our employees are likewise bound to FERPA and privacy requirements.

7. Where does Honorlock store student data?

Honorlock uses an encrypted and secured connection during each online proctored exam. All videos and photos are stored on Honorlock’s proctored testing platform. All data, including photos and video, is stored in an encrypted format on isolated storage systems within Honorlock’s private cloud in Amazon’s AWS U.S. data centers. They are SOC 2 Type 1 and GDPR compliant. Your school owns the data.

8. Who monitors the test, artificial intelligence (AI) or live proctors? Who reviews the flags?

Honorlock’s AI monitors the test-taking. The AI automatically generates a flag if unusual activity is detected, such as another person entering the room. If unusual activity is detected, a live proctor is notified and will pop-in via chatbox. Once an online exam session is completed, instructors are able to review flagged recordings to determine if there was a possible academic integrity violation. Instructors make the final assessment as to whether a transgression has taken place.

Honorlock was created by students who wanted other students to be able to have the most convenient, least intrusive remote exam proctoring experience.

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