Message from the Dean

Important Message from the College of Business Dean

Welcome to your online College of Business course! You may have already noticed that this course will use ProctorU, an industry leading remote proctoring service, and you may have a few questions about this. ProctorU is being required in this course in response to new federal guidelines that require institutions to make an effort to verify that the student who enrolls in a course is the same student who completes the coursework. These federal guidelines are now incorporated into policy by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC)—the regional accrediting agency that accredits all University of Central Oklahoma programs. A failure to comply with this policy would mean that eventually UCO students may not be able to receive federal financial aid to enroll in UCO courses. To meet these new regulatory expectations, the University of Central Oklahoma is partnering with the industry leading firm ProctorU to provide this exam proctoring service. ProctorU has worked with hundreds of other institutions offering online courses. Additional information on ProctorU, including their security protocols and instructions on how to use the service, is available on the ProctorU website (www.proctoru.com).

It is perfectly understandable that some individuals might be uncomfortable using this new technology to monitor students taking exams. For this reason, the university is allowing students enrolled in online courses to choose to take their exams in the College of Business Testing Center, where the student activity can be monitored by an on-campus proctor. Your professor can explain our testing center alternatives to ProctorU, but seating is limited and offered on a first-come, first served basis. The hours, operating policies and procedures, and link to schedule a test in our testing center, available here. Of course, students are always welcome to enroll in one of our many face-to-face courses too.

I hope this brief note has answered all the questions you have on this topic. If you would like to discuss ProctorU further, please feel free to contact Dr. Geoff Willis (gwillis@uco.edu) or call his office at 405-974-5345 to schedule an appointment. If you have questions about the College of Business Testing Center, contact the proctors at cbtesting@uco.edu.

Thank you, and good luck in your courses this semester!

Jeremy Oller, J.D., Ph.D.
Dean, College of Business