Scaling Secure Remote Exams with the 360 Total View Proctoring Solution

Overview

The University of Waterloo’s Math faculty partnered with Proctor360 to deliver a secure and scalable remote exam experience for its students. Leveraging Proctor360’s 360 Total View proctoring solution — which combines a proprietary 360° camera headset with traditional webcam and screen share monitoring — the department was able to effectively oversee students’ testing environments, both locally and globally.

Through a series of pilot programs and iterative improvements to the technology, the Math Faculty and Proctor360 collaborated to refine the solution for broader deployment, enhancing accessibility, cost-effectiveness, and monitoring capabilities.

Challenge

The Math Department needed a way to reliably monitor exams for students taking tests remotely, ensuring academic integrity while accommodating students worldwide. Traditional remote proctoring solutions — which typically rely only on webcam and screen share alone — left blind spots in the test-taker’s environment, presenting a risk of undetected misconduct.

The department sought a more comprehensive monitoring approach that could scale efficiently across terms and reach students regardless of their location.

Solution

Proctor360’s 360 Total View proctoring solution addressed this challenge by combining three monitoring streams:

• Proprietary 360° camera headset: Captured a complete view of the test-taker’s surroundings.
• Webcam: Provided a standard front-facing view of the test-taker.
• Screen share: Monitored on-screen activity during the exam.

Pilot Implementation

• Summer 2023 Midterms: The initial pilot deployed the 360 Total View solution to a sample of students during midterms. The pilot achieved a 96% success rate, confirming the solution’s effectiveness in monitoring and detecting potential academic integrity issues.
• Winter 2024 Midterms: The department continued to use the solution in the subsequent term, further validating its utility and collecting feedback on student and proctor experiences.
• Summer 2025 Midterms & Finals: The solution was deployed again, demonstrating consistency and reliability over multiple exam periods.

To facilitate deployment at scale, Proctor360 and the Math Faculty devised logistics for headset distribution, shipping headsets directly to students in some cases and leveraging the University of Waterloo Bookstore to distribute headsets locally. This approach enabled seamless service to students both in the Waterloo area and around the globe.

Continuous Improvement

While the pilots in 2023 and 2024 were successful, scaling the solution to a larger student population revealed opportunities for improvement. Specifically, the team identified the need to:

• Enhance the field of view to capture more of the testing environment.
• Improve adjustability of the headset for student comfort and ease of use.
• Lower the cost of the hardware to make widespread adoption more feasible.

Proctor360 embarked on a months-long engineering effort to redesign the headset. Multiple prototypes were developed and shipped to Peter Wood, Assistant Dean of Online Instruction and Educational Technologies at the University of Waterloo, for hands-on testing with real students. This collaborative testing process provided critical feedback, allowing Proctor360 to refine the design for better performance and scalability.

Voices from the Partnership

“We were excited to work with the University of Waterloo to deliver a truly comprehensive remote proctoring experience. Their willingness to collaborate and provide real-world feedback helped us improve not just the technology, but also the student experience.”
— Ujjwal “Paddy” Pandey, International Business Development Manager, Proctor360

“Proctor360’s 360 headset has allowed us to deliver secure online exams to students around the world, while preserving the integrity of our assessments. Their openness to iterate on the design and respond to our feedback has been invaluable as we look to scale this solution for the future.”
— Peter Wood, Assistant Dean of Online Instruction and Educational Technologies, University of Waterloo

Results & Impact

Through this partnership:

✅ The University of Waterloo Math Faculty successfully delivered secure, monitored exams to students worldwide.
✅ Pilots in 2023 and 2024 demonstrated a high success rate and improved integrity monitoring compared to traditional methods.
✅ Logistics were streamlined to distribute headsets effectively, both locally via the bookstore and globally through direct shipping.
✅ The collaborative development of a new headset design positioned the department to scale remote proctoring further, with improved usability and lower costs.

Looking Ahead

With the new headset design underway and proven processes for deployment, the University of Waterloo Math Faculty and Proctor360 are well-positioned to expand secure, remote exam delivery to even larger cohorts of students in future terms. The partnership exemplifies how academic institutions and technology providers can work together to innovate and maintain the integrity of remote assessments at scale.