UNCAUS virtual: equal opportunities through training

UNCAUS virtual is the distance learning area of the Universidad Nacional del Chaco Austral in Argentina. It is an area founded in 2014 that receives more and more students for their degrees remotely throughout the country, currently with more than 52 locations.

One of the reasons for strengthening this area of Distance Education is precisely the belief on the part of this institution that a better society can be achieved through equal opportunities generated by access to education, regardless of where people are located.

Its educational offer in this area – with undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate degrees and training courses in different areas – has positioned the institution as one of the reference universities in the country.

UNCAUS virtual classroom and knowledge self-management

One of the keys to their success has been their ability to provide quality distance education without forgetting its social impact. 

In addition, they have managed to ensure their students’ organizational, technological and pedagogical conditions through follow-up and accompaniment at each stage of the process.

How have they achieved this? 

Through its virtual classroom based on Moodle and the recent incorporation of a proctoring system. 

SMOWL proctoring brings quality and transparency to their exams

To successfully evaluate the exams of its distance learning courses, UNCAUS virtual decided to use the services of Smowltech and its proctoring software SMOWL.

Before contracting proctoring, students took the exams through the Moodle platform without monitoring. But faced with the increase in the number of students, the institution decided to contract Smowltech’s system.

The objective is to validate the students’ identity and monitor the entire exam, offering quality and transparency and respecting the student’s privacy.

With this, the university has managed to minimize fraud in online evaluations and, at the same time, comply with the demands of the CONEAU (National Commission for University Evaluation and Accreditation).

CONEAU is a decentralized agency under the jurisdiction of the National Ministry of Education whose institutional mission is to ensure and improve the quality of university degrees and institutions operating in the Argentine university system through evaluation and accreditation activities of the quality of university education.

The benefits of SMOWL monitoring integrated into virtual UNCAUS Moodle

UNCAUS Virtual integrated SMOWL into its Moodle platform and used three main features: webcam monitoring, computer activity monitoring, and audio capture. All this allows them to visualize each activity in detail and make decisions about it.

Stella Maris Gerzel, Head of the Systems Area at UNCAUS, emphasizes that the institution values very positively Smowltech’s “always quick” response to “possible eventualities or specific queries related to the system” and praises the “constant updating” of the tool, which incorporates constant improvements in each new version.

She also mentions that the SMOWL proctoring system has allowed the virtual UNCAUS to simplify processes, save time and facilitate student evaluation.

Thanks to this, students from all parts of the country can study 100% online and have access to complete and quality education, thus complying with one of the main values of this university: equality of opportunities.

Benefits for students

Although initially the institution’s students were skeptical because they were unfamiliar with the monitoring process, over time, they have adapted to the new process. Today they welcome it as a matter of course. 

The benefits of a 100% online, complete, and quality education outweigh any reluctance. Not only in the purely academic field but also in the economic field, since this model avoids students’ expenses generated by traditional evaluations, such as travel to the exam site or the cost of paper and other materials.

If your institution is also looking to generate fair and safe assessment environments for all users, feel free to learn about the proctoring options offered by SMOWL. Contact us, and we will give you access to a free demo so that you can evaluate if our system adapts to your institution’s needs.