Running a Proctored Online Olympiad: A Practical Checklist

Moving an Olympiad from paper to a computer-based test makes it easier to deliver, score, and report on. It also raises the question every organizer and participating school will ask: can the results be trusted?

Before exam day

Most integrity problems are prevented long before candidates log in:

• Build the paper from a question bank organized by subject, topic, and difficulty, so it can be balanced and reviewed properly
• Split the paper into sections, and decide your marking scheme — including negative marking — up front
• Turn on question and option shuffling so neighbouring candidates don't see the same paper in the same order
• Publish the test only to the classes, sections, or candidates who are registered for it

During the sitting

Remote proctoring works best as a set of layered checks rather than a single barrier:

• Webcam snapshots at regular intervals, with checks for no face or more than one face in frame
• Fullscreen enforcement and tab-switch detection, so leaving the exam window is recorded
• Flags for dev tools, print-screen, page refresh, and network drops, each logged against the candidate

A live monitoring view lets your team follow every candidate's progress and violations as they happen, instead of discovering problems after the sitting has closed.

After the sitting

Review flagged candidates first, then finalize results. Finalizing locks in scores and computes ranks across the whole cohort, which is what participating schools will want to see: a ranking, a section-wise breakdown, and a report they can export to Excel for their own records.