Jarrod Morgan, 32, is from the USA. He started his online eduction business, ProctorU, in 2008. ProctorU watches students take exams online using webcams and screen-sharing technology. The service gives students the convenience of testing at home and instructors the ability to ensure academic integrity. ProctorU watches students take exams online using webcams and screen-sharing technology. The service gives students the convenience of testing at home and instructors the ability to ensure academic integrity.
Starting the Business
Q: Where did the idea for your business come from? Where were you in your life and career?
A: In 2008 I was working at Andrew Jackson University as the Vice President of Technology, with Don Kassner, the President of the University and now President of ProctorU. A few years before ,we had converted the college from a correspondence college to a fully online university. Students loved being about to complete their courses online, but when it came time to test they had to actually go somewhere to take a test. The students wanted a way to complete tests from home. Don and I went into the market to find a solution; there were a few options, but nothing cost effective or reliable. We decided to design our own system for our students.
We were asked to present our new program at an education conference at Notre Dame in 2008, and there was a lot of interest in the service. In 2009 we started proctoring tests for other schools and later that year we split Andrew Jackson and ProctorU into separate corporations. In late 2010, Andrew Jackson University was sold to focus on ProctorU. Since 2009 we’ve more than doubled in size each year.
Q: What was the biggest challenge you faced when starting out?
A: When we were setting up ProctorU, figuring out a way to authenticate students’ identities was the biggest challenge. In a regular classroom the students are coming to class every day and you as a professor know who they are, but with online classes we have to verify the student completing an exam is the correct student.
We set up a system to authenticate a test-taker’s identity with a third party public records quiz, similar to those used in the finance and healthcare industries. We also check test-takers’ government issued ID to verify their identity. We created what we called the “AJU proctoring model,” named after the schools where we started. The model says that, in order to properly proctor an examination, you need to see the student, see what they are doing, and know who they are. This was the standard already set in the classroom and testing centers, and we wanted our service to be up to the same level.
Q: What is the one thing you know now that you wish you knew when you started the business?
A: That change in a rapidly growing organization is difficult for some people. You have to learn to bring people into the organization that you can trust. It was difficult to see some of the people leave who had been with the company from the early days. But we had to accept that, when you grow from 5 people, to 15 people, to 40 people, to over 300… not everyone was going to be comfortable, and some may decide to leave. We look at our company as a family, and it’s hard to lose someone. Luckily, we haven’t had much turnover relative to the kind of company we are, but the ones we did lose were tough on me personally.
Q: What would you consider your first big success in the business?
A: Our first big success was the feedback from the conference that we spoke at in Notre Dame. When we presented we were given 50 minutes, but we were so nervous that we rushed through it. We had half an hour left at the end of our presentation. When we asked for questions nearly every hand in the room when up. We knew we were on to something, and had dozens of schools asking us to start proctoring their exams immediately. It became apparent very early that we were performing a service that people wanted, which was eventually became the reason we chose to focus on ProctorU.
Our first success is hard to gauge. This is a brand new industry, and no one else was doing anything similar to us. The sheer amount of growth that we experienced in the first 18 months was a hugely obvious sign about our success.
Troy University, in Alabama, has an extensive online program. They had worked with another online proctoring company to design and establish their proctoring system. They had invested a lot of resources into getting this other company off the ground, but they approached us about working alongside them as an experiment. We were asked to proctor around 90 students in a class with known technical challenges. Our small staff of proctors worked like crazy to take care of all the students, and even overcame significant technical challenges with the exam being delivered (which were circumstantial, and not the fault of us or the school).
The team at Troy was very impressed, and they moved us to become an option for all of their courses (and let their students decide which company to use). ProctorU quickly became a favorite of instructors and students. Within a year and a half all of Troy’s online courses were using ProctorU for their online exams. Troy gave us the confidence to learn how to proctor exams online AT SCALE. Scale is really the differentiator for us. Anyone can watch someone over a webcam. But not everyone can do it for 1000 people, 10,000 people, or 50,000 people. All while keeping quality high, and workers happy. We have a saying in the office: Anyone can make a cup of coffee, but not everyone can be Starbucks.
We kept things simple. ProctorU was established on four pillars: integrity, service, simplicity, and fun. With these four ideals we shape everything we do at ProctorU.
Q: What is the toughest thing about getting to the top / staying on top in your industry specifically?
A: What we have learned is that there is no substitute for hard work. Or for doing the hard things. Everyone comes into our industry trying to throw as much technology at the problem as possible. Technology will always be a major part of our service, but what makes us special is the people who power our service. It’s not easy to hire scores of people, train them, manage them, and deploy them to work with students all over the world – but it is the right thing to do. It’s what really solves the problem. It’s also not easy to keep things simple, but complicated things rarely catch on.
Don Kassner, Matt Jaeh (ProctorU’s Senior VP of Technology) and I sat down and wrote out who we wanted to be in the early days. We narrowed it down to what is now our four pillars. We measure everything we do by staying true to these four things.
The Future
Q: Where do you see your industry heading in the next 5 years?
A: The online proctoring industry is still small, but it’s growing. We see growth coming in higher education as it moves more online, and in internet-based professional testing. Anyone who wants to reach test-takers anywhere in the world can benefit from what we do.
Q: What do you plan on doing / changing in order to keep growing in this time period?
A: ProctorU has learned to adapt quickly, as we’ve doubled in size every year since we started our service. We’ll continue to make our service as user friendly as possible, continue helping people around the world reach their educational goals and continue keeping integrity as our top priority in everything we do. It’s about the pillars. The whole team incorporates those pillars into everything we do and all decisions that are made. If we keep those simple goals clear, we’re confident we’ll make the decisions best for ProctorU and for all our partner institutions.
Q: What does ultimate success look like to you? How will you know when you’ve achieved it?
A: Success is a journey more than a destination. As the years have gone by, I’ve come to appreciate that true success is sustained success. It’s one thing to pop up and win out of the gate. But can you do it over and over again? Success for me is reaching a point years from now and realizing that we are still working as hard as ever, and staying true to our principals. We don’t want to be a footnote in the history of the testing business, we want to fundamentally move the industry forward.
Q: What do you think will be the biggest challenge facing entrepreneurs in the near future?
A: The recession created a giant backlog of people who educated themselves but were unable to find relevant work. Many of these people will hopefully turn to entrepreneurship rather than languish in unfulfilling work.
Q: What one piece of advice would you give to someone just starting out in your industry and wanting to make it to the top?
A: Focus on consistent execution of your business plan.