In this episode of Unlocking the Potential of Assessments, John Kleeman sits down with Timothy McClinton, CEO of Meazure Learning, to explore the future of remote proctoring and its impact on the assessment industry.
Tim shares insights on how Meazure Learning has evolved, the role of AI in improving test security, and the importance of providing flexible, secure, and inclusive testing solutions for a global audience.
Whether you’re curious about the latest advancements in proctoring technology or looking to understand how remote testing is reshaping education, this episode offers valuable takeaways for industry professionals.
Full Transcript
John Kleeman:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Unlocking the Potential of Assessments, the show that delves into creating, delivering, and reporting on fair and reliable assessments. In each episode, we chat with assessment luminaries, influencers, subject-matter experts, and customers to discover and examine the latest and best practice guidance for all things assessment. I’m your host, John Kleeman, founder of Questionmark and EVP Learnosity, the assessment technology company.
Today, we’re really pleased to welcome Tim McClinton. Tim is CEO of Meazure Learning, which is a large assessment services company originally formed from ProctorU and Yardstick and which has also purchased the certification part of Scantron and Examity. Tim has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame and, prior to joining Meazure, has substantial business and leadership experience at other companies in the education and wider business space.
Tim, hi there. I’m really looking forward to the conversation today.
Timothy McClinton:
John, thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be on this podcast. I think I’m not sure I reached the full status of being considered a luminary, but happy to share my initial thoughts and anything else I can.
John Kleeman:
Well, I think you’re pretty luminous. You’re a very respected person and CEO of one of the largest companies in our industry.
How did you get into the assessment industry and end up as CEO at Meazure?
Timothy McClinton:
It was an interesting path, and maybe I’ll just start by focusing on how I joined Meazure. And it’s actually a byproduct of the pandemic.
I was working for an organization that had two business units that used remote proctoring. And through the pandemic, that organization had to go through the process of vetting multiple remote proctoring solutions because all of their in-person testing was moving to remote. And I was actually part of the team that was doing the diligence, assessing all of the remote proctoring providers, and it was really interesting. I was very much impressed by Meazure. When you stacked ranked the remote proctoring providers at that time, Meazure came out on top.
And subsequently maybe 18 months later, a recruiter reached out to me and thought that I wouldn’t be familiar with this little organization that used to be called ProctorU that was Meazure Learning. Fortunately, I did have some background and experience with the company, and I felt really impressed for a few reasons.
One, I really do think there were unique capabilities that Meazure Learning had when we went through the assessment. I was super excited about that opportunity. Two is really the people and the team. I had an opportunity to spend some time with the people at Meazure Learning and the team and really felt like I’d be fortunate to join that organization. And then three was the true impact that they have on people. I really believe that the services and capabilities that we have really create an opportunity for us to support not only our customers, the programs themselves, but actually have a positive impact on test takers. And so, the itch I always scratch is the intersection between business, technology, and education. And it checked all three of those boxes.
John Kleeman:
That makes sense, makes sense, makes sense, and nicely put. Can you tell us a little bit about your career pre-Meazure Learning?
Timothy McClinton
I probably have … If there is a normal path to entering this industry, I probably have one of the most abnormal paths. I actually started my career as a professional baseball player.
John Kleeman:
Wow.
Timothy McClinton:
18 years old, I was drafted by the New York Mets and started my … Six days later after I graduated high school, started my minor league baseball career.
Fortunately or unfortunately, that didn’t work out so well. I spent four years doing that, and then I became enamored with technology. I went back to school, got my degree, became really enamored with technology. To date myself, this is pre-Y2K. I was the geeky guy that would read compact server manuals trying to figure out how to perform a RAID configuration. Long story short, that led me into telecommunications and technology, and I did some consulting. And then I had an opportunity to move to a business that was a training business training CPAs to pass the US exam for a CPA and just found that I loved education. My family had always … My parents in particular had always made education a priority.
I had then started to realize I liked this business technology education path, and so I had an opportunity at what’s called Becker Professional Education. Then that led to me actually running an association, the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists. The abbreviation is ACAMS. And so, I not only had an opportunity to experience the training kind of developing people for an exam. I actually ran an association, and that was my first exposure to exam delivery. And then moved over to Ascend Learning, which is a technology and education company. And that led me to Meazure Learning, as I mentioned just a few minutes ago. Kind of an indirect route to an industry that very few of us know, but very impactful.
John Kleeman:
Well, indeed, and it sounds like you’ve really been in the assessment industry or very close to it for quite a long time.
What have been the big changes or big things you’ve done since joining Meazure?
Timothy McClinton
I think, John, part of it is … Joining Meazure when I did was a very interesting time to join an organization because you’re coming off the back end of COVID. I joined right as the COVID pandemic started to normalize. And so, the first thing that we tried to do was just gain a better understanding of the direction our industry was headed. And so that for us was spending a lot of time with our customers, and our customers have been very clear that there are three key priorities for them.
Number one is security. Security means many different things to different programs, but if you can’t deliver the level of security your customer wants, you can’t get on to step two, three, or four. Step two was actually very focused on experience. And so, the programs being the customers very focused on the customer experience, but a lot of focus on delivering a differentiated test-taker experience. And then the third was really around scalability and flexibility. And I would describe that, John, as our programs tend to be very unique, and so there’s a little bit of a, “Please don’t come in here with a boilerplate template and say, ‘This is exactly what I have to do.’ Show that you can accommodate our needs as a program, our unique needs, but then also help us scale and reach new test takers.” And so, that’s the journey that we’ve been on and also hopefully explains some of the acquisitions that we’ve executed over the last couple of years starting with Scantron.
As we came out of the COVID crisis or COVID pandemic, we realized pretty quickly that the world is not going to go 100% remote, that our customers were telling us we need an end-to-end solution that includes assessment, development, remote proctoring, but also the capability to test in person, and so we acquired Scantron. Fortunately worked out incredibly well. Great cultural fit. Great team members. Integrated really well. That went well.
And then the next is around just that capacity, flexibility, scalability, which led us to the acquisition of Examity. Now, we actually have our own proctoring centers that allow us to deliver a differentiated experience, but then we’ll find an economical way for us to scale and be flexible to accommodate the needs of programs.
John Kleeman:
Because, I mean, Meazure must be by far the largest proctoring company around, I would imagine. Can you talk about what you see the purpose of remote testing is? I mean, how … Does it help democratize testing? Or is it … There’s obviously pros and cons, and different people have different views. What’s your perspective on remote testing?
Timothy McClinton:
I hope that we’re at a point in our industry and when we’re talking to folks that remote testing is just another modality, another way to deliver an exam, and the way that I view this is I really do think that our role in the industry is really democratizing access to secure testing and secure training. And that’s what I believe remote testing does. It allows programs to, first, provide test-taker choice. If you have a person who’s going to take your exam, you want to make sure that you provide the most convenient way for them to take an exam and the most comfortable way, remote proctoring being one alternative. You also still have in-person testing.
I think, two, it allows programs to really reach new test takers, new students, whether it be different geographies, whether it be working professionals, those in university, but I feel it creates an opportunity to expand that reach in that capacity.
Now, I think we’re also fully aware that, as remote proctoring was launched many, many years ago, and as our founder, Jarrod Morgan, reminds me, ProctorU was the originator of remote proctoring some 15 years ago, and it was really around access. And so, we want to true to that ethos of really providing access to folks and supporting programs.
John Kleeman:
No, I can certainly vouch for the fact that ProctorU was very early. I remember Jarrod and his colleague coming to Questionmark conferences and things. And at that time, proctoring was quite new and unusual.
Look, how do you see the evolution of online proctoring? Mostly, I think at the higher end, it’s really largely human led. But with AI and automation, and obviously there obviously are also lots of record and review and automated proctoring solutions out there, what’s your view on the automated as against live human issue?
Timothy McClinton:
It’s really interesting. Maybe I’m going to answer your question indirectly. John, feel free to point me back in the right direction.
I think the way that Meazure views this is we want to provide options to our customers. But at the end of the day, it’s their program, and we want them to move forward with whatever they’re comfortable with. And so, I do believe there’s an environment or a world where a remotely proctored exam with a proctor versus a remotely proctored exam that’s an automated solution may not fit for every customer. May not fit for every program.
I do believe there are some advancements that are taking place on the automated end that will somewhere down the road will never eliminate the need for a live proctor, but I think in certain use cases may be a comparable alternative that customers will think through, but there’s always that secondary impact that we try to think about as we do have our end customer that we’re selling to, but some of those customers have governing bodies or regulators that they have to demonstrate efficacy to and which is why we try not to force our customers in any direction. We try to inform them, let them know here are the best options that we believe, but at the end of the day, this is your program, and you have to be able to justify it. And so, we want to provide kind of an end-to-end solution that can fit all their needs.
John Kleeman:
That makes sense. And I think what you mentioned earlier about the three aims of sort of security candidate experience and flexibility is really, really important because we work a lot with Meazure in our programs, and I know that our customers want security, but they also want candidate success and experience. And also, for each of them, their own needs are really, really important. And so, the ability to be flexible and have proctors do things slightly differently for different customers is really important.
I mean, do you think there will come a time when AI is so effective at test security that a human proctor won’t be needed?
Timothy McClinton:
I have difficulty believing that we would reach that inflexion point anytime in the near future. And by near future, I’m talking maybe 10, 15 years. And I say that not because AI isn’t going to continue to grow and evolve and learn. I think it’s going to do that.
On the other side of that, there’s a human being that has to be comfortable with the outcomes. And then as the provider that’s in between those two, we have to be able to demonstrate efficacy consistency to our customers. And so, I think that we’re going to see automation being considered more frequently, but I think we’re pretty far away from a fully-automated solution being considered what I’d say may be the industry norm for remote proctoring just because there is kind of an adoption period and a comfort period that we would need to work through. And also the technology itself evolving.
John Kleeman:
But will it be sort of more human in the loop and sort of humans able to proctor more sessions at the same time because of automation?
Timothy McClinton:
The way that we are thinking about this … Because this is an area that we’re spending a lot of time researching but also a lot of time putting our money where our mouth is and capital invested in this. We believe the ideal solution is remote proctoring but using AI or some form of technology as a co-pilot to improve the effectiveness of the proctor. And so, I like that we really focus on improving the effectiveness of the proctor versus reducing cost. If reducing cost is a byproduct, that’s spectacular. But at the end of the day, we’re trying to demonstrate the efficacy of remote proctoring. And so, if we can have a human being plus some type of technology that makes that a human being more effective and also delivers a better experience to our customers and test takers, we’re 100% behind that.
Now, that I do believe is something you’ll see us moving to in the very near future.
John Kleeman:
Things like improving security by having the AI flag things that the human proctor can then look at? That sort of thing?
Timothy McClinton:
Yeah, we’re looking at everything from an improving security, to your point. We have eyes on screen. We have some technology behind that, but can we layer run additional technology to help us better understand the environment, better understand voices in the background, how to distinguish between those, flag more things for us, but we’re also looking at opportunities to use technology to improve the entire experience. How do we make the registration more effective? How do we make the launch less intrusive and faster? How do we make… We’re looking kind of at the end-to-end experience of leveraging technology that way as well.
John Kleeman:
That sounds really interesting. I know there are some test takers who are very vigilant about the privacy of test takers. They’re worried about surveillance or … How do you address their concerns when it comes to remote testing and remote proctoring?
Timothy McClinton:
Great question. I think the environment that we live in … Let’s expand it beyond remote proctoring. Just the environment we live in as human beings and understanding that every day there’s some massive breach that actually leaks personal and private information. We believe the table stakes are to protect our test takers, our programs, their information to the highest level. And the way that we do that is we focus on the regulations that are coming down the pike and ensuring that we’re fully aligned with those regulations. We have compliance folks in our organization that are constantly stress testing what we do and common practices. We’re incredibly diligent about the way that we think about, use, and store test-taker information just for that reason. We don’t want to be the organization that you see on the evening news that has a major breach that negatively impacts people.
John Kleeman:
And just to clarify for our listeners, the only reason you capture data is for the test sponsor, isn’t it? You’re not using people’s data for your own purposes or other things. It is just solely to ensure the validity of the test.
Timothy McClinton:
Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that, John. We absolutely do not store, use, and sell test-taker data. That’s not the business that we’re in. We’re not data mining. We capture the information for the purposes of the exam and testing, and then we dispose of the information within the guidelines of that program. We absolutely … The data is only there as a part of the proctoring process, but the data is not there for us to monetize and use in any way.
John Kleeman:
Thanks. That’s helpful. And I think a lot of people don’t understand that, and they’re worried about things, but whereas we’re really just about making tests valid. Let’s change tack a little bit. If an organization out there is considering remote testing, remote proctoring, what advice would you give to them about how to approach that? Any sort of good practice?
Timothy McClinton:
Well, first, you teed me up perfectly for that, John. I have to say the first thing you do is you call Meazure Learning because we’re the experts and the leaders in the industry as it relates to remote proctoring and online proctoring.
But I would say, on a more serious note, I do believe that programs… When they’re considering remote proctoring, there are a few things that they should take into consideration. One, and I think we touched on this a little bit already, John, is just the capabilities of remote proctoring have developed and progressed tremendously over the past… Fill in the blank. Five, 10, 15 years. And so, the technology and the process are far more advanced than many customers actually believe. But if you are a program that is looking to reach new test takers, can’t think of a better way to efficiently reach new test takers except through a remote proctoring environment. If you’re looking to provide your candidates with choice, which by default provides a better experience, we believe that remote proctoring is definitely something that you should take a look at.
We’re also very pragmatic. We understand that every customer doesn’t have that ability to wholesale move to remote proctoring, which is why we acquired Scantron, and we’re very focused on delivering the solution our customers needs, which includes a hybrid solution as well.
John Kleeman:
How much… I mean, there’s a lot of international… It’s not just in the US Meazure offers services. Do you offer 24/7 365 proctoring? And does that work for people?
Timothy McClinton:
Yeah, we do, and I wish that I could take credit for establishing these capabilities, but my predecessors, when I walked in the door, establish our proctoring capabilities to be 24/7 375 to service any customer around the globe. And so, we have hundreds of customers both inside the US and outside the US. We take everything into consideration, including cultural differences, language differences, and so we’re very focused on…
To us, remote proctoring capabilities should be ubiquitous. And so, that’s the way we’ve built our organization to support that.
John Kleeman:
And I think also the more remote people are… There’s a kind of benefit there if you are in, say, Australia, and there’s a huge distance to a city or whatever. Then remote proctoring is super valuable as against if you’re in London, New York, or something when you could just take a short train ride to a test center.
Timothy McClinton:
You’re the best advocate I’ve ever had, John. This is spot on. I think you’re right, though. I think it’s a…
Especially when we look at the way that people live their lives now, we’re not travelling into an office. Most of us aren’t travelling into an office every day. And so, convenience matters. Especially if you are a distance from a major hub or a major city, it can be a tremendous effort just to get into a location, a limited location, to test in person.
I would even share we even hear folks that live in major cities, but… I’m originally from Chicago. We’ve had students I’ve talked to from Chicago. They live in the suburbs of Chicago and said, “For me to get to the test center I want to get to, it’s about a 90-minute commute each way. Remote proctoring also works for me.” There’s a convenience factor that really should be taken into consideration.
John Kleeman:
And what about pitfalls or issues to avoid? If somebody’s going into it, what are the things to be careful about or make sure to avoid?
Timothy McClinton:
I think the one area … Or maybe I’ll touch on a couple, but the one that we always like to coach people up on is, if you’re going to move to remote proctoring, and this is more from the test taker side, is to take the time to do the checks ahead of time so that you don’t have any panic on your test day. And so, by that I mean we actually walk test takers through a process where we check your internet connection. We check your device. If there’s anything that you need to download that’s mandated from the program, you download that ahead of time. That way on test day, you’re fully prepared, and all you’re focused on is your test, not your technology. From a test taker perspective, that’s the one lookout that we have.
From a program or a sponsor perspective, part of it is just helping your test takers understand how, when, and why you use and leverage remote proctoring. There’s a little bit of education and messaging that we like to help them understand that it’s a comparable choice to in-person testing, but it’s a more convenient choice and then set those expectations. As long as you kind of work through that and set those expectations, it’s normally a really good experience.
John Kleeman:
And in terms of inclusivity and diversity, I mean, how does remote proctoring deal with, say, accessibility or other inclusivity challenges?
Timothy McClinton:
I think we’ve come a long way probably over the last four or five years in this. We have a lot of capabilities now built into Meazure Learning that we didn’t have four or five years ago that speak to and support inclusivity accessibility. Where there is a gap, if we have a gap, we will partner with third -party solutions and have them fully integrated into our solution so it’s seamless to the test taker, but we have seen the adoption and the use of remote proctoring for, in particular, accessibility grow exponentially probably specifically over the last two years.
John Kleeman:
Good. Good, good, good. And if you are considering remote proctoring, what kind of questions should you be asking your provider apart from, “Do you use Meazure or not?” More seriously, what are good questions to determine?
Timothy McClinton:
I think, for us, we always ask … We lead with this, but we always ask those folks considering remote proctoring to start with, as you’re looking at a vendor, speaking to them around how they define quality proctoring. It always starts as always a benefit if you are on the exact same page as your provider or vendor or partner on what a good experience looks like.
The next for us is proctoring is a … Live remote proctoring is a complicated thing. And so, asking how the proctors are trained and how those proctors are evaluated is normally will allow a program to get a very good understanding of what their test takers can expect. We also think that it’s beneficial to ask, who are your proctors? Where are they located? And are they employees? Or are they contracted or contracted? We think that makes sense.
And then finally for us is the last thing you want to do is to have some type of disruption is really double-clicking on how that provider looks at business continuity. If you have a test taker, is that test taker going to have a disruption because where you’re proctoring has a disruption? Business continuity is probably the fourth or fifth thing on our list.
There are about five or six more things I could go through, but I think those are the top of the list. And you touched on the other one, which is also how you think about privacy and how you’re handling test-taker data.
John Kleeman:
No, those are really good comments. Let’s change gears slightly. As you think about the market change from post-pandemic, lots of new technologies coming through, how does that impact how you lead the organization?
Timothy McClinton:
That’s a great question. The way I think about it is change is happening much more frequently and at a faster rate now than it has in the past. And so, a lot of my coaching and helping folks developed was I would say very focused on the immediate, what’s happening right now, and a lot of what we’re doing now is we’re changing the way that we help people.
First, we’re helping them understand that the best thing that they can do is to be a change agent. We think of leader as a change agent versus leader as a person who’s managing some part of the business. And so, spend a lot of time helping folks become change agents and being comfortable with change.
The second is, especially in this environment, and Meazure is an example, we’re … Probably 50% of our team members are remote. And so, helping them understand that culture is the glue that holds everything together and making sure that we’re doing the right things to establish the right culture, live the right values, and find unique ways to demonstrate that in this more diverse and geographically spread workforce.
And the third thing for us is our customers are going through the same changes. And so, a lot of our focus is, how do we build the customer intimacy at an account level, customer by customer, to really understand their programs, to really understand what they’re trying to accomplish, and then think of our role as being true advocates for their success? If we help our customers who become successful and grow, we by default grow. And instilling that mentality in the organization has been critical to us.
Those are the three areas that we’ve really focused on or I’ve focused on as a leader, kind of change in particular, since the pandemic.
John Kleeman:
And what’s the key culture at Meazure Learning that you are putting in place?
Timothy McClinton:
One, we’re an incredibly entrepreneurial organization. It’s in our DNA. We like to move fast. Once in a while, we may break something, but we learn quickly. We don’t repeat the same mistake.
Second is we’re an organization that’s incredibly collaborative. We believe the best way for us to do things is to do things together. We don’t suffer … There’s probably an inappropriate way to say this, but I’ll say this maybe more appropriately. Jerks. We don’t like jerks in our organization. We believe in … We have a concept called the ideal team player. Humble, hungry, and smart. Those are the type of people that we see thrive within our organization.
And the other thing that we’re really driving towards is just empowerment. We believe that we hire great people. We try to put them in the best position to be successful, but at a certain point in time you have to empower them to do their jobs. And so, really driving towards that empowerment phase is critically important to us. And so, I hope it’s a good culture. Haven’t had too many complaints so far.
John Kleeman:
All my experience would suggest the culture is so important to making an organization successful. It sounds very, very sensible.
Look, we’ve talked a little bit about AI and the proctoring set, but it’s also a big factor in the market in terms of how AI within assessment outside proctoring and other areas.
What’s your take on how AI is going to impact assessment and measuring, more broadly, outside proctoring?
Timothy McClinton:
Well, first, John, I give you a lot of credit because we’ve been talking for 10, 15 minutes here, maybe a little bit longer, and we’re just now getting to AI. You’re a very disciplined interviewer.
I do believe that AI is going to have a material impact on our industry. I think we’re starting to see it already. I think it’s being used pretty heavily in item development, exam development, and I think that’s going to continue to progress. Our industry seems to be more willing to adopt it on that end and experiment on that end immediately.
I think what we’re going to see over time is AI permeate the end-to-end business operation to try and deliver a better experience, more cost-effective experience, with everything from customer success to remote proctoring to billing and invoicing. AI or some form of technology is going to play a material role.
I will say I get a little nervous when we’re at the top of the hype cycle, which I believe we are, but I do believe there is tremendous value that we’re going to see. It just may take a little longer than some folks think, in my humble opinion.
John Kleeman:
I agree with you. I think we’re going to secure information perhaps not as quickly as everybody thinks, but reasonably quickly. This has been really insightful, Tim. As we wrap up, any parting words of wisdom to our listeners?
Timothy McClinton:
Well, first, I thank you again, John. Just really appreciate the opportunity to be on this podcast. And thank you for all that you’re doing for our industry. I have to share that, when I joined the industry, the first thing I did is I looked up podcasts, and this is the first podcast I found on assessments. And so, I think I’ve listened to every one of your episodes. I won’t hold it against you that it has taken until 2024 for you to get Meazure Learning on, but we’re there now. That’s a good thing.
I think the only thing that I would share with folks is I do believe that what we do is critically important, and I’ll go back to my passions around business, technology, and education with an emphasis on education. We really do have a profound and positive impact on this industry. And so, I think that our responsibilities as stewards in this industry is to continue that. And I’m happy that Meazure can play hopefully a material role in helping advance our industry and our cause.
John Kleeman:
Sounds very good. We did actually have Jarrod Morgan on the podcast a long time ago.
Timothy McClinton:
I missed that episode. Shame on me.
John Kleeman:
But we’re very pleased to have you, and been really, really, really insightful what you’ve said today and, I think, interesting for all our listeners. Thank you, everybody, for listening to us today. We appreciate your support. And don’t forget, if you enjoyed this podcast, why not follow us through your favorite listening platform? Please reach out to me directly at john@learnosity.com with any questions, comments, or if you’d like to keep the conversation going. You can also visit the Learnosity or Questionmark sites for more information or to register for our webinars. And there’s also a lot of resources about the things that Tim was speaking about on the Meazure Learning site at www.meazurelearning.com.
Thanks again, and please tune in for future podcast episodes. And also, please check our back catalogue. We’ve got over 40 episodes you can listen to. Thanks, everyone.