The role of proctoring in personalized instruction.

Researchers split college students into four groups. All used Keller’s personalized instruction.

Group one had no proctor. The others had 25%, 50%, or 100% of their work proctored.

Final-exam scores and course finish times were compared.

Any proctoring beat no proctoring on the final exam.

Among proctored groups, scores stayed the same, but higher proctoring made students finish sooner.

Hoffman et al. (1969) ran Keller’s plan first and also saw higher finals. The new study zooms in on how much proctoring is enough.

Born et al. (1974) followed two years later. They kept the PSI frame but looked at study time, not proctoring. They found the same small score lift plus steadier daily work.

Jimenez et al. (2021) asked a similar "how little is enough" question about interteaching. They learned peer discussion is the key piece, just as this paper shows proctoring is the key piece in PSI.

You can safeguard exam success with light proctoring. Just one in four checks still lifts scores. Add more checks only when you want students to finish faster, not to score higher. Use the saved staff time for other supports.