Why Nigel
We built Nigel because proctoring lost its way.
Somewhere along the line, assessment integrity became about controlling students instead of collecting evidence. We think that's wrong.
How we got here.
The proctoring industry started with a reasonable goal: protect the value of a credential when the exam moved online. But somewhere between there and here, the tools turned inward. Lockdown browsers took over student machines, disabled assistive technology, and broke outright on non-standard hardware. A student with a screen reader, an older laptop, or an unusual keyboard layout became a technical problem to be excluded rather than a person to be served. The exam experience began to feel less like an assessment and more like a search of your belongings.
Then came behavioral scoring. Algorithms began grading not just answers but bodies: how often a student looked away, how their keystrokes rhythmed, whether their face stayed centered in frame. These systems have flagged students for glancing at scratch paper, for living in busy households, and, in well-documented cases, for having dark skin that the face-tracking models handled poorly. A statistical suspicion score became a stand-in for evidence, and students had no way to see inside it.
Worse, many platforms wired those scores directly to consequences. Auto-suspension systems ended exams and referred students for discipline before any human being reviewed a single frame of video. Some vendors layered on emotion detection, claiming to read stress or deception from a webcam feed, a capability that institutions could neither explain to students nor defend to a review board. When the algorithm is the accuser, the judge, and the record keeper, due process does not survive contact.
The backlash is no longer hypothetical. States have moved to ban specific proctoring practices. Lawsuits over biometric data collection have been filed and settled. Student governments have passed resolutions, faculty senates have pushed back, and institutions have quietly dropped vendors after public incidents. The industry earned this. We started Nigel because we believe the next generation of assessment integrity has to be built on a different foundation entirely.
Integrity is not something you enforce. It is something you verify.
That distinction changes everything about how a proctoring system should be designed. Enforcement assumes guilt and builds walls. Verification assumes a process and collects evidence. Nigel watches the exam environment for concrete, observable things: an unauthorized device, an extra person, materials that are not on the allowed list. It does not score behavior, read faces, or guess at intent.
When something is flagged, the flag is a piece of evidence, not a verdict. It goes to a human reviewer at the institution, with the video, the timestamp, and the context attached. The student can see what was flagged and why, and can contest it through an appeals process that is built into every session rather than bolted on afterward.
This is not a softer version of proctoring. It is a more defensible one. Evidence that a human reviewed holds up in an academic integrity hearing. An opaque suspicion score does not. Institutions that adopt Nigel are not trading rigor for kindness. They are getting both, because the system produces something a review board can actually use.
And because students take their exams in a normal browser, with their own tools and their own accommodations intact, the assessment measures what it was supposed to measure all along: what they know.
The old way vs. the evidence way.
A category comparison. Not every vendor does every one of these things, but every one of these things is real.
| Capability | Traditional Proctoring | Nigel Integrity |
|---|---|---|
| Browser control | Full lockdown required | Normal browser, no restrictions |
| When AI flags something | Auto-suspends or auto-fails | Routes to human reviewer |
| Behavioral analysis | Scores eye movement, keystrokes | Never. AI sees materials, not behavior |
| Emotion detection | Some vendors use it | Never. Not built. Never will be. |
| Student appeals | Afterthought or absent | Built into every session |
| Data control | Vendor-controlled | Institution-controlled |
| FERPA model | Varies | School official exception |
A note from the founder
“Assessment integrity should protect the value of a credential without destroying the experience of earning one. That's what we built Nigel to do.”
Ryan Vance, CEO
See what evidence-based proctoring looks like.
A 20-minute demo. No lockdown software required, obviously.