An education-focused assessment monitoring application (app) developed by South African academics has been scaled for the global market. With close to one-million local users, Mexico, India and Australia are set to be the first global users to incorporate The Invigilator app into tech-education management systems.

The app was created in response to the Covid 19 pandemic and was developed as an invigilation and attendance tracking tool for use by education institutions. The app incorporates facial verification and an anti-plagiarism feature, does not require consistent WiFi or Internet connectivity, and can be accessed on an entry-level smartphone.

The Invigilator co-founder Nic Riemer notes that the app was the most downloaded education app in South Africa in 2022. “At that time, we realised that we were at the point where the technology was scalable and the structure of our back-end infrastructure and servers allowed for increased volume. We were, in essence, ready to launch to global markets.”

Mexico and India were selected as the first global target markets because of their similiarities to the African context, where laptops and Internet connectivity is scare. “Australia came into the picture most recently when we progressed The Invigilator to personal computer (PC) platforms that incorporate video monitoring and again, without the need for a constant Internet connection. It only took a handful of months for The Invigilator pilots to prove to educators in the three nations that the app is one of the most transformative, and affordable, artificial intelligence-based solutions in the ed-tech environment globally. This is because of the all-inclusive nature of the technology,” explains Riemer.

The offering is designed to facilitate connection between an entire ecosystem of users in a university or school and can accommodate an unlimited number of students, lecturers or teachers, and management within an educational institution – whether blended, exclusively online, or traditional learning environments. The app offers a low-cost fixed price per student, including unlimited use over a 12-month period.

Institutions can use the app to monitor student attendance, with facial recognition required intermittently as a student progresses through an assignment or assessment. In addition, anti-plagiarism technology accommodates both handwritten and text-based submissions, using Optical Character Recognition technology.