invigilate
verb

- to watch people taking an exam in order to check that they do not cheat

The Cambridge Dictionary

—
WORD ORIGIN

“Invigilate” is a descendant of the Latin verb vigilare, meaning “to stay awake.”

As you may have guessed, vigilare is the ancestor of our adjective vigilant (“alertly watchful”), and it also gives us reveille (“a signal to wake up in the morning”, via French réveillez) and surveillance (“close watch, supervision”, via French surveiller).

Invigilate has been a member of the English language since the mid-16th century.

Merriam-Webster

—
ROBOT INVIGILATORS

A modest proposal for improving exam invigilation - Jon Dron, Professor (Learning & Assessment in the School of Computing & Information Systems), Athabasca University (Canada's leading online university).

"Exams cost a huge amount of money to host and to invigilate… I have a better solution."

"Instead of costly invigilators and invigilation centres, all we need to do is to send out small (returnable, postage-paid) robots to students’ homes. A little robot sitting on the student’s desk or kitchen table as they sit their written exam (on paper, of course - tradition matters), recording every blink, watching their fingers writing on the paper, with 360 degree panoramic camera and the ability to zoom in on anything suspicious or interesting."

—
SYNONYMS

- to oversee a test or exam

check, conduct, inspect, INVIGILATE, keep an eye on, monitor, observe, oversee, police, preside over, proctor, superintend, supervise, watch over

—
SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation, say something like:

“Some people believe that a different philosophy of education and learning will remove the need to INVIGILATE students. What do you think?”

—
HERZLICHEN DANK to all readers helping me keep OWAD alive with single or monthly donations.

Every month, I spend evening and weekend hours with my family researching and writing your daily OWAD. It remains FREE, AD-free, and ALIVE thanks to voluntary donations from appreciative readers.

If you aren’t already, please also consider supporting us - even the equivalent of a single cup of coffee a month will help us cover mailing, site hosting, and maintenance costs. Just head over to DonorBox:

https://donorbox.org/please-become-a-friend-of-owad-5-3

Thanks so much!

Paul Smith