Earlier quoted context omitted.
The software sounds faulty. The black screen is terrible UX; it should just silently set a bookmark and let the student continue. The overall outcome (and the student's experience and stress) is ultimately a staff issue. The professor should have been on call, and should have been able to get the student back into the questions, or, failing that, to offer another sitting. I have done both of these, among other remedi…
You are correct this is a staff failure, the failure lies in using the software in the first place. If we agree that the current situation is so exceptional that we need to fully monitor all students taking exams (and that's still a big if, I also am a university teacher, we don't use any monitoring system. There are other solutions as well such as taking oral exams...), one could simply hire a bunch of proctors who…
> I see it as a currently-necessary annoyance, as the least bad option. The alternatives have greater deficiencies: human invigilators using Zoom etc. don't scale (institution experience); oral exams don't scale (my experience moderating such assessments); no invigilation leads to cheating (by few students but enough to be a real problem, especially for professional qualifications - my direct experience and institution experience); shutting down education until the pandemic's over is unfeasible.
Last year, we tried not monitoring, we tried Zoom invigilation, we tried orals. Lockdown rules prevented us from sending in-person invigilators in one semester (and we couldn't have hired even 10% of what that would take) and the other we invigilated in person like normal. We are spending more than ever before, so there are no savings. All of these methods failed. This year, grudgingly, we have moved to proctoring software.