At Building Blackboard Together 2026 convention in Dallas, Melvin L. Simon, Global Partner Manager at Smowltech, sat down with Fredrik Klemming, Director of Product Management at Blackboard, to talk about what keeps online credentials credible. Klemming's answer comes down to one word: trust.
In digital assessment, trust depends on evaluations that are both secure and fair.
Trust is what gives online credentials their value
Fredrik Klemming explains that "prestige in a virtual ecosystem comes down to trust. And at Blackboard, trust rests on three pillars: security, usability, and accessibility."
Institutions hold large amounts of personal student data, and, according to Klemming, "nothing erodes or damages trust faster than a security breach." Accessibility matters just as much: "Having a platform that's fully accessible and leaves no one out is essential."
Academic integrity completes the picture. As Klemming puts it, "A credential or a degree earned online needs to mean the same thing as one earned in the classroom."
Secure and fair: two sides of the same coin
For Klemming, integrity is a matter of fairness and a core requirement that has to be built into the platform.
"Secure and fair are really two sides of the same coin. An assessment that isn't secure can't be fair, because some students will have gamed it."
When some students can bypass the rules, those who put in the work are placed at a disadvantage. Secure assessment keeps the playing field level, so grades and credentials reflect what each student has actually learned.
One platform, one tool
Moving high-stakes assessment online can make faculty hesitant. According to Klemming, some of that comes down to workload: the idea of having to learn and manage multiple tools. Blackboard's answer is an open platform built on open standards, such as Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI), managed by the 1EdTech consortium.
As Klemming put it, "the Blackboard LMS can't be everything to everyone." Open standards let institutions choose the specialist tools they need, such as online proctoring , and connect them to the LMS they already use. "One platform, one tool, because the integration makes sure that your proctoring solution feels like a native part of Blackboard."
As Klemming noted, instructors don't have an additional workflow to learn, and students take proctored assessments in the tool they already know, which "helps reduce students' anxiety around assessment."
How SMOWL works inside Blackboard
SMOWL has an official integration with Blackboard . Instructors and administrators can activate supervision in their assessments and access monitoring data directly from the platform. Depending on the SMOWL plan , each assessment can combine: - Webcam monitoring throughout the assessment.
- Browser Lock , which locks the browser during the assessment.
Browser Lock and webcam monitoring run through SMOWL EXTENSION , a browser extension. The SMOWL CM desktop app is only needed when Computer Monitoring is enabled. Instructors review results in the SMOWL panel integrated into Blackboard, and detailed reports are also available in mySmowltech. Where assessment is heading
Looking ahead, Klemming expects three shifts. First, a move away from single, very high-stakes exams "towards smaller, more continuous assessments that take place over time," which give instructors a more complete picture of learner achievement.
Second, as generative AI produces polished answers in seconds, more focus on the thinking behind the final submission:
"Think about the sketchbook for an artist. They might come to you with a masterpiece, but it's really the sketchbook that shows you how their thinking has evolved over time."
Third, more authentic assessments, where students apply knowledge and demonstrate skills rather than recall information. They are harder to cheat on with AI and closer to what employers need:
"An employer doesn't need you to be able to recall every piece of information you ever learned — they need you to be able to demonstrate that you can work with that information."
These shifts change how assessments are designed, not the need for them to be trustworthy. Whether an exam is high-stakes or one of many touchpoints, its result only matters if it reflects the student's own work.
Building trust, together
Trust in online learning is built on security, usability, and accessibility, and protected by assessments that are fair for everyone. Open standards make it possible to combine the strengths of Blackboard with specialist tools, so institutions don't have to choose between integrity and simplicity. That is the purpose behind SMOWL: helping institutions build trust in the digital world, one assessment at a time.
Want to see how SMOWL works inside Blackboard? Explore SMOWL for Blackboard or get in touch with our team .
