Students cheating on final proctored essay
In my online asynchronous english composition I class, my students are taking their final exam which is a timed essay proctored by Proctorio.
Yesterday morning, one of my students sent me an email that she was kicked out of the exam before she could upload her essay to the file upload. When I checked the Proctorio Review Center to see what might've gone wrong, I noticed that the student did not have her camera turned on, or rather, there was something covering the camera. Also, on the side where it shows the screen recording, it never showed her opening a document or typing at all. It stayed still on the exam instructions page the whole time. At the very end of the recording, it showed a fully written document. Since the camera was covered and there was no typing on the screen recording, my theory is that she used another device to type the essay and to use AI or other websites to cheat.
Today, another student sent me an email that he typed his essay on an iPad while taking the exam on his computer.... so Proctorio obviously didn't record his screen and there's no evidence he wrote it. Again, I suspect he used AI tools and did this so he could bypass his screen being recorded.
I have no idea what to do. If I give them a zero and say that they violated the proctoring and that there's evidence of academic dishonesty, I know there's going to be a shitstorm and they're going to claim there were "technical issues" or come up with some BS excuses. I am so sick of this shit.
What can I say when these students inevitably try to fight me on this?