BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Are Schools Forcing Students To Install Spyware That Invades Their Privacy As A Result Of The Coronavirus Lockdown?

This article is more than 3 years old.

A few weeks back I logged into our learning management system and noticed a new option in the sidebar, something called ProctorU. I didn’t pay much attention to it. I figured (correctly) from the name that it was some sort of test proctoring application. Neither of my courses have traditional exams this semester. I’m teaching a Ph.D. seminar, where the major project is a research paper, as well as an upper-level undergraduate course where, again, most of the assignments are written work of some sort.

I wondered for a brief second how online proctoring works, but as we’re all busy and just keeping our heads above water at the moment, I didn’t think much more about it. Then I started seeing fellow instructors sharing stories about online exam proctoring services. As someone who researches, writes, and teaches about cybersecurity, surveillance, and privacy—my undergraduate course on information warfare this semester includes one week on how students can improve their online privacy and security—I became increasingly concerned.

As it turns out, I’m not alone. As schools and universities have moved online because of coronavirus, many have signed contracts with online exam monitoring and proctoring services that go by names like ProctorU, Proctorio, Examity, Honorlock, and Respondus LockDown, among others. There is growing concern about student privacy as a result.

Desperate Times Call For…Spyware?

At the start of April, the Washington Post reported on the growing use of online exam proctoring solutions and provided a disturbing picture of just how invasive these services can be for students.

Some solutions use human proctors while others rely only on software. In most cases, however, they require access to some combination of the student’s webcam, microphone, screen, and browser. Some even use biometrics, like facial recognition, as well as eye tracking and artificial intelligence, to positively identify students and monitor for “suspicious” behavior, the Post reported.

The report goes on to explain that some services require the student to show the proctor their entire room, monitor the student’s screen, collect their browsing and search histories, and monitor their keystrokes and mouse clicks. It’s a set of “features” that borders on what might be called “spyware” in the cybersecurity world.

In the world of higher education, some also see it as spyware, but think that’s O.K. The Post reported, for example, that Chris Dayley of Utah State University “described the software with a laugh as ‘sort of like spyware that we just legitimize.’” An administrator at Auburn University justified the use of such tools to the Post by saying, “It’s a crisis situation. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Not So Fast, Say Students And Faculty

As early as mid-March, the University of California Santa Barbara Faculty Association raised concerns with university administration about ProctorU’s data collection, retention, and sharing practices. The move provoked a response from ProctorU’s attorney, claiming the professors had defamed the company, among other allegations, and demanding the letter be taken down. The letter remains on the website of the Council of University of California Faculty Associations, however.

Since that time, students and faculty in the United States and around the world have continued to raise concerns. There are at least a dozen student petitions on Change.org calling for their universities to stop using online proctoring services. Students have also expressed their concerns in articles published by local and campus newspapers across the country.

Of course, faculty and students are raising concerns about privacy and security. That was the main concern for faculty at U.C. Santa Barbara. As a result, some universities have decided against these solutions, at least for now. For example, Duke University decided against online proctoring this semester, in part because of security concerns. Similarly, one faculty member said that U.C. Berkeley’s decision not to expand online exam proctoring at this time was due, in part, to their belief “that current options do not satisfy university policies related to privacy.”

In other cases, some universities and individual professors are discouraging the use of proctoring software even if it is available. An economics professor at Harvard said, “I just didn’t think it was appropriate to sort of introduce that level of intrusion of technological intrusion into the test taking process.” And while U.C. Davis offers professors the use of proctoring software, it does so as a last resort, encouraging them to find alternate means of assessment before using the software.

Students have raised privacy and security concerns too. The student petition at Florida State University, for example, is premised on the belief that the university’s chosen software “blatantly violates privacy rights.” Privacy was one of the concerns raised by Phillip Sheldon, President of the Student Veterans of William and Mary, in voicing his opposition to his university’s use of proctoring software.

Another student at Rose State College in Midwest City, Oklahoma, told the local newspaper that students do not want to install monitoring software because, “Some people have been hacked, it’s messed up their computers.” An instructional technologist for the university told the paper that such concerns were not unfounded. “It’s hard to say that something is not possible because hackers are pretty good at what they do.”

Access, Cost And Usability of Online Exam Proctoring

But students and faculty are also raising concerns about other issues too, such as access, cost, and usability of online proctoring solutions. The William and Mary student mentioned above raised concerns about some students’ lack of access to webcams and stable internet now that they have moved back home.

Others noted that many proctoring services do not allow other people in the room while an exam is being taken, which poses a problem for students who may have partners, roommates, or children also working from home. This is all the more true if students live in a small house or apartment without a separate, dedicated workspace.

And then there’s the problem of time differences, especially for international students who have returned to their home countries. Taking an exam at a set time could mean a student is taking it in the middle of the night, which can negatively impact student performance.

Another issue is cost. In some cases, the students themselves are required to pay a per-exam fee to the proctoring company. It is a cost that some students cannot afford now that they have lost jobs and had to find alternative housing arrangements at the last minute.

Finally, some students have reported that the proctoring software is buggy and crashes their computers. For example, the student from Rose State College mentioned above reported, “The first time I downloaded it my laptop kept crashing in the middle of me doing stuff. The screen would just go black and I’d have to restart it.”

Some universities have pointed to these issues in their decisions not to use proctoring software. Fordham University rejected the software as “prohibitively expensive” and “overly complicated.” Similarly, the University of Oklahoma, in an email to faculty, said that proctoring software is “limited in nature with respect to accessibility and lack of compatibility across devices, this tool is considered highly inequitable and strongly discouraged during periods of remote instruction where students may not have access to approved devices.”

Resistance to these tools is not only a U.S. phenomenon. Students in at least two universities in Australia have protested the use of proctoring tools like Proctorio and ProctorU. In the Netherlands, students at Tilburg University have started an online petition against the use of Proctorio. Over 4,000 had signed at the time this piece was published. Students at Canada’s Concordia University are raising concerns too.

Big Brother On Campus

The move to online instruction as a result of the coronavirus pandemic is exacerbating pre-existing tensions over the growing use of surveillance on college campuses, from attempts to harness students’ phones as location tracking devices to university police contracting with surveillance companies to improve campus security.

Many university administrators have responded by pointing to the unprecedented nature of the current situation as warranting the expansion of surveillance measures. Others point to the widespread use of proctoring tools and the assurances made by the software vendors, as if to say, “it’s O.K. because everyone else is doing it too” and “if something goes wrong, it’s on the vendor, not us.”

But “everyone is doing it” is precisely the kind of faulty reasoning we try to discourage students from using. And while shifting the burden to the vendors might make sense as a risk management or legal compliance strategy, it shows too little concern for the real issues of privacy, security, accessibility, and equity facing students during this crisis.

Alternatives To Student Surveillance

Faculty and administrators concerned with student privacy and security in addition to academic integrity need to consider alternative options for assessment of student performance. One is to abandon traditional exams where possible and offer alternative forms of graded work. This might require more time grading and providing feedback on the part of instructors. But it might be a tradeoff that some instructors are willing and able to make.

For others teaching classes for which that is not possible, instructors might consider making exams open book or just trusting students to do the right thing. Though it pains me to say it, if students cheat, they are the ones who are losing out in the long run.

Finally instructors might consider proctoring the exams themselves using tools like Zoom. But, then again, these tools have their own tradeoffs in terms of ease of use, privacy, security, and access to webcams and stable internet connections.

There are no easy answers. One of my fall courses will be a large lecture that is primarily exam based. If my university ends up remaining online like some others, I too will be faced with making hard choices about how to assess student learning in a way that is fair, equitable, and respectful of student privacy and security. Despite the difficulty, I believe that these are values that are worth upholding.

Follow me on TwitterCheck out my website or some of my other work here