Higher Education Reckons With Concerns Over Online Proctoring and Harm to Students | SPARC

When students’ homes became their classrooms during the pandemic, a dilemma arose about how to fairly monitor their academic progress. Some faculty and institutions turned to remote proctoring software, where a camera records the students’ home environment, monitors eye movements and physical behaviors, tracks searches, and records their screens while taking online tests to flag signs that could indicate cheating.

Just as the use of programs by Proctorio, ProctorU and ExamSoft expanded, so did outcries about the invasive nature of the practice and error-prone algorithms disproportionately hurting people of color and students with disabilities.

“Remote proctoring has been a concern in the educational landscape for years, but it has radically expanded both in scope and the severity of harm during the pandemic,” said Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.). “What was a rare outlier technology prior to COVID-19 is now integrated into every nearly aspect of American education—from the earliest grades through professional licensing exams.”

Objections to online proctoring grow

Use of the software largely was justified by institutions as an emergency measure, but now students are voicing objections. There are protests and petitions on campuses to stop the use of proctoring surveillance programs. Some colleges and universities have begun to track or discourage use of the technology; others are revisiting assessment mechanisms altogether and moving away from high-stakes testing. Open pedagogy is one strategy in the mix that offers an alternative way to evaluate student performance and provide opportunities to co-create material.

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