By Jamar Knight on Monday, 18 October, 2021 at 02:04 PM

Students at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus have started a petition against the use of the Respondus Lockdown browser for their online examinations and assessments.

Respondus is considered proctor software, which is a type of software used to monitor students for suspicious activity to ensure the fairness and integrity of answers for tests taken at home. Proctoring software works by monitoring the computer's desktop for the programmes being used, using webcam video and microphone audio to record the student's actions and analyse the student's test-taking session. Once the test is finished, the data collected with the software is transferred to a proctoring service for review.

While proctoring software is both legal and commonly used in the digital classroom, one of the reasons students are disgruntled is the time of the rollout of the software and the requirements for its use. Damar Howard, a final year Computer Science student explained that students were given notice of the requirements in the middle of the current semester.

He also noted that the devices many students owned were not able to handle the software which resulted in glitches or crashes. Howard explained that some of the main issues many of the students who signed the petition have with the use of the browser is the amount of information passed from their computer to the monitoring service as well as how deeply the software gets into your computer system.

“To use it you need to disable your antivirus and firewall because it’s flagged as a spyware by your system. That’s already a red flag because it leaves you vulnerable to things like hacking. The fact that it automatically shuts down programmes in the background is another problem because it shows how little control you have over your system. Then you also have to think about the Data Protection Act. What other information is being collected off your computer, where is it going, how long is it being stored?” Howard critiqued.

Kevin Yarde, another Computer Science student, shared similar sentiments as well as concern about the steep requirements of what is considered suspicious behaviour. 

“You’re being forced to stare into the camera and sit still for however long the exam is. Fidgeting or scratching or twitching is flagged as suspicious because of how unpredictable the software’s monitoring A.I. [Artificial Intelligence] is. It also seems like they forgot some students have home situations they can’t control. If your little brother or sister walks in the room in front the camera you are automatically flagged for ‘suspicious activity’, but you can’t control that,” Yarde explained.

The petition currently stands at 1,940 signatures, and students are hoping that alternative methods beyond the invasive programme can be agreed upon.