Academic Senate Vice Chairperson Thomas Norman, a professor at Cal State Dominguez Hills, said he grew concerned that e-proctoring software’s collection of student data was predatory.
“We are the product. But for this one, we’re actually paying for it,” Norman said. “This is more of a human rights issue. We’re doing away with a lot of privacy and we just thought that was inappropriate.”
Cal State previously held a system-wide license for the Respondus Monitor software, which allowed faculty on all its campuses to download the software for free. That license expired in July 2021 and was not renewed, said chancellor’s office spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith.
However, Bentley-Smith added that “some campuses may have individual agreements with the vendor.”
One campus that does have an active contract with Respondus is Cal State San Marcos. Spokesperson Brian Hiro said that the software’s default setting includes room scanning and webcam monitoring, which means an “instructor would have to turn it off if they don’t want those functions.”
A small number of Cal State San Marcos’s programs use a different e-proctoring service, ProctorU, on a “pay-as-you-go” basis, he said. ProctorU services also require webcam use and their live proctoring does submit students to room scanning, according to their website.
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo also uses ProctorU for virtual math placement exams.
Many California schools don’t have a centralized policy on e-proctoring use, leaving the decision up to individual departments and professors. Cal State LA has not “embraced or implemented” e-proctoring, but individual faculty may request permission to use it.
Chico State encourages faculty to avoid using e-proctoring, said public information officer Sean Murphy.
“Because of concerns about privacy, racial discrimination, equity, and accessibility when it comes to exam proctoring platforms, the CSU Chancellor’s Office strongly encourages faculty to choose alternative assessments in lieu of proctoring software,” Murphy said in a statement to Cal Matters.
If a Chico State professor chooses to use e-proctoring, they must notify students in the course syllabus and description before the start of the semester. Additionally, “students must be able to opt-out of being proctored by software” and “faculty must be prepared to offer an alternative form of assessment,” Murphy said.
UC Berkeley follows a similar decentralized policy. The university originally halted most remote proctoring use, said spokesperson Janet Gilmore, but then established a pilot program in 2020 after the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department raised concerns. The campus has since created guidelines for remote proctoring, Gilmore said, but noted that e-proctoring is “generally not used” on campus.
At San Diego State, the use of Respondus Monitor is only allowed “when specifically requested by individual faculty members, and faculty are only able to use e-proctoring software for their courses with approval from their Dean’s office,” according to a statement from the university.
This structural ambiguity, coupled with a lack of understanding among students regarding the sensitivity of their biometric information, can lead to dangerous and “chilling effects on students,” said Greer.
“We’re normalizing the practice of handing over our sensitive biometric information to our schools and most people just do not truly understand the potential risks associated with that,” Greer said. “Meaningful consent means you have to really understand what you’re consenting to. And since most people don’t have an understanding of what it means to hand their biometric information over to a company, I don’t think that’s really meaningful consent.”
Unlike other California college campuses, Cal Poly Pomona has a strict policy against the use of e-proctoring “due to the concerns about privacy and equity,” a university spokesperson said.
And California’s Student Test Taker Privacy Protection Act, which went into effect Jan. 1, prohibits companies that provide proctoring services in educational settings to collect or use personal information outside of what is deemed necessary to provide the proctoring services.
Case under appeal
Cleveland State is currently appealing the federal court’s decision, which focused specifically on room scanning and did not address whether e-proctoring as a whole is permissible.
“The Fourth Amendment prohibits schools from conducting this virtual snooping. That’s what we argued to the court, and the court agreed,” Ogletree’s attorney, Matt Besser, told the CalMatters College Journalism Network. The ruling bars Cleveland State from requiring Ogletree to take tests with room scans; Besser is filing a motion to extend that ban to the rest of the university.
Cleveland State counters that room scanning should not be considered searches because they are limited in scope and not coerced. And in a statement Feb. 13, Respondus minimized the significance of the ruling. “This decision relied on a very fact-dependent inquiry and therefore we do not believe this is a landmark ruling relating to remote proctoring technologies,” the company wrote.
Many California faculty, however, remain skeptical of the technology. Norman, the Cal State Academic Senate vice chairperson, said professors can cut down on cheating by choosing creative assignments over typical exams, fostering a more personalized experience that makes students less likely to want to bend the rules.
“We deal with a lot of first-generation students and a lot of students coming back who have bad experiences or have imposter syndrome,” Norman said. “We want to have an honor code and just trust that it’s going to be you (taking the test).”
Norman also noted that in addition to online proctoring services, faculty use learning management systems such as Canvas and Blackboard that often have proctoring built into their software.
“We want to make sure that we’re looking over all of that so we don’t inadvertently, through a textbook, be subjecting our students to agreeing to things they might not want to agree to in respect to privacy,” Norman said.
