How Hofstra Students Are Being Surveilled by Testing Software

BY: KAYLA STADEKER, LEO BRINE AND SARAH EMILY BAUM

(Apr. 5 2021) — For Hofstra junior Madeline Walsh, one of the most difficult aspects of the transition to online learning was taking exams, but it wasn’t the content or the new format that caused her grief. Instead, she struggled more with the test proctoring software her business management professor mandated. It monitored her movements, collected biometric data and required she submit a video of her surroundings. “I was a lot more anxious taking exams last year than I ever have been before,” she told The Clocktower. 

School officials say that the increase in online learning requires more exam proctoring software. As its usage rises, students are raising red flags about its ethical and privacy implications.

What is Respondus?

Hofstra uses two classes of software. Respondus Lockdown Browser, which the university has licensed since 2017, prevents students from using other webpages and applications during online exams. Respondus Monitor, which records footage of test-takers and analyzes biometric data such as eye movement, was added in 2020. 

“I felt violated,” Walsh said. “I have no idea where it all went. For all I know, it could be Respondus property now.”

A spokesperson for Respondus told The Clocktower that the university, not Respondus, owns data captured by the software. This includes video of students’ facial movements, keystrokes, mouse movement as well as the sounds of the students’ environment. The software also requires students submit a 360-degree video of their test-taking environment and display a photo ID. 

Respondus software is available for all Hofstra University professors to use. If the software picks up what it claims is suspicious behaviors during the exam, a video of the incident will be created by the software and shared with the professor. It is then the faculty member, rather than Respondus itself, which decides whether or not an incident qualifies as cheating.

“The software is not grading the student,” said EdTech Director Mitch Kase.” The faculty member is always the person at the end of the day who reviews the materials and makes a determination.”

However, if a student disagrees with the professor’s determination, they can file a grade appeal, explained Hofstra University Provost Herman Berliner. “We’ve been very careful to make sure that a student’s rights are preserved just as a faculty member's rights are preserved.” 

All Hofstra University professors have the discretion to require online students to download Respondus, although a Hofstra spokesperson told The Clocktower that the university did not keep exact statistics regarding its usage. 

“As we’ve been transitioning to more online courses—and if there are exams that are a part of those courses—the need arises to proctor,” Berliner said. “And you can’t proctor the way you do in an in-person class.” Berliner said that, in order to make sure no one is taking advantage of their internet during an exam, the university would need to rely on technology to assist in proctoring.

Dr. Carolyn M. Dudek, a professor and chair of the Political Science and Director of European Studies, told The Clocktower she commends Respondus, and finds it a “useful tool.” 

“In some way you have to manage the integrity of the exam,” she said.  She also expressed surprise at student backlash regarding its usage. “You guys put up 1,000 videos and plaster them on the internet, and you're worried about taking an exam in front of a camera?” 

‘Civil liberties of students have been violated’

It’s about more than merely being on camera, says senior public policy, rhetoric and public advocacy major Imani Thompson, who has a concentration in bioethics. While at Hofstra, Thompson worked as a student organizing coordinator with the New York chapter of the ACLU, where she worked on a campaign to biometric surveillance issues on campus, including pushing back against proctoring software like Respondus. Thompson points out that in addition to footage and audio of a student’s personal living space, which may inherently depict intimate details of their personal lives, the software scans for and store incredibly personal biometric data.

“Civil liberties of students have been violated,” Thompson said.  “It also forces students to show their home environment in a way that is invasive and unnecessary.”

According to an article by a scholar at the Center for Democracy and Technology, Lydia X. Z. Brown, the software can be especially harmful to students in marginalized identity groups. “Facial recognition, facial detection, and similar automated technologies are unreliable for detecting and identifying Black people, East Asian people, South Asian people, Central American people, and trans and nonbinary people,” they said.

“Being disabled can affect how we move, what we look like, how we communicate, how we process information and how we cope with anxiety,” they continued. “Virtual proctoring software places us at higher risk for being flagged as suspicious—and for being outed as  disabled.” 

A spokesperson for Respondus told The Clocktower that almost 2 million exams are proctored with Respondus every week across the country. “Our technology has been widely used for years, and closely analyzed by hundreds of customers along the way,” the spokesperson said. “Universities have a rigorous process for reviewing the security, data privacy and legal compliance of their software vendors. From a data privacy standpoint, our system collects/stores as little data as possible. We leave it up to the instructors and institutions to review the data collected/analyzed by our system.”

In other words, it is up to the University to determine how long collected data is retained. A Hofstra spokesperson told The Clocktower that the university keeps the data for two years, while Provost Berliner added that the footage is sent to the faculty member administering the exam, not the Provost’s Office. “I’ve never seen the data and I don’t know that any sort of aggregate data exists,” he said.

Respondus also provided The Clocktower with a fact sheet about its privacy policies. The graphic states that Respondus does not link students with a 3rd-party identification service, store biometric profiles on company servers, review videos after the exam, or sell or share data (“it’s the institution’s data, not ours.”). 

The expanded Terms of Use states otherwise, however. “Random samples of video and/or audio recordings may be collected via Respondus Monitor and [...] may be shared with researchers under contract with Respondus to assist in such research,” the website said. It also says that Respondus reserves the right to disclose data such as recordings to comply with the law or a governmental request.

In the meantime, legal debates about such programs on students continue to occur nationwide. Students at the University of Wisconsin, the City University of New York, the University of Chicago and more have organized to overturn the practice, citing policy think tanks and civil rights watchdogs in their objections. 

“Educational institutions have long shown that they can administer remote and take-home exams without relying on in-home surveillance systems,” said one policy memo from The Electronic Privacy Information Center. “[Respondus has] not demonstrated why such surveillance is necessary now or established any benefit from these systems that could outweigh the harms to test-takers.”