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A similar effort is underway in Illinois, while Louisiana, Oregon, and Wisconsin have already scrapped their upcoming bar exams as a result of student pressure. In California, two students have filed an emergency petition with the state supreme court requesting that it cancel the exam entirely and institute a new form of assessment.

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Law students around the country are organizing to fight against the use of any kind of digital proctoring software like ExamSoft on bar exams.

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“It just seems to me that this mock exam is reading the poor lighting as my skin color,” he told Motherboard.Īlamri isn't alone. He estimates he’s attempted to verify his identity as many as 75 times, with no success. Alamri, who is Arab-American, has attempted to pass the identity check in different rooms, in front of different backgrounds, and with various lighting arrays. Every time, the software’s facial recognition system has told him the lighting is too poor to recognize his face.

As more evidence emerges about how the programs work, and fail to work, critics say the tools are bound to hurt low-income students, students with disabilities, students with children or other dependents, and other groups who already face barriers in higher education.Įvery day for the last week, Ahmed Alamri has opened ExamSoft and attempted to register for the practice version of the California state bar exam. Students’ and educators’ objections to exam proctoring software go beyond the privacy concerns around being watched and listened to in their bedrooms while they take a test. Comparing his product’s deterrent effect to that of more ubiquitous surveillance technology, he added “we may not love the idea of being on camera every time we visit a bank or go to a convenience store, but no one is suggesting taking them down.”

“Any plan that calls for schools to just ‘stop using’ proctoring will make cheating more common than it already is, escalating a severe threat to all higher education,” Scott MacFarland, the CEO of ProctorU, another proctoring vendor, wrote in an email to Motherboard.

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The companies consider the algorithms proprietary and Proctorio, in particular, has reacted swiftly to prevent anyone with access to its training material or underlying code from disclosing their analyses. While their algorithms flag behavior that the designers have deemed suspicious, these companies argue that the ultimate determination of whether cheating occured rests in the hands of the class instructor. Like many other tech companies, they also balk at the suggestion that they are responsible for how their software is used. Proctoring companies cite studies estimating that between 50 and 70 percent of college students will attempt some form of cheating, and warn that cheating will be rampant if students are left unmonitored in their own homes. 'We’re supposed to be protecting our students.”Īlgorithmic proctoring software has been around for several years, but its use exploded as the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to quickly transition to remote learning. “We need to really think long and hard about how we are adapting,” Jennifer Holt, a film and media studies professor at UCSB, told Motherboard. In recent weeks, students have started online petitions calling for universities across the world to abandon the tools, and faculty on some campuses, like the University of California Santa Barbara, have led similar campaigns, arguing that universities should explore new forms of assessment rather than subjecting students to surveillance. His case is just one example of how college campuses are revolting against the use of digital proctoring software, and the aggressive tactics employed by proctoring companies in response to those efforts. “It’s insane to think that a company CEO can affect my academic career just for raising concerns.” “If my professors weren’t flexible, I’d be completely unable to take exams,” Johnson said.

Johnson refused to do so, and is now waiting to see if Proctorio will follow up with more concrete legal action, as it has done to other critics in recent weeks. He also received a direct message from Proctorio’s CEO, Mike Olsen, who demanded that he take the Pastebin posts down, according to a copy of the message Johnson shared with Motherboard. Not long after he began airing his concerns on Twitter and posted a simple analysis of the software’s code on Pastebin, he discovered that his IP address was banned from accessing the company’s services. In the end, Johnson never had to use Proctorio.