Category: Article

Proctorio is an online proctoring software. The primary function of this software is to police academic performance by monitoring academic integrity during exams. This technology has raised considerable concerns amongst the third-level education community. The following slides outline the issues with this software and why instead of adopting this technology, our institutions should instead adopt open-book online take-home assessment formats with creative questions where cheating becomes impossible.

LAWSUITS

There are many students and staff who are apprehensive about using Proctorio, and those who have been publicly critical have at times been silenced by the company through frivolous lawsuits.

Across the world, students, staff and institutions have decided against Proctorio due to how problematic it is.

We should not associate with such a company that so viciously persecutes any and all opponents, contrary to public debate and freedom of expression that we hold so dear as an academic community.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ME?

There are serious concerns about welfare, privacy, accessibility and bias that may result from the Proctorio-required recordings, including recordings of a student’s home environment, image, audio, and computer screen while they are taking the exam.

Discriminating factors we have identified with Proctorio include economical, gender, culture, race and disability issues as follows.

Trinity College Dublin has adopted this technology for the School of Medicine in 2020 in a trial period. There are now whispers that they would want to adopt it for the whole of College. This must be met with the utmost opposition.

USABILITY AND RACISM

Proctorio has been noted for its inaccuracy and general unreliability. At Trinity College Dublin, when it was trialed in the School of Medicine in 2020, a report noted that “somebody opens another window, opens another file, if somebody else comes into the line of that camera, if there’s a voice in the room, it’ll give you all these signals”.

Furthermore, as all AI algorithms, it is biased against certain skin colors. It has been reported that it struggles to recognize people of colour. Undoubtedly, this is an equality issue.

As a result, some universities have banned Proctorio, like the University of California, Berkeley, after student complaints saying they may not have the high-speed internet connection or living situation to make remote exams happen effectively and equitably.

PRIVACY

The scanning of a student’s room and the collecting of information about a student’s home environment as a breach of privacy. Every student has the right not to invite examiners in their homes and their life outside of the classroom.

Students become vulnerable by showing their homes to unconscious or conscious bias and future discrimination, bullying or even harassment.

An examiner viewing a student’s personal living space and living condition, decorations/posters, and potential iconography is unacceptable. It opens up discrimination of a student’s socio-economic situation, living environment, gender and political orientation, race, culture, and religious orientation.

A student said, in the report from Trinity’s trial period in the School of Medicine, “I felt a bit embarrassed showing my room during proctorio settings, as it is very small compared to the houses/apartments of others”, indicating the discomfort felt by students while taking exams under Proctorio.

WELFARE

Being monitored and taking a real-time exam during a cost of living crisis and the aftershock of a pandemic will feed into the extraordinary stress students have been under since 2020. The additional stress can result in worsened mental health. Besides, the stress and discomfort arising from being monitored will affect the students’ performances.

HOUSING AND CHILDCARE

Proctorio discriminates against living conditions. For example, there are shared rooms that are cheaper where students can take their exams without being disturbed and can concentrate, but if there are multiple people in the room even moving, Proctorio will flag it as cheating . Students might live in accommodations that are loud because of many reasons from nearby constructions or motorway to crowded apartments, also activating the system.

Acquiring the right infrastructure, including affording a private room, a computer, web-camera and microphone and stable internet at home is stressful and expensive.

Finally, students with caring duties might find it difficult to find someone to take care of their children while they are sitting an exam or making clear that they are under no circumstance be disturbed which induces anxiety. This affects both student parents, mature students, young and old and also those who have other family commitments to care for a loved one.

COST

It would cost Trinity College Dublin around € 0.3 million to implement Proctorio across the 24 Schools, which could surely be better spent on infrastructure, welfare supports and extra amenities for students and staff.

OPPOSE PROCTORIO

To sum up, the use of online proctoring software such as Proctorio violates student privacy, equality and accessibility and creates unnecessary barriers to exam-taking.

Myth: The HEA Bill 2022 will mean that the government will invest in mental health and other areas.

Truth: The bill itself does not contain any provisions for mental health funding. The “Student Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Framework”, already published in 2020 October will fit in to provide for it under section 37 of the legislation. However, in line with government policy of consistently targeting mental health funding during austerity and in 2012, 2016, and a general continued sharp decline in the health budget from 16% in the 80s to 6% in 2020, we do not think the government will do anything differently and step up under the new bill. There is a stated need of 28 million euros for an appropriate student-counsellor ratio (USI – Pre-Budget Submission 2022), in response to which the government provided only 5 million euros.

Myth: The HEA Bill 2022 and the funding plan for universities are separate issues.

Truth: You can’t have one without the other. The HEA Bill 2022 contains the framework that will distribute funding. In the funding plan, there is no commitment to reducing the student fees as the USI pointed out and also, the funding is less than half of what our universities need as per the 2016 Cassels Plan.

Myth: The HEA Bill 2022 will increase student representation on governing bodies.

Truth:

In earlier drafts of the bill, over 60% of HEIs will lose student representation on governing bodies, as the bill prescribes 2 representatives, including Trinity, UCD, UCC and others.

However, on the 21st of June Tuesday 2022, it has been confirmed that Minister Harris will support an amendment that increases the number to 3, changing the situation. It is not ideal, as we would have asked for 2-4, but this way less HEIs wil lose student representation. This is a win and we welcome this amendment to the bill.

Myth: The HEA Bill 2022 will mean that the USI will sit on the HEA Board, therefore democratizing education.

Truth:

The USI has been promised that they will now sit on the HEA Board, but it is just one vote against a lot of apparatchiks provided for by the Minister who will always vote against student interests. When have they ever listened to the USI in committees?

As per section (16) (2) (b), one of the members appointed to the HEA Board will be from a nomination of a student from the national student union. However, they can be rejected. The 12-member HEA Board will be appointed by the Minister as per section (16) (a), and so it is his Board, and he will control its direction and fulfil the aims set out in section 8 and 9 (e.g. equality, diversion and inclusivity). The spirit of these aims will be controlled by the government and will not be fulfiled.

Equally for all other matters as outlined here where the HEA’s scope of power is extended, the Minister is influential as he appoints the members of the HEA Board. The HEA Board is by no means democratic, and does not guarantee democratic representation for trade unions, students and staff.

For a lot of matters, therefore, we will be reliant on the Minister. For example, in an email to the USI President, Minister Harris has said that the HEA Board can invoke section 143 to protect student union autonomy. In practice, this means it is at the whim of the Minister.

Myth: The HEA Bill 2022 contains elements of student partnership.

Truth:

Once again, the “partnership” this bill promotes is the corporate one, also known as “commodified dissent” for example through the NsTEP program or StudentSurvey.ie. In the U.K. the NUS is boycotting the StudentSurvey.ie equivalent, the National Student Survey, due to concerns that it leads to the corporatization of universities. They can make as many surveys but these will not stop the rising cost of education as they relate to wider socioeconomic factors.

These surveys fit well within the KPI-centric, corporate and capitalist ways of measuring universities’ activities, like league tables, as part of the corporatized university.

Myth: The HEA Bill 2022 will provide more oversight for universities, and for taxpayer money.

Truth:

The argument that universities need strict financial oversight to overcome their troubles comes from multiple flawed narratives.

Firstly, the underfunding of universities is a crisis that the government themselves have created, and are now stepping in as saviours to fix it.

Secondly, there will be more oversight, but it is by the government. A den of thieves, crooks and landlords. The government will be no better than the universities, since both university leaders and the government belong to same elite. In fact, oversight should be done on the frontlines and with non-bureaucratic and truly democratic university governance, not via a state takeover, something that the IUA also spoke about.

Thirdly, there will be more oversight, but it is by the government. A den of thieves, crooks and landlords. The government will be no better than the universities, since both university leaders and the government belong to same elite. In fact, oversight should be done on the frontlines and with non-bureaucratic and truly democratic university governance, not via a state takeover, something that the IUA also spoke about.

Finally, there is no independent appeals board for such decisions as per (69), as the Minister appoints it, furher cementing a government takeover.

Sign the petition!

#StopHEABill22

There is an email circulating with regards to Minister Harris’ reply to an amendment about student union autonomy to the HEA Bill 2022, which was rejected.

It was sent to the Union of Students Ireland (USI) and this is an explainer post as to why his reply is not enough to protect student unions.

Minister Harris claims that section 139 (in the latest bill section 143) will be used to guarantee student union autonomy, in other words the HEA can use its power to issue “guidelines, codes and policies” for this.

What Minister Harris is saying in this email, is that not only will we take away universities’ autonomy with section 139, but student union autonomy will also be at the whim of the Minister-dominated HEA Board. Only one student representative will sit on the aforementioned Board, and if he does not like your student union – tough luck!

This is not in any sort of framework or legislative solution to the idea of student union autonomy, which Minister Harris later admits in the email, saying that “these issues are not directly addressed in the new legislation”.

It is furthermore unclear how student unions not affiliated with the USI, like UCDSU, will be able to raise their issues with their universities.

In 2021, NUIGSU had its funding unfairly taken from them over a dispute over a levy collected for services.

After quoting section 139, he claims that the bill has strong student partnership.

Firstly, we would fundamentally reject that any bill which cuts student representation can be considered a partnership. In earlier drafts, over 60% of HEIs would have lost students on governing bodies.

According to latest news, which we welcome, the number of student representatives will be 3, but this is still not the 2-4 we asked for.

Secondly, he mentions that section 8 and 9 provide for equality, diversity and inclusion in higher education, since they make it one of the functions of the HEA Board.

The HEA Board will be appointed by the Minister, and he promised only to have 1 student representative from the USI.

This is a joke. The HEA Board will be dominated by apparathciks of the Minister, while he weakens the student movement and refuses to reduce student fees. It does not make sense how equality will be guaranteed if the voices of those most vulnerable – students, staff and trade unions – are being silenced with the bill on governing bodies.

The implementation of section 8 and 9 under this government will result in the spirit of the law not being followed, since no further procedures or goals are outlined on how to reach this equality. Without a democratic HEA Board, and based on the prior actions of this government, there is no indication that they will implement any substantive equality, inclusivity and diversity initiatives.

Thirdly, he mentions that Section 43 will provide for the training of student representatives on the governing bodies of universities. This does not answer the question of student union autonomy, and furthermore, this sort of training fits well into the service-provider, KPI-centric and neoliberal student union, wherein everything they do has to fit into the labour market and be respectable and professional.

After setting out that Section 44 will provide powers for the HEA Board to consult with student representatives on issues of a national level, he mentions StudentSurvey.ie as an example of a partnership.

StudentSurvey.ie is a corporate survey that pushes a cookie-cutter capitalist logic, and its equivalent the National Student Survey (NSS) is boycotted in the U.K. for corporatizing universities and raising tuition fees.

QQI is also mentioned, which only cares about quality of education insofar as the bottom line, how financially viable the way institutions run their courses is.

This is disgraceful from Minister Harris.

Him and his cabinet, and all the bureaucrats working on this bill, are taking us for fools.

There are 245,000 students in Ireland, and their voting rights will be diminished with the HEA Bill 2022, as over 60% of HEIs will lose student representatives on governing bodies. A democratically elected TD is putting forward legislation into the Oireachtas that is reducing student representation. A minister is asking a democratic parliament to reduce democratic student representation. Bureaucrats wrote the bill, with their bureaucratic reasoning of “efficiency”, to reduce governing bodies. But the real bliss of this bill for bureaucrats will be that no more awkward questions will be posed at governing body meetings.

The USI needs to step up, stop being in useless committees and mobilize people. A question is, as such, posed before all our organizations. Will they become radical, or redundant?

Sign the petition!

#StopHEABill22

At Students4Change we aim to empower you with the tools to make change and effective activism. An FOI request allows you to request any data from any public body, even data considered confidential. It is free and legal right enshrined in the 2014 FOI Act.

For example, we have used an FOI request before to expose Trinity’s 2.5 million euro investments in the war-industry.

It is a very powerful tool as it allows you to gather data. For example, most students would feel that a refund for last year is a fair demand, as online College was disengaging and it made no sense to pay so much money for it.

However, to prove this, statistics are needed. For example, from the big SUrvey from last year we know that 71.4% did not feel part of the College community in 2020-2021 due to online learning, which suggests that the student experience was greatly reduced. From an FOI request, we also know that the total number of students (both undergraduate and postgraduate) who withdrew in the academic year 2020/21 during the pandemic was 1,231 (higher than previous years) December 2020, further supporting this argument. This can then be packaged into e.g. a report or a press release which supports refunds.

Some other examples of FOIs requests that we have done:

• To discover that Trinity’s use of the RDS for exams costs them 0.5 million euros.
• That the number of students with overdue tuition debt last March was 506.
• That there are only 180 academics with Non-EEA nationality as of May 2020 in College… etc.

To make an FOI request for Trinity College Dublin, you have to fill out a PDF form, which you can do online, and then you have to send on this form to the email address [email protected] .

Here is a link to the FOI request PDF form, and here is a link to an online PDF editor called Smallpdf. When making our FOI request for Trinity’s investments, for example, this is how we filled it out.

It is a similar process in other Universities, like for University College Dublin. There the email is [email protected] and the form can be found here.

The same investment FOI as a filled-out example can be downloaded here.

Here is a PDF of all FOI contacts for third-level institutions in Ireland.

Some tips:

• Be as precise as possible and specific. When asking for documents, use as many identifiers as possible (e.g. I would like to respectfully request a document made on XYZ called XYZ from College).
• Be aware of the possibility of appealing internally and appealing to the Information Commissioner (these both cost money).
• Feel free to reach out to us for help at [email protected] if you have an idea for an FOI request.