Nici Sandberg, a spokesperson for ExamSoft, said the company has since taken steps to improve its defenses against future attacks. But it\u2019s not the first time ExamSoft\u2019s digital proctoring has run into problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cBarmageddon\u201d<\/h2>\n
In 2015, the company agreed to pay<\/a> more than $2 million to settle a class action suit after software failures affected the bar exams in 43 states. At the time, the situation spawned a catchy epithet: \u201cbarmageddon.\u201d The company declined to comment on those incidents.<\/p>\n And this year, two states with contracts with the proctoring company ILG Technologies, Indiana and Nevada, postponed their remote bar exams<\/a> after technical glitches were revealed during practice testing. ILG Technologies did not respond to a request for comment. Officials offering the exams in Michigan, Indiana, and Nevada also did not reply to requests for comment.<\/p>\n But that hasn\u2019t stopped more and more state bar associations, along with a growing number of universities, from turning to companies that produce remote proctoring software\u2014the University of Washington<\/a>, University of Missouri<\/a>, and the University of California system are just a few of the many schools that have turned to the tools.<\/p>\n One executive from a company called Examity recently told Inside Higher Ed<\/a> that the company\u2019s growth was up 35 percent over what was expected in its quarterly forecast. Another, from a company called Proctorio, told The Washington Post<\/a> his company would \u201cprobably increase our value by four to five X just this year.\u201d<\/p>\n Even before the pandemic, the tools were being widely adopted. In 2018, Examity reported that it had seen five straight years<\/a> of more than 50 percent growth. That growth is likely to continue unabated as schools remain remote.<\/p>\n The states The Markup contacted did not respond to requests for the dollar amounts of contracts with exam companies, but ExamSoft, for example, has been known to charge each exam-taker $134.50 in licensing fees<\/a> as part of its contract. Normally, thousands of people take the bar around the country each year.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, privacy advocates say the technology, which purports to track eyes, scan faces, and monitor typing, is troubling.<\/p>\n \u201cA bar exam that forces our future colleagues to use invasive and unproven technology \u2026 and potentially endure discrimination is antithetical to everything the law is meant to uphold,\u201d Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, wrote this month in a letter to New York officials<\/a> asking them to reconsider the use of ExamSoft for the state\u2019s bar exam, citing concerns of the potential for racial bias in tools like face-scanning. (Some test-takers have recently said they faced exactly that problem<\/a> with the software\u2014that it appeared to struggle to recognize darker features.)<\/p>\n ExamSoft\u2019s Sandberg said, \u201c[A]ll exams are first reviewed by AI, flagged for potential incidents and then also re-reviewed by professional human proctors.\u201d<\/p>\n The Electronic Frontier Foundation raised similar concerns<\/a> about the California state bar exam. Both that exam and the New York exam were given remotely through ExamSoft last week.<\/p>\n The question is, in a pandemic\u2019s world, what the alternatives really are.<\/p>\n One option, \u201cdiploma privilege,\u201d is used in Wisconsin. It\u2019s a process that allows some in-state law graduates to become licensed to practice without taking the bar exam. A few other states have given 2020 law school graduates<\/a> who complete certain requirements such privileges, laying a path to practice as lawyers without taking the exam.<\/p>\n But other states have been more reluctant. In Florida, a group of law graduates filed a petition in the state\u2019s Supreme Court court against<\/a> the use of ILG software for the state\u2019s exam this year. The graduates asked to have the exam waived for the year and to be allowed to practice after working with a licensed attorney for six months. The court ultimately shot down<\/a> the request. The Florida Board of Bar Examiners did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n At the University of California, Santa Barbara, faculty sent a letter<\/a> to the administration objecting to the broad categories of data, from identifying physical details to keystrokes, used by ProctorU, another provider of software used for remote exams. \u201cWe recognize that in our collective race to adapt our coursework and delivery in good faith, there are trade-offs and unfortunate aspects of the migration online that we must accept,\u201d the faculty wrote. \u201cThis is not one of them.\u201d (The company threatened legal action<\/a> against the faculty over the letter and said it only collects data for proctoring purposes. Use of the software is currently optional.)<\/p>\n \u201cOn campus, we are there to protect our students; we feel responsible for our students,\u201d Jennifer Holt, a film and media studies professor at UC Santa Barbara and part of the faculty association, told The Markup. \u201cThat,\u201d she said, \u201cdoesn\u2019t change because instruction has moved online.\u201d The use of the software isn\u2019t required, but there\u2019s little alternative beyond changing the format of tests.<\/p>\n Some experts in education question whether the problems go beyond the use of any specific software.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a case where we\u2019re trying to use the technology Band-Aid for a problem that\u2019s much more fundamental,\u201d said David Rettinger, a professor of psychological science at the University of Mary Washington, who studies ethics in education.<\/p>\n Rettinger said educators should consider relying more on different forms of testing, like open-book exams, which may better demonstrate how much students have learned. That could also create a less adversarial learning environment, he said, one that\u2019s built more soundly on trust. It\u2019s not exactly a silver lining, he said, since these are problems that suddenly have to be solved immediately, instead of over time.<\/p>\n Holt, for one, said she\u2019d given the first open-book exam of her career recently. \u201cThese are crazy times,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to make adjustments.\u201d<\/p>\n But, she added, \u201cwe have to do it in a way that has these students in mind first.\u201d<\/p>\n This article was originally published on The Markup<\/a> by Colin Lecher and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\nTracking eyes and faces<\/h2>\n
Open Book Tests or No Tests at All?<\/h2>\n
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