What are the Pros?
Holds Students Accountable
We all know cheating is bad, but sometimes students get carried away when taking a test online. Lockdown Browser allows professors to hold their students accountable when cheating on a test by monitoring their activity.
It’s just like taking a test in person where the professor can see what the student is doing at all times.
Pushes Students to Study
A student will be more likely to study and work harder in preparation if they know they can’t cheat on a test. More studying means more understanding of the content which will help the student in their overall academic career.
Even though Lockdown Browser can’t help students study –it’s not a platform for studying tools like Quizlet— it is valuable psychologically. Motivation to use your resources is just as important as actually using resources.
Zoom Accessible
Zoom accessibility means that students never have to suffer the consequences of being absent for a test. Covid-19 is obviously a reason that being zoom accessible is important but think about the students that are semi-permanently hindered from being in-person.
Foreign exchange students who weren’t allowed to come back to campus and others going through extenuating circumstances are still guaranteed to take their tests. Since Lockdown Browsers exist, it’s been a reason all the online students were allowed to still be online and take their classes.
What are the Cons?
Lack of Trust Between Students and Teachers
Lockdown Browser by nature exemplifies teachers’ distrust in their own teaching skills and students. Anti-cheating software goes against everything SJU stands for: advocacy, learning, and service. How can you be an advocate for the student body when they’ve made it clear that Lockdown Browser hinders their performance on tests?
Teachers lose their credibility because it comes down to a lack of trust in themselves. They know that the material they’re covering has not been thoroughly taught or they wouldn’t suspect cheating to be a problem, whereas the teachers who don’t project this onto their students administer their tests without anti-cheating software.
Heightens Test-Taking Anxiety
Privacy is important to students during a test. Students with abnormal test-taking behavior due to learning disabilities are targeted, and it’s psychologically demanding to record students and limit their internet access.
This invasion can cause students’ performance to be jeopardized. The stress of the technological malfunctions also causes a possible low performance, and Lockdown Browser will never be as reliable as a teacher administering the test.
Data and Surveillance Issues
For Lockdown Browser to be able to catch cheating, it requires data taken from the student’s computer, which can and has been hacked, so it sets the students up for massive data breaches. The physically invasive nature of Lockdown Browser has to do with its recording of the students because administrators’ ability to interpret cheating is faulty and ableist.
Considering students have been mistakenly kicked out of exams, this is both invasive to the students and inaccurate.
