How a California college uses data collection tools to track students' daily movements, like homework trackers, e-proctoring software, and license plate readers
The MarkupTara García Mathewson
Context & Ripple Effects
The reported use of homework trackers, e-proctoring and license-plate readers brings separate educational and campus-monitoring systems into a single student experience. It extends a pattern in which colleges have used phone tracking for attendance and vendors have monitored keystrokes and cursor movements during exams.
What matters is the combination: data gathered for coursework, assessment and access or safety can reveal more about a student’s routine than any one tool alone. That makes governance of collection, access and retention a campus-wide issue rather than a procurement choice for individual departments.
First-order effects
Students at the California college face monitoring across multiple parts of daily campus life, while administrators and technology vendors gain more behavioral and location-related data through existing tools.
The college must manage the operational and privacy implications of connecting—or keeping separate—data produced by academic software, proctoring systems and license-plate readers.
Second-order effects
Other colleges evaluating attendance, integrity or campus-security products may face greater scrutiny over whether each tool adds a distinct purpose or contributes to cumulative surveillance.
Proctoring and education-technology suppliers may be pushed to offer clearer data controls as concerns already raised around software flagging ordinary exam behavior broaden beyond remote testing.
Third-order effects
If institutions continue layering monitoring products across academic and physical settings, higher education could shift from tool-specific oversight toward policies governing data combination, retention and student notice across vendors.
The pattern strengthens the case for surveillance governance that treats educational technology and campus safety systems as linked data infrastructures, though the resulting rules will vary by institution and jurisdiction.
The trend: Higher education is moving toward pervasive, workflow-embedded student monitoring, increasing pressure for governance that addresses the combined effects of otherwise separate tools.
Keyboard readers...facial recognition...AI-informed cameras. Colleges are tracking students' every move and converting that into a steady stream of data. Can anything be done to opt-out? Read from @themarkup: https://themarkup.org/...
This is a hell of a story. https://themarkup.org/... I thought I knew how far we were gone on what @pluralistic calls the shitty technology adoption curve. But seeing it all in one place. *shiver*
“In Florida, where it is against the law to transport undocumented immigrants, students mention that their peers with undocumented family members are at risk if they have relatives in the car with them on campus. The automated license plate reader cameras can capture not only th…
Keyboard readers...facial recognition...AI-informed cameras. — Colleges are tracking students' every move and converting that into a steady stream of data. — Can anything be done to opt-out? Read from @themarkup: https://themarkup.org/...
It watches you read. It watches you park your car. It watches you type. It watches your facial movements. What is it? Your college. READ: https://themarkup.org/...
Increasingly, being a college student means being subject to a vast array of watchful tech. For @themarkup, @TaraGarciaM reports on what this looks like in practice and how students are thinking about data privacy. https://themarkup.org/...
To understand how Mt. SAC collects data on its students, The Markup used public records requests to obtain contracts bet. the college & companies that provide its learning management system, online proctoring services, & automated parking enforcement tech. https://themarkup.org/.…
“At Mt. SAC, McCarthy Neal dropped an online course last spring rather than use Proctorio. The professor told students they had to run the monitoring program every time they completed an assignment... something that felt overly invasive.” Link: https://themarkup.org/...
The reason to be sceptical of the puffery about AI “transforming” education is that institutions are already full of edtech that tracks students, as this nice @themarkup piece illuminates, and this is the same edtech now selling “AI” to schools and unis https://themarkup.org/...
“college students have become more organized and insistent about what they see as a right” Labor folks should support students fighting surveillance tech on campus not only b/c it's just right, but these experiences will prepare them to organize vs. workplace surveillance too.
#Cengage “collects information about a #student's internet network and the device they use to access online textbooks... [&] webpages viewed, links clicked, keystrokes typed, and movement of their mouse on the screen, among other things”: https://themarkup.org/... #ethics #privac…
This great investigative article should be required reading for every college student in order to somehow protect their privacy. He Wanted Privacy. His College Gave Him None @TaraGarciaM https://themarkup.org/...
They watch you learn. They watch you park. They watch where you go (online and off). They watch your face. Who are they? Colleges. Read my latest for The Markup: https://themarkup.org/...