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Surveillance and Disability in Online Proctored Exams: Student Perspectives and Design Implications

Monika Blue Kwapisz, Yoav Ackerman, Jennifer Nguyen, Prashanth Rajivan

TL;DR

Online proctoring systems (OPS) raise serious privacy and discrimination concerns for students with disabilities. The authors conducted reflexive thematic analysis of 16 interviews with disabled students to examine how OPS surveillance affects anxiety, misrepresentation risk, and cognitive load, revealing a cycle of stress and performance impairment. They identify trade-offs between surveillance benefits and privacy costs, and argue for design interventions grounded in contextual integrity, ability-based design, and universal design in higher education with privacy by design principles. The work offers concrete implications for more transparent, accommodating, and less intrusive OPS that can reduce bias against disabled students and improve testing experiences.

Abstract

Online proctoring systems (OPS) are technologies and services that are used to monitor students during an online exam to deter cheating. However, OPS often violates student privacy by implementing overly intrusive surveillance to which students cannot consent meaningfully. The technologies used in OPS have been shown to unfairly flag students with disabilities. Our reflexive thematic analysis of interviews with students who have first-hand experience with online invigilated exams and who have disability accommodations points to their anxiety about the interaction between surveillance and their disabilities, leading to fears about misrepresentation and increased cognitive load on the exam. Students describe the compromises they need to make with their privacy and accommodations to take remote tests and share their privacy values. We present the implications for the design of OPS to mitigate the issues faced by disabled students.

Surveillance and Disability in Online Proctored Exams: Student Perspectives and Design Implications

TL;DR

Online proctoring systems (OPS) raise serious privacy and discrimination concerns for students with disabilities. The authors conducted reflexive thematic analysis of 16 interviews with disabled students to examine how OPS surveillance affects anxiety, misrepresentation risk, and cognitive load, revealing a cycle of stress and performance impairment. They identify trade-offs between surveillance benefits and privacy costs, and argue for design interventions grounded in contextual integrity, ability-based design, and universal design in higher education with privacy by design principles. The work offers concrete implications for more transparent, accommodating, and less intrusive OPS that can reduce bias against disabled students and improve testing experiences.

Abstract

Online proctoring systems (OPS) are technologies and services that are used to monitor students during an online exam to deter cheating. However, OPS often violates student privacy by implementing overly intrusive surveillance to which students cannot consent meaningfully. The technologies used in OPS have been shown to unfairly flag students with disabilities. Our reflexive thematic analysis of interviews with students who have first-hand experience with online invigilated exams and who have disability accommodations points to their anxiety about the interaction between surveillance and their disabilities, leading to fears about misrepresentation and increased cognitive load on the exam. Students describe the compromises they need to make with their privacy and accommodations to take remote tests and share their privacy values. We present the implications for the design of OPS to mitigate the issues faced by disabled students.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 39 sections, 3 figures, 4 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Research questions
  3. Contributions
  4. Background
  5. OPS privacy issues
  6. OPS discrimination
  7. Panopticon surveillance theory
  8. Disability theory
  9. Methods
  10. Research ethics
  11. Interviews
  12. Analysis
  13. Limitations
  14. Results
  15. Negative emotions, like anxiety, lead to fear of misrepresentation and increased cognitive load while taking a test
  16. ...and 24 more sections

Figures (3)

  • Figure 1: The surveillance and implementation causes of anxiety feed into a cycle of misrepresentation and cognitive load increase.
  • Figure 2: Participants balance benefits and disadvantages in their perceptions of OPS.
  • Figure 3: The prominence of various topics brought up as privacy vulnerabilities.