Executive summary   

The students of Balamand have many concerns regarding the recent decisions taken by the administration. A concern worrying enough to have sparked out 2 ongoing petitions as of “25th March 2020”.

The first change that students have requested is the introduction of a “Pass/Fail” system for examinations that they will be taking at the end of the semester, this is the best choice for our courses. The way the course has been taught online is not nearly as effective as how we were taught in class, and for that reason sitting for the exams under the same conditions as if the move to online teaching never occurred will lead to many complications. The introduction of the Pass/Fail option will provide every student with the much-needed relief in such an unexpected turn this semester. 

The second request the students have is a reevaluation of this semester’s tuition fees, most students are self-isolated in their homes. Due to this, the students are requesting a reduction in the tuition fees for any semester that this issue persists into, including the current Spring 2020 semester. It is not fair for these students to pay full, no proper lectures, online classes are objectively inferior to the previous method of teaching. Furthermore, the penalty for students who do not pay the tuition is unjust, banks have introduced very tight restrictions to the amount of money that can be withdrawn or sent from Lebanese bank accounts, this means that students will not be able to pay for daily needs and the university tuition in the same period of time. 

(an in-depth list of new student expenses due to COVID-19 is included later in the document) 

The final concern students have regarding their semester is the introduction of the “Respondus” system. This system that the university means to apply to online examinations has a substantial amount of issues for students, these issues are highlighted in a section further into the document. 

 

Reasons for the request of Pass/Fail

 

1. The laws placed in Lebanon due to ‘COVID-19’     
   1. Due to the rapid spread of the virus among us in Lebanon, the government has implemented many new laws in an attempt to reduce the spread. Many of these laws do not favor students when it comes to online examination.
2. The new rules set by the government:
   1. Gatherings of any sort are now illegal and any person gathering to study or to do a project can be subjected to jail or a fine up to 600,000 LBP.
   2. This means students with group projects are forced to stay apart.
   3. The students who are not understanding what is being taught online can not go to other students for help or the instructor themselves.
   4. Any students who depend on a third-party instructor such as a tutor is no longer able to meet or study. Driving after curfew hours poses a large problem for tutors living far apart
   5. As of “27th March 2020” the government has put into action the mandatory curfew from 5am to 7pm.
   6. All non-essential stores are forced to close until further notice leaving only the markets that sell bread to remain open.
   7.  If any student with an unworking laptop, phone or computer cannot receive the help to get it repaired leaving them in a dilemma that causes them to miss online classes or exams.
   8. Any student with weak internet is forced to use their own mobile data (4G) to connect to classes. Which means exhausting the entire mobile data bundle. With the new law to close nonessentials stores many students are stuck with 0MB remaining till stores open again, whereby then they can recharge them
   9. Students can recharge online but this is not something that students have to do. No student has accepted to this way of education and with Balamand forcing instructors to take attendance it is a matter of time when students can’t keep paying phone bills
   10. Banks as of recently have announced a max use of 100USD in online transactions only per week
   11. Due to the closing of all establishments and more importantly the jobs of parents. This has forced parents to stay indoors at home. A student cannot study and focus in a situation where the house is full for weeks. Many students have siblings and the house becomes too chaotic in a sense for a student to conduct an exam or attend a regular class
   12. Students would always rely on the peace and quiet the campus library offers. But in times like these parents and siblings are forced to stay home all day. Peace and quiet have almost become a luxury
   13. Most students in a house that is full do not have the ability to focus and study for their major.
   14. Students in intensive courses such as engineering or pre-med will not be able to study or focus. Students in the mentioned majors have always used the library as the source of quietness they need for long extensive hours of work. The self-quarantine and curfew have put everyone in lockdown and isolated from the outside
   15. The internet in current households cannot handle the stress of families using it constantly and has put the students at a disadvantage.
   16. Siblings with conflicting classes will strain out the internet causing the inability to join classes and to have a stable connection. With this problem, conducting online exams via live streams will be extremely unreliable and become an inconvenience to other students attempting to join the live stream.

Student inabilities and the quality of the internet

Students in Balamand are facing many issues that have caused them to have concerns about the way exams will be conducted. None of the students could have ever know the severity of the situation in Lebanon. No one could have been prepared for this.

Time zones and students abroad

1. During the spread of this virus and the cancelation of classes, many students traveled out of Lebanon to be with their families and loved ones. Some in neighboring countries but importantly some across the globe
2. It is extremely unfair to conduct exams when students are in different time zones. They will not be able to attend and will suffer the loss of getting a ‘0%’ on the test.
   1. Many of the instructors will find it extremely difficult to coordinate a time with all students especially if they are unaware of abroad students
   2. On top of finding a suitable time for an exam. instructors must avoid the times the power cuts off to avoid loss of connection due to the power outage
   3. Due to the increase in people staying home, the sudden use of much more electricity has made it more unreliable. Power outages will become highly volatile.

Quality of internet

The quality of the internet across the country is extremely slow and unstable. It is no secret. It is very ineffective to conduct a live stream for any exam as the internet simply cannot handle the requirements. The implications of Lebanon’s slow internet are obvious and far-reaching.

Upload speed

1. Lebanon’s upload speed, “0.10 Mb/s”, is second from the bottom of internet quality by world ranking. This is in no way strong enough for a student to create a live stream in stable condition for an hour or less.
2. The minimum bandwidth requirement for live streaming is “0.62 Mb/s”. an average household with a family will not be able to maintain a proper connection
   1. The slightest stress on the connection could cause disconnection and disrupt the online class or exam. No house in this quarantine time can maintain no disruption in a full house.

Students do not have the proper equipment

1. Many students at the University do not have the necessary equipment such as laptops of personal computers at home, and heavily relied on the offered pieces of equipment in the campus library. Due to the circumstances, Balamand has closed off to all students.
2. Students without the necessary equipment must use their mobile phones to join a class. Some households have one family computer/laptop for all the individuals in the house which will be extremely inconvenient for an exam or even proper studying time due to sharing.
3. Students without the proper equipment are sharing laptops in order to watch a class. How is a student going to be monitored if he/she does not have a personalized laptop.
4. “Respondus” is meant to red flag any anomalies including people in the vicinity of each other to stop any sort of cheating,But. How are siblings going to conduct an exam and not raise red flags? how is someone sharing a laptop not going to confuse the program and falsely red flag him?

Instructor abilities to conduct

1. Most doctors in the University have extremely little training to conduct online classes. The instructors of most courses rely on the IT department for basic matters such as uploading files on Moodle.
2. With the overnight change in our lifestyles, no student or instructor was prepared. The students of Balamand are committed and ready to adapt to any situation, as shown in our spirit in the ‘thawra’ that to this day we are more than ever dedicated.
3. Unfortunately, the services and simple requirements for these exams to take place are not up to par. Lack of instructor training, weak internet, the concern of safety and privacy, power outages, etc. the list can carry on.
4. This why the Students are requesting the traditional grading system change to Pass/Fail

Instructors and WebEx

WebEx has insured us to continue our classes and provide us with the chance to continue our academic learning. Unfortunately, it is still not the answer to our problems.

Courses yet to adopt WebEx

1. To this day there are still some classes being conducted on WhatsApp and not through the program offered by the uni. The instructor is sending whole class sessions as voice notes for the students to hear, some voice notes are 50 minutes long.
2. No class interaction or live teaching. How is a student meant to effectively learn and understand listening to hour-long voice notes over WhatsApp?
3. Many of these courses that still do not use WebEx have no way of ensuring if the student(s) are fully understanding.

Exams through WebEx / live stream

1. Some courses cannot simply be done online or through a live stream. How are courses that use maths or need calculations going to show their work?
2. Many courses simply can not be done online. And if done online will not properly show the full potential a student has and will lower his/hers performance.
3. On top of all the forces working against us that are not within our hand’s, students are expected to learn complex classes alone at home and expect to be tested on it as if they never left the campus

 

                                     Removing the use of ‘Respondus’

this is the most important addition to the entire petition. The concern of students with ‘Respondus’

The part the University of Balamand has failed to mention when announcing the use of such program

 

Reasons why ‘Respondus’ should not be used

What Balamand has failed to tell us

1. Eye-tracking / face tracking
   1. with the installation of this program comes a feature that will monitor you for the duration of the exam. Keep a saved file of the exam session and can watch it back.
   2. What was not mentioned in the program's feature to track students' faces and eyes. The use of tracking eyes and face is extremely unnecessary and stress-inducing. How does one look down on his paper without getting a red flag?
   3. The feature will track head movement and eye direction. With an unstable connection, the system will be detecting a lot of anomalies and falsely flag students
   4. A student is most safe in this pandemic is his own home and to have his face, eye, and head-tracked in his own home is stress no student must face in the comfort of their own homes.

Ability to get locked out

1. Upon installing the program,you would have granted access to let it lock your screen for an exam. What was not mentioned was the ability to get locked out anytime the host decided
2. The screen lockdown includes out of exam times or days after exams have passed. A host with malicious intent can inflict a lot of harm to students. Frankly, no student would have this much trust in a feature that was not mentioned prior to the announcement UOB has made.
3. Tutorials and methods are all over the internet on how to use this program for all the wrong reasons. Students can find a loophole in other students’ computers. All readily available online on YouTube.

No permission needed to lock computer

1. The university has not mentioned whoever the host can lock your screen and control what you see without your permission. The program does not ask, nor does it notify of when it locks down.
2. Granting this much power to hosts while tutorials are available online to teach others how to have the Host capability is the biggest invasion of privacy to students.
3. Lockdown programs are easy to hack. Do a quick Google search and you’ll see lots of methods students have found to get around them. and students know it.
4. If the whole point of lockdown browsers is to have more secure exams, you’re probably not getting what you paid for.

The host can send files or programs

1. As mentioned above with the concerns of potential hacking and the takeover of hosts. If the wrong person is in control, they may send malicious programs or viruses to all students.
2. The lair of security the program offers is nonexistent and is purely based on the trust no one does anything harmful

 

Privacy

1. With the mentioned issues. A small reason for the privacy concern is the anti-virus programs have listed this program as “malware”.
2. The term malware is a contraction of malicious software. Put simply, malware is any piece of software that was written with the intent of damaging devices, stealing data, and generally causing a mess.
3. Students do not want the stress and the possibility to be monitored and have their devices controlled by a third party.
4. Each exam will be recorded and stored. Students in their own homes do no want to have their actions saved within their own homes for other hosts to watch again.

Inability to work with students

1. As mentioned above. The connection required to live stream will not be strong enough to stay steady for the whole exam. Disconnecting will be frequent and cause false red flags.
2. Many students man not have access to a laptop or computers. Using their phones to watch online classes and do assignments. Having their personal phones to be locked and tracked is a massive violation of personal space and privacy. With the mentioned issues of hacks available online, this is not trustworthy at all.

Geo tracking

1. Using GPS to track students is not information that should be important when conducting an exam. The correlation cannot be explained
2. The explanation provided from the University about Geo tracking still leaves key questions unanswered.
3. If the program flags students in the same house or vicinity as suspicious of cheating. How do you justify the red flags for:
   1. siblings living in the same house
   2. student forced to share a computer or laptop
   3. entire dorm buildings with students