Stop the use of proctoring examinations at the Radboud University and provide better and safer alternatives!

The Radboud University announced its online proctoring pilot using Proctorio on April 24th. While the pilot is voluntary at face value, in practice you are forced to participate in order to avoid unnecessary study delay. Proctorio will monitor and analyse your entire screen, searches, eye movements, sound and microphone. You will also have to provide a thorough scan of your entire room by uploading a video or webcam recording of the room you'll be taking the exam in. On top of that students are required to be alone for the duration of the exam, which can be hard to ensure for some.

Many students are opposed to this method of examination, and wish to put a stop to this blatant disregard of our privacy. While the Executive Board themselves also deem online proctoring to be "undesirable", they "were faced with the choice to either offer an online exam by means of proctoring, or not offer an exam at all." There are, however, many alternative examination methods provided by other universities in the Netherlands, including, but not limited to:

• Open-book exams
• Essay assignments
• Time-limited exams, in which students need to download an exam, take it, and upload it before a certain time. 

The Law Faculty is currently conducting exams online, which also works for larger groups. Though this method has disadvantages as well, initial results are positive. As such, with creativity and time, it is possible to come up with a viable alternative than proctoring.

As can be seen, these are possible alternative methods that do not require:

• High-quality computers/laptops that can handle downloading software/extensions like Proctorio
• A perfect internet connection that is completely reliable all the time
• Room scans (which is an invasion of privacy in that you are forced to provide recordings of your own personal space)
• Monitoring of our screen, body and eye movements, microphone and sound

As shown above, the use of proctoring exams entails many points of concern that alternative methods do not have. In addition, the available alternatives ensure that the quality of examinations remains high and there will be no study delay.

With this petition we want to emphasize our concerns about the use of online proctoring exams and urge the Radboud University to put an end to the use of online proctoring at our university.

This petition is a shared initiative with AKKUraatd. AKKUraatd is the biggest student party and is active within the student council of the Radboud University. AKKUraatd supports this petition and is currently in contact with the Executive Board of the Radboud University regarding the pilot.

We would like to thank Naomi de Leng for providing the inspiration for this petition.