UW-Madison Renews Contract With Critical Online Exam Software Company | Higher Education

Instructors can also customize Honorlock settings based on the type of test, she said. For example, instead of having students use their own graphing calculator, which could present a potential cheating opportunity, instructors can choose a setting that provides scientific calculators on student screens.

Some Honorlock features will not be needed in a face-to-face testing environment, such as one in which a computer webcam records students as they take the exam. But other settings can still be useful in physical classrooms, like the ‘disable copy / paste’ and ‘disable printing’ settings which are designed to prevent exam questions from being passed on to future candidates. .

Paige Leistner, a senior who took several Honorlock exams last year, said she was happy to hear that some features like webcam monitoring would likely no longer be used as these settings raised privacy concerns for she. But she was surprised to learn that UW-Madison is reconnecting with the company.

“I find it a little strange that if we are in person, we are still using an online monitoring system,” she said. “It sounds like a kind of waste of money.”

The students weren’t the only ones worried about Honorlock. More than 120 UW-Madison employees signed a petition in March calling for changes after learning that technology failed to recognize the faces of several darker-skinned students during exams.