Ah yes, another semester of going through the accommodations song-and-dance and feeling like a demanding entitled shrew.
Every time I open a new professor’s syllabus and see the words “online exam with eye tracking software,” I gotta grit my teeth and prepare myself for another slew of emails to the accessibility office. The replies often look like this:
“The head of accessibility & accommodations has been heavily involved with our decision to use Respondus software.”
I’m glad. Thank you for vetting new software on the behalf of students using accommodations. Did you perhaps speak to any of us during that review process?
Did you consider from our perspective what it would feel like to have the movements and sounds we make recorded or watched while we’re already in a high-stress situation? What it might be like for
ADHD kids who fidget or talk aloud?
Autistics who visibly stim?
People with anxiety who’re choking down the usual garden-variety panic attack that accompanies tests in general, and now have to handle somebody watching everything they do like they’re guilty until proven innocent?
Parents whose kids aren’t in school because of the pandemic & who might have to get up for a minute or two in the middle of the test to keep their six-year-old from turning on the stove, and be flagged for cheating as a result?
I’m thirty-one years old, and I can grit my teeth and force myself to do these things; I spent my entire time in undergrad doing that, wishing I’d break my ankle in the parking lot on my way to tests because the other students were watching and the teacher was watching and I could never finish on time.
Now somebody’s gonna watch or record me through a camera! Cool!! Guess that’s just the way it is these days.
But y’know? the older I’ve gotten, the more I’m unwilling to put up with “that’s just the way it is.”
Who is it throwing under the bus?
So I resign myself to writing emails that say please let me know how we can arrange an alternative by the class add/drop date so I can plan accordingly. Knowing, as I do, that I’m beating my head against the wall; that I’m not actually changing things for anyone else, even when I’m so, so angry for all the students ten years younger than me who aren’t armed with the experience and cumulative anger required to find a better way.
If you’re an instructor, for god’s sake, don’t proctor with eye-tracking software. Don’t use Respondus. You’re disproportionately affecting neurodivergent students, a group almost certainly as large as the portion of your class likely to cheat.
And if you’re under the assumption students who need accommodations are the same portion of your class as the students who cheat, you’re... unbelievably ableist, actually.
Find a better way to proctor your tests. BETTER ALTERNATIVES EXIST.
