Students of the study programme Applied computer science at the Belgian hogeschool PXL must monitoringssoftware of the company Impero install. So can the university during exams to check what the students are doing on their laptops.
The students express their dissatisfaction with the measure compared to the Belgian newspaper het belang van Limburg. “It is an outright violation of our privacy,” says an anonymous student against the newspaper. The software makes it possible for the college to see what is on the laptops of the users; students claim that teachers are even able to see.
That latter is not so, says head of department, Francis Fox of PXL. “With the software we can see what students have on their screen and we can avoid them during exams, communicate with each other,” he says. “Students can have the software will also turn off if there is no exam,” stresses Fox.
Students are required to have the software on their own laptops to install; to this end, they close a contract with the university. The software, by the students are labelled as spyware, snooping counter, without anyone physically monitoring the need to keep.