Your privacy is important to Respondus. Our Privacy Policy explains how we gather and process your personal information. The information below provides additional detail about how personal information is gathered and processed when using Respondus Monitor.

Respondus Monitor is a companion product for LockDown Browser that enables students to record themselves with a webcam and microphone during an online exam. The recordings and other data from the exam session are processed automatically; summary information is provided to the instructor, such as if the student left the video frame during the exam session.

The Institutional Terms of Use must be agreed to by an administrator at the licensing institution prior to enabling the Respondus Monitor tool within the Learning Management System. (If you are an instructor using Respondus Monitor with Pearson MyLab, see the Pearson-specific Instructor Terms of Use.) The Student Terms of Use for Respondus Monitor must be agreed to by users (e.g. students) prior to each use of Respondus Monitor.

Respondus Monitor is an enterprise application accessed from within the institution's Learning Management System (LMS). Respondus Monitor uses a plugin to interact with the LMS's application programming interfaces (APIs). Respondus Monitor doesn't require users (e.g. instructors, students) to create an account since the APIs include "single sign-on" capabilities for authentication purposes. The APIs pass the username to the Respondus Monitor server, which then gets stored on the Respondus server. The legal ground for processing your username for this purpose is based on Respondus' legitimate need to perform the requirements of the contract.

In GDPR terms, the Respondus Monitor service is a "processor" of your personal information; the licensing institution (e.g. university) is the "controller" of the personal information gathered and processed. This means we provide the technology for storing and analyzing the data, but the licensing institution (e.g. instructors; administrators) control the actual use of the data.

A variety of data are automatically processed during an exam session that uses Respondus Monitor. The webcam recording itself goes through an automated "post-processing" step that utilizes computer vision technology to determine: whether the student remained in the video frame, if multiple people appear in the video frame, if the person in the video frame differs from the person who started the exam, and the position of the user's face relative to the webcam recording device.

The recordings are controlled by your Institution and will be processed by an agent of your Institution, namely, Respondus, through its Respondus Monitor Services. Respondus Monitor may analyze the recordings through automated processes to generate additional data derived from the recordings, with the additional data being associated with individual students for use by your Institution in evaluating the recordings. This additional information includes the creation of a temporary template of facial features during automated processing, and such template is used either by the server executing the Respondus Monitor software or by the automated processing occurring on your computer to determine whether the student who started the exam differs from the person in the video frame throughout the duration of the exam. The template is not saved on your computer or to the cloud server’s database or storage and is cleared from your computer or the server’s memory by Respondus Monitor after the processing is complete, which occurs immediately after exam completion on your computer and no later than two (2) days after the completion of the exam if on the server. The additional data, as well as the original recordings, may be evaluated by agents of your Institution, including your instructors, to review, assess, and analyze student performance and conduct, among other things, for the purpose of improving educational processes for students, including investigating student conduct violations. Your Institution works with Respondus to help ensure your privacy regarding the recordings and to comply with applicable laws and regulations as to any information or data (including any of the video or audio recordings). Respondus personnel do not review/analyze the recordings except as may be required to resolve technical problems, improve system performance, modify Respondus Monitor, investigate violations of these Terms, or as may be directed by your Institution or applicable law enforcement.

Respondus Monitor processes other data from the exam session, such as: the date and time the user starts and completes an exam session; the time that each exam question is answered; how much time is spent on each exam question; if/when an answer to an exam question is changed; the quality of the user's internet connection during the exam session (including the time and duration of any internet disconnections); mouse, keyboard and screen activity; the quality of the video recording (in terms of lighting, contrast, movement); and the quality of the audio recording, among other data.

Respondus Monitor continually tracks the applications and processes that are running on the computing device during an exam session.

User data may be aggregated, and then individual user data may be compared to the aggregated data to look for patterns or anomalies, such as whether a user spent an unusually long time answering a question relative to other users.

Summary information for each exam session is made available to the instructor, including a "timeline" where important events are noted (e.g. when an exam question was answered; when an internet disconnection occurred; when multiple people appeared in the video frame). Aggregated data is also provided to the instructor (e.g. the average length of time users spent on an exam question; the average time spent on the entire assessment; the average date/time that users started the exam session).

An overall value is generated for an exam session that helps the instructor determine the risk that exam violations have occurred. Again, these analytics are generated automatically by the Respondus Monitor application.

The legal ground for processing the above-mentioned data is based on Respondus' legitimate need to perform the requirements of the contract.

Depending on the exam settings selected by the instructor, students may be required to show an identification card to the webcam, from which a photo will be taken. The photo image is securely transmitted to the Respondus Monitor server using https, and then stored on the server in encrypted format. Respondus does no further processing or analysis of this data. The legal ground for storing a photo of the identification card is performance of a contract.

Respondus Monitor uses APIs from the LMS to display other personal information, such as grades, within the Respondus Monitor application. This information is obtained in real-time from the LMS (using APIs) and isn't processed or stored by Respondus Monitor.

The default data retention period for Respondus Monitor is five years. Respondus uses AWS servers which are located in the United States. Upon request, licensing institutions can change the data retention period (e.g. one year). If an institution terminates its license for Respondus Monitor, the institution may request that user data be deleted immediately; alternatively, the data will be retained according to the data retention period, which allows an institution to access that data again if they restore their Respondus Monitor license. The legal ground for storing a user's exam session data on our servers is performance of a contract.

Most institutions have an "enterprise" license for Respondus Monitor, which means they pay the entire licensing fee themselves. However, some institutions license Respondus Monitor in a way that requires individual users (i.e. students) to purchase a "seat" directly from Respondus. If you purchase a Respondus Monitor seat directly from us, we collect your name, email address and the course ID for which the seat will be used. The legal ground for processing this information is Respondus' legitimate interest in completing and servicing the financial transaction. No additional use is made of this data. We do not view or store your payment card information. A third party, Paypal, processes customer payment card information when Respondus customers use a payment card to make a purchase on a Respondus website. We recommend you carefully review Paypal's Privacy Policy.

If you have any questions, concerns or complaints about our Privacy Policy, our practices, or our Services, you may contact us by email at [email protected]. Our Privacy Policy provides additional ways that you may contact us.