At its Nov. 18 meeting, the Lyon County School Board of Trustees approved a pilot program to test GoGuardian, a program that allows teachers to monitor student browser activity on their school issued Chromebooks.
The Trustees approved the licensing for up to 250 students at a cost not to exceed $3,000, and to come back with a follow-up report on the results of the program when they can.
The program is designed for in-person, supervised lab-oriented environments and not for big online programs with hundreds of students on at the same time, said the district’s Executive Director of Operations Harman Bains.
LCSD Executive Director of Educational Services Jim Gianotti said the teacher should be moving around the room monitoring the class, not at a desk monitoring a video screen. Gianotti said the staff of the district’s distance education program, LyOnline, expressed a desire to have it during testing periods during their semester exams to monitor large numbers of students testing at once.
Bains said some students in LyOnline use their own device, but with GoGuardian, all students would be required to use a district-provided Chromebook. He said it is not district policy to install software on non-district equipment.
LyOnline teacher Loraine De La Torre said the district uses a program that can catch plagiarism or AI usage, but she said many students have found a program that runs in the background and answers questions for them. But she said GoGuardian would record what those students are doing.
“We really would like to try it because when it comes time for them to do their testing online, they can’t go into the lock mode because they can’t have their camera on at the same time as they’re in the lock mode,” De La Torre said. “It’s not for every student, but it would help us to have proper consequences.”
For final exams, De La Torre said LyOnline teachers proctor the tests by having the students log into a private meeting on Google Meet and are not allowed to have other students there.
“So, no one else besides us are watching them or monitoring them,” she said.
Trustee Tom Hendrix asked what would keep a student from having a second device providing answers. De La Torre said students have to keep their microphone on during final exams so the teacher can hear if the student is using a second device or if there is another person in the room giving the student answers.
Trustee Darin Farr asked whether the program was worth whatever it might cost if it’s only going to be used for a couple hundred students.
“At this point, we want to give it a try to see if it is,” De La Torre responded. “We would love the opportunity to try it out on final exams, see how that works.”
Bains said the cost of each license and how it might be used or applied is a conversation the district would have if the Board decided to proceed, as well as how teacher will determine when students must use the program.
“That conversation has not been had,” Bains said. “However, it would be had if this board chooses to proceed with this.”
Without a specific cost for the program for the board to approve, Farr made a motion to move forward with a pilot for the program and procure student licensing for up to 250 students at a cost not to exceed $3,000. That motion passed unanimously.
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