Computer Science Colloquium Talk

Join the Department of Computer Science for the 2025 Colloquium talk "The Changing Landscape of Privacy Concerns for Online Remote Proctoring" by Adam J. Aviv, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the George Washington University and is the director of the GW-Usable Security (GWUSEC) Lab.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and remote learning, many ed-ucators turned to new technology of remote exam proctoring to ensure the integrity of their assessments. Remote proctoring, specialized soft-ware installed on students' computers, offered the promise of restricting students' access to information, monitoring behavior, and reporting cheat-ing. At the height of the pandemic, we investigated the (obvious) privacy concerns that both students and educators shared with this new frontier, particularly around the power imbalance. Following this work, nearly four years later as the pandemic abated, we returned and replicated our re-search finding that many things have changed. Students have normalized the practices of remote exams with less concerns with the technology de-spite privacy reservations. In this talk, I will track how this landscape has shifted and where we might go from here.

Adam J. Aviv is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the George Washington University and is the director of the GW-Usable Security (GWUSEC) Lab. Aviv has published over 90 peer reviewed papers in areas related to computer security, privacy, and applied cryptography. Currently, his primary academic interests lie at the intersection of human computer interaction (HCI) and computer security and privacy, as well as research in net-work security and applied cryptography. He has made significant contributions in the space of mo-bile authentication, studying how users choose passwords and PINs for their mobile devices. Prior to GW, he was a assistant professor at the United States Naval Academy and a visiting assistant professor at Swarthmore College. Aviv received his B.S.E from Columbia University and a M.S.E. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a recipient of six NSF awards as a PI, including the prestigious NSF CAREER award.