University asks students to download app to curb truancy

The University of Missouri in the United States is using hidden technology and an app on student cell phones to keep track of who is in class and who is not, raising concerns about invasion of student privacy, write Mará Rose Williams and Souichi Terada for The Kansas City Star.

Officials say it is for the students’ own good. Besides, they say, the university’s athletic department has been using the tracking app the past four years for all freshmen athletes, plus any athlete in academic trouble.

Now, as a test pilot, the university is expanding the programme to any student new to campus for this semester. Faculty volunteered to have their classes be part of the test. Their students won’t be given a choice. But critics worry that the monitoring could go way beyond a professor’s old-school attendance records and is the first step down a path to invasion of student privacy.
Full report on The Kansas City Star site