UoN To Track Student Attendance Via Mobile Phones. Violation of Privacy?

[Geoo]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-04/newcastle-university-tracking-student-attendance-through-mobile/11915502

Just saw this pop up on ABC news and was wondering  what everyone else thought about it. I do think that the potential in tracking outside of uni is a violation, which is what we may be heading for.
This only applies to 2020 and beyond students at the UoN.

[sweetiepi]

I don't think it's much different to what they do at Monash Parkville imo. (They use Polleverywhere and your IP address to award any attendance marks via the use of interactive lectures (which were only given if the IP address attached to your PE profile came from the Monash/Parkville whilst connected to eduroam aha))

[turinturambar]

I can only think one subject I was in that had attendance marks, and I'm not sure I approve.  Why is attendance the magic thing, rather than mastery of the content?

I take particular issue with the framing in that article, that it was "a good way to help students struggling academically", at the same time as offering them the threat of failure if they don't attend 80% of classes.  Sounds more likely to produce anxiety than anything else.

The use of tracking is probably just a way to try and help automate an existing manual process.  Speaking as a software developer, we like doing that kind of thing, and assume it will magically make things better - but I would think it fairly unlikely it has all the safeguards in place it needs to have.  But the more fundamental issue is "Is that manual process actually required?"  My opinion: No.  Even if the tracking is 100% effective and the data collected has 0% chance of being misused, it's still not needed.