By Hannah Stainbank, Second-year, English
Following technical issues last term, the controversial University of Bristol Check-In App is up and running again. The app’s primary aim is to monitor students’ attendance and wellbeing, but how do students and staff feel about this monitoring? And how has the app fared since it was introduced? Between the boycott, privacy concerns, threats to student visas, and day-to-day issues with functionality, it has been somewhat of a bumpy ride.
The Check-In App began as a way to standardise attendance monitoring across the university, where previously it had varied across departments. This change occurred soon after stricter regulations for visa sponsors – i.e. the university – came into full effect, specifically for closer monitoring of international student attendance. Though these regulations changed in late 2020, the initial testing of the Check-In App began in September 2023 after in-person teaching was back in full swing. On the 22nd of January 2024, the Check-In App was made a requirement for students university-wide.
Since then, the app has posed a number of challenges. Several student groups have called for a boycott, technical issues ensued back in October, and many have struggled with ensuring the app properly records their efforts to make it to class.
The first of these issues was the boycott. In an Instagram post on the 5th of March 2024, Student Action Bristol called for a boycott of the Check-In App as it was ‘another example of uni complicity with apartheid and the genocide of Palestinian people.’ The group cites the reason for their encouragement of non-use as being due to the fact that the app was ‘developed by an Israeli company (Ex-Libris)’. They also condemned it as ‘an ableist form of surveillance’ and a ‘threat to our [students’] privacy.’
Since this initial call to boycott, four groups (Student Action Bristol, Extinction Rebellion Youth Bristol, Bristol Leftist Collective, and Bristol Palestine Solidarity Encampment) published an open letter clarifying their reasons for boycotting.
In this letter, the groups state that ‘every investment in, and partnership with, Israeli companies and institutions helps sustain the racist, settler colonial paradigm that is the occupation of Palestine’ and that Ex-Libris is ‘headquartered in the ethnically cleansed village of al-Maliha.’ Al-Maliha – now Malha – had an almost entirely Arab population before the 1948 Arab-Israeli war (or the Nakba), when the population fled after a series of attacks and counterattacks.
The letter also cites a document from Librarians & Archivists with Palestine, demonstrating how University of Bristol students are part of a wider network boycotting Ex-Libris. This now forms what is called the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS).
The BDS campaign states that they target ‘complicity, not identity’, and that being non-complicit entails:
- ‘Not being implicated in Israel’s military occupation, apartheid or settler-colonialism; and
- Publicly recognizing Palestinian rights under international law, primarily the right of refugees to return in accordance with UN resolution 194.’
They also state: ‘As far as we know, there is no Israeli company that meets these two conditions.’
They focus on targeting ‘a relatively smaller number of carefully selected companies’ that ‘play a clear and direct role in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians.’ The BDS movement does not list Ex-Libris as one of their targeted companies, but supports grassroots and student-led campaigns generally.
Aside from the BDS movement, some students feel a sense of distrust for a third-party company having access to their live locations.
Robin Wrigley, an MA English student, received a phone call from the University’s administrative team as a result of not using the app – she was accused of not attending her classes. She responded to this call that she had been attending, but that she was ‘not turning on [her] location services.’
Robin expressed distrust of the company: ‘I don’t see why my location should be available to a company that I don’t have a contract with. We’ve all heard quite negative things about it in terms of where it’s based.’ Robin also will not download the app as she doesn’t have the storage on her phone. ‘I’m not deleting Snapchat for this’, she jokingly added.
She also shared frustrations about how impersonal the call was. The representative didn’t know the course she studied, and only gave general information about how not checking in could affect her progression, grades, and marking.
She felt the Check-In App takes away from the ‘personal and pastoral help that can be available through the university’ and devalues ‘rapport between personal tutors and seminar tutors.’
There is also a growing perception that the app unfairly targets international students. The repercussions for not using it are indeed more severe for internationals. While home students are threatened with ‘further escalation’, international students failing to check in could result in the cancellation of their visa and, ultimately, deportation.
Epigram spoke to a member of the teaching staff – who wishes to remain anonymous – about this issue. They described these regulations as part of a political aim to build ‘a vote base of bigots by being seen to be tough on immigration’, as ‘international students are a very easy target.’ The staff member criticised the ‘huge amount of university time, money and resources’ spent on monitoring, and questioned why the university is not ‘standing up and saying this is a waste of money.’
As detailed on the timeline, the Home Office regulations around stricter monitoring of international students came into effect on the 5th October 2020. However, due to COVID, in-person attendance – and therefore, the monitoring of this – was halted.
The staff member called for ‘solidarity from university bosses against this vile, racist demand to monitor the presence of international students in this way’, also pointing out that while the University has found money for this app, teaching staff since 2012 have suffered a ‘25 per cent pay cut in real terms.’
Regarding budgeting for the app, the staff member drew attention to the budget cuts that have been made to wellbeing services: ‘I have no sympathy with a system that is happy to spend money on monitoring you but not on caring for you.’
They recognised the university has issues regarding student attendance, though they did not see the app as a solution for this. Understanding the reasons for low attendance as a result of the increased cost of living, they crucially noted how the ‘government does not support [students] as it should. You have to work harder than my generation did at university.’
Going forward, the member of staff expressed how they would like to see the university ‘campaigning robustly for higher levels of student financial support’, believing that ‘universities are being run like businesses and not as institutions built around the provision of education.’
Along with the ethical concerns about the app, many students have struggled fundamentally with how it functions.
Epigram spoke to Seren Beer, a second-year English and Classics student, who was recently involved in a motorcycle accident which left her with broken bones, lacerations, and temporary paralysis along her dominant arm. As these injuries impeded her ability to attend university, she explained how she ‘outlined a plan with tutors, teachers [and] lecturers’, noting the ‘warmth and humility’ with which she was able to reorganise her academic schedule. She had only missed a week’s learning.
Despite making up for absences, Seren received several ‘semi-auto-generated, passive-aggressive, harassing emails, notifications, pigeon-wired letters’ which ‘caused nothing but further anxiety.’ She describes the Check-In App as having a ‘persistent determination to invade [her] rehabilitation journey.’
What Seren describes clearly echoes Robin’s views: human-to-human interactions are being consistently undermined by an insistence that the Check-In App is the only indicator of academic engagement.
A recently graduated student faced similar issues in their final year. The student describes a ‘lack of timely communication leading up to the app’s launch’, which resulted in them not having ‘enough time to buy a device or ensure that [their] device would operate with the app.’ The student describes themselves as being at an economic disadvantage and therefore was unable to get a device compatible with the app at short notice.
Like Seren, they received automated emails about attendance, despite having ‘backing from staff members who knew [they had] been attending.’ They were informed that the university would pursue the vague ‘non-engagement procedure’ if they didn’t use the app. This escalated to the university considering kicking the student out.
Ultimately, though the student was able to graduate, it was not without a considerable amount of worry. This student was sufficiently shaken by this experience that they chose to only speak anonymously, concerned that the degree they had already been awarded may be put back in jeopardy.
For issues such as this, the university has communicated that the Check-In App has a web version that can be used on laptops. This, however, poses its own issues. Robin expressed her general distrust about having location services switched on on her laptop – a personal security preference that must be overridden in order for the app to function. ‘I simply won’t do it’, she wrote.
Many other students have faced issues with the functioning of the app. Second-year Philosophy and Theology student, Daisy Yates, grappled with the app’s technological issues. Daisy told Epigram that the app would say that she was not in the location where she was supposed to be, would cut out and also fail to load. She cites poor Wi-Fi as part of the reason for this, telling Epigram of the time she had to re-download the app during a lecture, which meant missing vital information.
Due to these technological issues, Daisy has given up on checking in: ‘It was making me miss content.’ Now, with the app purportedly working again, she has struggled to get back into the habit of using it.
Nadia Anwar-Watts, a fourth-year music and German student, has faced similar issues remembering to use the app, and shared frustrations regarding the ‘fear-mongering’ emails telling her she was ‘at risk of not being able to […] finish this year of university.’
‘What are you really going to do? Kick me out over not pressing a button?’ she remarked.
Despite this, not all students are wholly against the app. One anonymous student told Epigram that the app has encouraged her to attend lectures and seminars more frequently: ‘I find it satisfying to see it all green.’
In order to better understand the university’s motivations for implementing the Check-In App, Epigram spoke with a university spokesperson. On why the university uses the app, they stated:
‘Checking in to classes is one of several ways we can monitor how students are engaging with their studies and if they are not attending, we may contact them to understand why and offer support if appropriate. In addition, UK Visas and Immigration requires that students sponsored by universities have engagement with their studies monitored and reported to enable their visa sponsorship to continue.
‘The University’s Education & Student Experience sub-strategy sets out a clear ambition to develop an approach to better use of data to support individual students and enhance the overall student experience. An essential part of realising this ambition is building a richer and more sophisticated understanding of students’ engagement throughout their time at the university, in order to better target interventions to support student wellbeing and success.’
Part of this ‘better use of data’ involves the data collected from the Check-In App. Before the app, the university had found that its methods of collecting attendance data were, according to the spokesperson, ‘time-consuming to set up and operate and could be unreliable.’
That’s not to say the Check-In App hasn’t had its issues with reliability. After the technological difficulties last term, the spokesperson confirmed that ‘we have a team in place to respond to any future issues’ and that ‘regular testing of the software is undertaken.’
Regarding the boycott, the spokesperson noted that ‘the university is aware that a very small number of students has decided to boycott the app.’ They did not respond to the question: ‘Is there any other form of attendance monitoring they accept considering [the boycott]?’
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Whether or not you agree with the boycott or that international students are being unfairly targeted, it is clear that the fundamental concerns around privacy, patchy Wi-Fi, and technical issues persist unresolved. In light of continuous pressure from student complaints and boycotting, it is clear that the university will need to reassess whether the targets to improve student wellbeing and monitoring attendance are really being met, and if the Check-In App is the best way to do this. It seems evident from student testimony that automated messages and faulty technology is not currently contributing to improving student wellbeing, if this is indeed the app’s aim.
Featured Image: Epigram / Nel Roden
What have been your experiences with the Check-In App?
