The University of Missouri has been garnering national attention for incorporating an attendance app, Spotter, into classes. Some feel as if it’s an invasion of privacy, while others think it helps to make sure students are held accountable. From the founder himself, Rick Carter, to MU students themselves, each gave their own take on their experience with the Spotter App.

What is the Spotter app?

“If they’re not there, or they don’t connect to the beacon we don’t have the ability to tell anyone where they’re at.”

– Rick Carter, Creator of SpotterEdu (via Phone)

How does the community feel about the Spotter app?

“I don’t think we need to be tracking locations.”

– Elise Mulligan, Student at the University of Missouri, Freshman

“For athletes it definitely forces you to go to classes.”

– Reed Nikko, University of Missouri Basketball Player, Senior

“The students who aren’t coming to their classes are the students who are struggling academically.”

– Jim Spain, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies at the University of Missouri

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Spotter Creator Rick Carter talks about what exactly the Spotter App tracks and other important information relating to Mizzou and their students. Carter said the idea of creating the app came from his time as a basketball coach when he was recruiting high school athletes. When Carter visited another college that had new locker room features, he noticed every student had an iPad. He goes on to say “if someone lost their iPad they could use a find my iPad app.” The iPad tracking was “GPS” and “geo con space,” but Carter wanted to come up with a different kind of solution: “We hired a development team in Chicago, after about a year we hired one of their developers away to work for us full time. He’s the person that kind of developed the whole app, when it comes to the technical side of things.”

The Spotter founder states “our services are actually going to help out regular students and student loan debt, things of that nature. So, a professor does agree they should have to take attendance. However, at the end of the day, when you’re counting on a certain amount of people to be in those seats, to be able to, like, pay your bills basically keep the lights on, and only 18% of your professors are reporting no shows. That’s a huge deal.”

Privacy is a big question related to the app, but according to Carter there isn’t that much information being collected “the only information that we’re going to collect from a student is the time they get there (to class) and leave. Then, that calculated percentage request that they were obviously at for us on our end, they’re actually not known as a human, they’re just a random set of letters and numbers.”

Carter isn’t the only one confident in the technology. Dr. Jim Spain, the Vice Provost of Undergraduate Studies at Mizzou talks about how the widely used attendance app Reef is different from Spotter: “Spotter because of how bluetooth technology works, you stop outside the classroom and you got concrete and wood between you and the bluetooth.” According to Spain, Reef in some instances caused “data issues” in the classroom. The last point the vice provost made is that Spotter “is limited to that classroom,” unlike Reef which can (if setting isn’t changed) be used from any location.

Although some professors are currently using the app right now, it was the Athletic Department who started using it first. According to Associate AD of Academic Services, Tami Chievous, they have been using the Spotter App. for years now. “We’ve been using the Spotter App. for 5 years now. We were the first ones to do a pilot program with them, to test everything out, and we just started using it because we wanted to be able to check on class attendance more without having to use in class checkers.”

When it comes to students going to class, Chievous believes there is a correlation between if they actually go to class and their GPA. “I do believe there is correlation, I think the more you can get the information directly from the instructure, and not trying to re teach yourself the information that you missed in class. I think it’s also good relationship building with the instructure when you’re in class and they can see you face to face. And we have had record GPAs the last 4 semesters, and I can’t directly correlate it to the Spotter App, but I do think it does help.”

The Spotter App being used at the University of Missouri recently made national news. Depending on who you talk to, opinions on the app may vary significantly. Is it an invasion of privacy? Does it hold students accountable? There are many questions that can be asked about the attendance app, and as time goes on and if the app continues to be used, the more definitive answers there will be.