As students working on projects or research assignments click to open a new tab, they are greeted by an orange pop up with the words “Tab Limit Reached.” This notice requires them to close one of many essential tabs in order to continue their assignment.
This tab limit, a new feature on Lightspeed, allows teachers to set a maximum number of tabs students can have open at a time.
Having the tab limit makes it difficult for students to work on assignments, since they need to look through their many tabs and figure out which ones they can close in order to continue working on their assignments.
“I had around 50 tabs open for a research project and the tab limit kept closing them,” sophomore Sofia Falsone said. “It made it so hard for me to do my work.”
Currently, teachers can only apply the tab limit to the entire class, not specific students. Therefore, if one person is doing a make-up test or retake and a teacher sets a tab limit on that student, those who aren’t taking the test will also have their tabs shut down. This can lead to unsaved assignments, lost sources and panic as students potentially lose all their work.
“My teacher puts a tab limit every time we take a test and she never gives us a warning,” sophomore Laila Khalifa said. “It closes out all my school work and some of it isn’t saved.”
Limiting tabs shows the lack of trust teachers and the school have for their students. Instead of allowing the chance for students to be honest while taking tests, the limit takes away the ability for students to develop good judgement. When students reach college and encounter fewer restrictions, they won’t have existing ethical principles that are built up during high school to stop them from cheating.
While the tab limit can be a beneficial feature to prevent dishonesty during tests, without a warning and time to close and save tabs, it can cause unnecessary stress. Lightspeed offers numerous other ways to watch and record screens that will prevent cheating. Teachers need to use these tools instead of tab limits to monitor students’ screens without deleting their work from other classes.
With this new feature, FCPS is once again drilling home its lack of trust in high school students. The tab limit needs to be removed in order to help students succeed in school.
