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Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#21

Post by astura »

t34543 wrote: post #18
sys_64738 wrote: post #6

What's wrong with an attendance sheet?

Why does attendance matter?

That's where you learn the material?

Beyond that most of my anthropology classes (I minored in anthropology) had class discussion as part of the grade. I even had one professor who had us move the desks into a big circle as we entered (and put them back as we were leaving) in order to better facilitate discussion.

Also you'd have to be there to hand in previous assignments and get new assignments. Most of my classes (in all classes) had assignments due either every day or at least most days.

You'd also have to be there to hear about changes in the schedule. If you only show up for tests and the day of the test changes you'd need to know.

Plus pop quizzes. They aren't used much in college, but I think I had one or two.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#24

Post by DailyHN »

hooloovoo_zoo wrote: post #7

How hard would it be to make a device that spoofs everyone's phone?

Not hard. No dedicated device required, either.

It requires reverse engineering which data in being transferred to the school. This likely occurs using a simple HTTP request. Or series of requests. Copy the data from that HTTP request. Then replicate those HTTP requests.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#26

Post by mnm1 »

sebasmurphy wrote: post #4

Not sure if this is still the case or not but at Maryland circa. 2007-2010 it was school policy that no class could have attendance factored into the grade. If you wanted to skip every class and only show up for exams, that was your choice. Privacy implications aside, I feel that this should be the case everywhere since college is effectively a business transaction. What you decide to do with the product after you've…

Seriously. I was lowered an entire grade in one class for not attending despite my work being of the highest quality. Attendance was not even listed as part of the grade on the syllabus so I was graded on something without even being told ahead of time. Teachers that do that should be fired. As should teachers that lose your midterm. But I doubt anyone cares about the students and the impact things like this have on them. Then we wonder why people cheat at the highest levels of our society. Because our society and education system encourages them to cheat by showing students in the harshest way possible that the rules are stacked against them and the playing field is uneven. And I paid over $100k to have my work devalued while being treated like an infant.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#27

Post by sverige »

x100100 wrote: post #11

Disgusting that an IT "professor" forces students to install spyware on their own hardware. Students should unite and collectively uninstall the malware.

Now, now, don't get too frisky there or these same people might get the idea to uninstall the spyware put on their phones by the manufacturer, the carrier, the OS provider, and the app devs. Then where would we end up? [/s]

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#29

Post by _vertigo »

esotericn wrote: post #15

Weird. My university didn't care if you attended lectures. Why would they? It's not a prison camp. More focused tutorials with 1 on 2 or 1 on 4, sure. Not everything needs to 'scale'.

In my experience it varied from professor to professor. Many professors would notice when you don't attend lecture, which I found to be impressive given the size of some of the classes. I found that some professors were more likely to be lenient or accommodating if they recognized you as a frequent and engaged attender, or if you went to office hours or asked insightful questions during lecture.

On the other hand, there were classes I didn't attend very often at all, and I remember a couple of times being stumped on the homework and going to office hours to gain some traction only to be gently ribbed for not going to lecture. You get the sense that many professors do pay attention to that kind of thing and it does factor in, if only unconsciously.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#30

Post by astura »

mnm1 wrote: post #26
sebasmurphy wrote: post #4

Not sure if this is still the case or not but at Maryland circa. 2007-2010 it was school policy that no class could have attendance factored into the grade. If you wanted to skip every class and only show up for exams, that was your choice. Privacy implications aside, I feel that this should be the case everywhere since college is effectively a business transaction. What you decide to do with the product after you've…

Seriously. I was lowered an entire grade in one class for not attending despite my work being of the highest quality. Attendance was not even listed as part of the grade on the syllabus so I was graded on something without even being told ahead of time. Teachers that do that should be fired. As should teachers that lose your midterm. But I doubt anyone cares about the students and the impact things like this have on…

> I was graded on something without even being told ahead of time

Ever heard of a pop quiz?

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