Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines • Hacker News Board

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#121

Post by ineedasername » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 12:42 AM UTC

cmcd wrote: post #105

ineedasername wrote: post #85

Speaking from the Devil's Advocate side, as I work in Higher Education analytics: First: this data is, by the vast majority of institutions, used very respectfully in terms of privacy rights and it is ABSOLUTELY never sold. Third part vendors that provide hosted systems are REQUIRED to affirm that they pass nothing on to any other party whatsoever. (I should note that this is the case in public and traditional privat…

Just because the institution does not use the data irresponsibly doesn't mean the service provider will not. Not to mention third parties which could potentially gain access to this data directly or indirectly by listening for the check in signal devices send. Per the article, this is not being used to help the students succeed, instead it is being used to damage their grade for a lack of attendance. I think most rea…

We have extremely stringent security checklists for 3rd part vendors, as I alluded to in my post. Both the vendors, and any of the vendor's vendors, must be able to demonstrate that data is not used for any purpose but the school's. As for attendance, automated attendance tracking has been around for decades in the form of swipe cards, and simply automated a process professors undertook manually. No data is captured that would not have been in the analog world, and professors are still free to have no attendance policies at all schools I have spoken to about it. Granted, that may only be a sample size of 100 or so.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#122

Post by jldugger » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 12:45 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #43

> logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade. Fortunately, I attended a college (Caltech) that as institute policy did not take attendance and no part of the grade was based on attendance. The result was nobody was disruptive in class, because if students didn't want to attend, they didn't attend. I remember sitting in class as a freshman thinking about this and e…

> Fortunately, I attended a college (Caltech) that as institute policy did not take attendance and no part of the grade was based on attendance.

One pushback I've heard from administators on this idea is that it's really hard to answer certain Federal aid questions when the student drops out, like 'when did they last attend class?' if you don't take attendance. And the student Visa programs apparently require attestations about both attending and passing classes.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#123

Post by ineedasername » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 12:46 AM UTC

jahmed wrote: post #106

ineedasername wrote: post #85

Speaking from the Devil's Advocate side, as I work in Higher Education analytics: First: this data is, by the vast majority of institutions, used very respectfully in terms of privacy rights and it is ABSOLUTELY never sold. Third part vendors that provide hosted systems are REQUIRED to affirm that they pass nothing on to any other party whatsoever. (I should note that this is the case in public and traditional privat…

I work in higher ed and we use a student success analytics platform. Where I see this going wrong is administrators want a system to do everything. We want to identify the at-risk student, nudge them automatically, and have a successful outcome. Schools don't want to invest in people to actually make outreach or connection with students because that is hard. As a result, we generate a ton of data with little to show…

We're not perfect, but as we have brought on analytics systems and engaged in institutions drive projects like my use of Xgboos with LMS data, we have invested heavily in additional advising resources because we recognize that data is irrelevant if you don't have people that will take action on it. I can make data driven predictions all day long about students at risk. What matters is what do we do about it? I've spoken with schools that thought buying an analytics platform was all they had to do. They have universally been disappointed with their lack of results.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#124

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 12:47 AM UTC

knzhou wrote: post #102

defen wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about having the student’s score decay as some function of how late they turn it in? If they turn it in before the deadline, they get 100% of their marked grade, if it’s an hour late 90%, a day late 50%, etc (use whatever function you want)

Usually, delays lead to logistical difficulties. Until every copy of an assignment is submitted, you can't release solutions, assign grades, talk about the problems in lectures or recitations, or really give any feedback whatsoever. I've had excellent courses that ran on your system, but in those cases they had it completely standardized from year to year, and even automated grading systems.

If you're just trying to solve the bad feelings caused by a really hard deadline, you could do something as simple as "due at midnight, 80% credit from midnight to 6am". Then everyone's still done by class.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#125

Post by lonelappde » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 12:49 AM UTC

knzhou wrote: post #102

defen wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about having the student’s score decay as some function of how late they turn it in? If they turn it in before the deadline, they get 100% of their marked grade, if it’s an hour late 90%, a day late 50%, etc (use whatever function you want)

Usually, delays lead to logistical difficulties. Until every copy of an assignment is submitted, you can't release solutions, assign grades, talk about the problems in lectures or recitations, or really give any feedback whatsoever. I've had excellent courses that ran on your system, but in those cases they had it completely standardized from year to year, and even automated grading systems.

This issue only comes up if you have a low caliber class where homework is nontrivial part of the grade.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#126

Post by lonelappde » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 12:51 AM UTC

esotericn wrote: post #84

threatofrain wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could speak the same way about police to make it obvious why some people don’t like the double edge of discretion. Isn’t it such a burden that police have to wear cameras? It’s probably much harder to exercise any executive discretion that way, let alone have any natural conversation, especially when people may demand lawsuits and firings over such footage. Must police be very equally kind to both white and black…

My interactions with British professors are not in any way comparable to what I know about the US police! It's a really weird comparison to me. Perhaps US profs are way more uptight in general? I'm not really sure how to respond to that, to be honest.

Discretion works great for the privileged portion of the population.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#127

Post by ken » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 12:53 AM UTC

> “They want those points,” he said. “They know I’m watching and acting on it. So, behaviorally, they change.”

I can't tell if he realizes that his students find electronically-tracked attendance points more valuable than his lectures.

That sounds like a fundamental problem. You can lead a horse to water, and all that. Are these students paying attention in class? Are they getting better grades? If they're showing up to lecture but playing on their phones or reading other books, you've accomplished exactly nothing.

The only justification I can imagine is that it's an intro class for freshmen, and so maybe they're trying to ease students into an environment (i.e., the real world) where they have the freedom to do whatever they want, even if it's bad for them. Do they stop requiring this system for upperclass students? They doesn't say, but it doesn't sound like it.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#128

Post by lonelappde » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 12:54 AM UTC

isthis1984 wrote: post #67

userbinator wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called authoritarianism.

Thanks, @droithomme's comment put me onto that to, I didn't realise it was classed as a personality type not just a form of government. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Authoritarian_Personalit... this irritates me even more that its been known since the 50's and we still put up with it. The book is here https://smile.amazon.com/Authoritarian-Personality-Theodor-A... the comments are an interesting study alone.

The book is pretty well derided as political propaganda masquerading as science. It's the same as the modern day "scientific" view that all Trump voters are mentally ill and Clinton voters are not.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#129

Post by ken » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 12:58 AM UTC

wck0 wrote: post #13

ryzvonusef wrote: post #10

""Several students said they didn’t mind a system designed to keep them honest. But one of them, a freshman athlete at Temple University who asked to speak anonymously to avoid team punishment, said the SpotterEDU app has become a nightmare, marking him absent when he’s sitting in class and marking him late when he’s on time. He said he squandered several of his early lectures trying to convince the app he was presen…

That's likely a violation of the institution's academic honesty policy.

True, but it's a two-way street. An academic honesty policy seems predicated on the assumption that the system run by faculty is inherently honest.

> [...] said the SpotterEDU app has become a nightmare, marking him absent when he’s sitting in class and marking him late when he’s on time. He said he squandered several of his early lectures trying to convince the app he was present, toggling his settings in desperation as professors needled him to put the phone away. He then had to defend himself to campus staff members, who believed the data more than him.

I pride myself on my honesty, but even I would have a hard time feeling bad about cheating this system.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#130

Post by ineedasername » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 1:01 AM UTC

jdkee wrote: post #100

ineedasername wrote: post #85

Speaking from the Devil's Advocate side, as I work in Higher Education analytics: First: this data is, by the vast majority of institutions, used very respectfully in terms of privacy rights and it is ABSOLUTELY never sold. Third part vendors that provide hosted systems are REQUIRED to affirm that they pass nothing on to any other party whatsoever. (I should note that this is the case in public and traditional privat…

“ respectfully in terms of privacy rights and it is ABSOLUTELY never sold.” Could it be hacked? How good are university IT security operations?

At my school, they're surprising good. I mean, the systems aren't in an air gap, but we use 2FA, requests for data access are scrutinized, and not from a bureaucratic perspective but from a conversational perspective: "Let's talk about what you're trying to do with this data, what's the minimum needed for your goal? Is on-going access really necessary or can we provide a single extract that you access via a secure environment?" That sort of thing. Infrastructure security isn't something I'm involved with, but we do have a robust security team that works on it, that I engage with when working through vendor checklists and other security matters, and they are up to date on the field and conscientious to the point of (reasonable) paranoia.

We're also not a high-profile target: Most hackers looking to crack a system holding personal data seem most concerned with high value targets with millions, not thousands of records. That doesn't stop our security team from treating the possibility with the utmost seriousness though.

However, the above applies to where I work. This is not universally the case. I think most schools are increasingly aware of the potential, are take minimally necessary steps to make sure they aren't wide open, but there are simply too many small schools with 1,000 to 5,000 students that simply don't have the scale needed to really devote resources to this. Again, the low-value target helps here, but it's not great.