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

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#171

Post by HarryHirsch » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 3:12 AM UTC

knzhou wrote: post #104

anigbrowl wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you appreciate the basic point that many people do not wish to live in such a mechanistic and rigid society to begin with.

Rules aren't made to make people miserable, they're made to keep things running for everybody involved.

Yes, that's the point. The reason that assignments are due on a certain day each week is that you've blocked out a certain afternoon of the week to go over the blasted things. If people routinely handed stuff in late then stuff would pile up, especially near the end of the semester, and the backup would interfere with the rest of your duties.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#172

Post by mirimir » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 3:21 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #151

mirimir wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably, yes. As covered in Stephenson's Dodge . Students are fully anonymized, in meatspace as well as in data. So there's no possibility that anything except performance affects assessment.

Stephenson managed to present both a Utopian and Dystopian view of the future at the same time... I'm not sure his work there is very instructive in this matter. But the thing is, factors other than quantifiable performance do impact assessment. As just one small example, from what I have seen in analyzing the data, the best performing students at some of the worst inner city schools tend not to be nearly as prepared…

That's true about the novel [Fall, not Dodge]. But not, I think, about the idea of students being anonymous.

I mean, it's not that Sophia remained entirely anonymous. But she did retain full control over who had access to what. She was anonymous in applying for an internship. But as a grad student, she got lots of expert coaching.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#173

Post by AlphaWeaver » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 3:23 AM UTC

Just wanted to chime in here- I'm an undergraduate student at a major state university in the US, but I've also built a (small) start-up in edtech.

I condemn schools that are using techniques like Bluetooth beacons to track attendance, but I can say it's definitely not the norm.

The vast majority of schools use pure software solutions (apps like Top Hat) to track attendance (if they choose to do so.) These typically function by having a randomly generated code that the professor writes on the board at the start of class, and students then have to enter into their apps.

It's not the best, and I generally don't agree with tracking attendance in college courses, but it's certainly less invasive than the system described in the article.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#174

Post by mistymountains » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 3:26 AM UTC

JadeNB wrote: post #90

droithomme wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the colleges that use this are third rate colleges that aren't going to have too many "creators, entrepreneurs and groundbreaking scientists". The creator of the app is a guy who has a restraining order because of violent threats he made against a school he was kicked out of as coach. Based on his history that the article touches on, it seems possible he's a controlling authoritarian sociopath. Why anyone wou…

> Many of the colleges that use this are third rate colleges that aren't going to have too many "creators, entrepreneurs and groundbreaking scientists". Surely on HN at least we can be free of the idea that only first-rate colleges have (a substantial quantity of) students with such exceptional potential. (I would go even farther and deny that there is any particularly strong correlation between 'rate' of the school…

He never once wrote that only first-rate colleges produce these individuals, nor has anyone with any sense ever stood by rankings as anything more than a proxy for some deeper hierarchy. And yes, like it or not, the higher ranked schools attract and produce more ambitious and intelligent humans in the aggregate.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#175

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 3:28 AM UTC

pickdenis wrote: post #114

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…

This sort of thing doesn't work at schools that don't have such a high bar of entry. Caltech can afford to treat their students like adults, because they're picked from the cream of the crop. On the other hand, schools like the one I went to would have a horrible(r) matriculation rate if students were not forced to attend certain classes. It infuriurates me (and I think students who want to fail should be allowed to…

> Caltech can afford to treat their students like adults, because they're picked from the cream of the crop.

The cream in terms of demonstrated capacity for academic performance, which probably has very little correlation to readiness to be treated as an adult. There selection criteria is why they can afford to have rigorous coursework as the basic freshman core, but not why their decision to treat the young adults attending as adults works.

If anything, that policy is part of the selection system: the people that aren't ready for that treatment don't cause problems for other people as much as they would in other systems, they just fail out fairly quickly.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#176

Post by throwawayhhakdl » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 3:29 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…

Do people have experience with disruptive behavior in college? I would expect it to be a lot less common due to fewer demands of uninterested students to take classes and professors having both more power and less of a need to get everyone across the finish line.

In my experience, uninterested students just slept or played on their phone

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#177

Post by throwlaplace » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 3:29 AM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #78

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…

Lets not blame tech, the root cause is the administrators are douchebags. Tracking because they can is their fault. Adding control because they can is their fault. Not doing their testing of their unneeded system? Not being responsive at the tech support level? All their fault. They neither need nor deserve the excuses and allowing them that rhetorical shield has only harmful results.

>Lets not blame tech, the root cause is the administrators are douchebags.

as if there aren't sales people in these tech companies pushing these kinds of products.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#178

Post by 15__characters » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 3:35 AM UTC

isthis1984 wrote: post #46

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #38

> The dream of some administrators is a university where every student is a model student, adhering to disciplined patterns of behavior that are intimately quantified, surveilled and analyzed An appropriate dream for a college administrator. But a travesty for creators, entrepreneurs and groundbreaking scientists. I’d be curious. Would these same administrators object to their timeliness being similarly measured? Qua…

I've observed there are a class of people that desire to keep everyone else under control. There seems to be no other reason than it makes them feel better, the fact that some people are not under control makes them feel uneasy. These people seem to be inserting themselves everywhere, IT is a bonanza for these people. Anyone know any psychology researching this? It's something that's been irritating me more and more…

Show me someone who seeking power over others and I will show you someone who themselves is a slave to someone or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U&t=1m53s

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#179

Post by pickdenis » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 3:35 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #119

pickdenis wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of thing doesn't work at schools that don't have such a high bar of entry. Caltech can afford to treat their students like adults, because they're picked from the cream of the crop. On the other hand, schools like the one I went to would have a horrible(r) matriculation rate if students were not forced to attend certain classes. It infuriurates me (and I think students who want to fail should be allowed to…

Most of those third-tier schools shouldn't exist in the first place. Immature, undisciplined students are just accumulating debt without learning much. They would be better off in community college or working for a while. Then once they gain a little more life experience some will figure out what they want to do and have enough motivation to return to school.

> Most of those third-tier schools shouldn't exist in the first place

I disagree. I was offered admission to zero first rate schools, two second rate schools ($$$$$$ tuition), and my backup which is a third rate school (which I am attending for free).

If my backup school didn't exist, I would either be without a degree, or my parents would have a significant dent in their retirement. I'm willing to put up with the BS of third rate schools so that I can at least have a degree and not be scalped, thank you very much.

I'm grateful that my third rate school exists, no matter how shitty it is.

I will grant you, however, that no school should knowingly take $$$$$ from students and give them an useless degree. But a CS degree? It's pretty cool that I can get that from any school and it's the "same" level of degree whether it's from Caltech or Arizona State.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#180

Post by porknubbins » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 3:37 AM UTC

sircastor wrote: post #154

godelski wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the legal risk different now from back then? If so then maybe those legal decisions weren't great. Maybe they were. But at least worth revaluation.

I think it is. I think people used to be less litigious, so schools had less to worry about. The law was certainly less complex, providing less potential risk than it does. Additionally, I'd be willing to bet school districts have dedicated legal departments, or lawyers on retainer these days and I'd bet that's a recent change.

I think this is mostly a media driven perception that lawsuits have been increasing when in fact the trend is that tort awards and causes of action have been restricted. If you’re a school administrator wanting more control its easy to say “lawsuits” but I bet these people are not doing research on lawsuits for students leaving campus in their jurisdiction.