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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

#181

Post by pickdenis »

dragonwriter wrote: post #175
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…

> 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 a…

> has very little correlation to readiness to be treated as an adult

My words may have been misleading. What I'm trying to say is the kind of student that gets admission to Caltech is not the kind of student to neglect going to class out of laziness or whatever and fail out because of that.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#182

Post by aratakareigen »

mentos wrote: post #66

Why are kids paying for school if they’re not going to class?

I stay at home and read the lecture slides on my computer because it's easier for me, and lets me be nocturnal. Am I really missing out on that much by not being there?

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#183

Post by pickdenis »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #165
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…

I disagree. I went to the University of Canterbury (the New Zealand one), the bar to entry was literally to pass your high school exams. We were treated like adults, and attendance was entirely optional for most lectures and tutorials. If you failed a paper because you didn't go to any lectures, that was your problem.

I don't think you're disagreeing with me here. It's just that your school doesn't care that much if students fail because of their own negligence. Mine does, because that looks bad or something.

I totally agree with your school's stance, but I acknowledge tha the current financial incentive structure prevents my school from having the same.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#184

Post by jupp0r »

Maybe Jeff Rubin should spend his time improving the quality of his lectures instead of strong arming his students into attendance. From my own college days I remember the really good lectures being mostly full while the bad ones were deserted and people rather spent their time self studying textbooks (which is also fine).

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#185

Post by Accacin »

So I don't even see the point in taking attendance (and as far as I remember at my university in the UK lecturers didn't even take attendence), but if you do, what's wrong with taking a register at the beginning? It's probably cheaper, less error prone and the teach can use their discretion if a student is a little late to class because of ~reasons~.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#186

Post by heavyset_go »

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…

> This sort of thing doesn't work at schools that don't have such a high bar of entry.

This was the policy at the community college I went to. No one took attendance, and it was the students' responsibility to make sure they did the work and prepared themselves for exams if they chose not to show up.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#187

Post by SauciestGNU »

seditiousseals wrote: post #149
elfexec wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Miss more than a few classes absent a compelling excuse and you are docked a half letter grade. Why not give a half letter grade boost to those with good attendance rather than docking a half letter grade to someone who misses a few classes? Why not incentivize with a reward rather than a penalty? The carrot rather than the stick? > However, the students have the opportunity to review the syllabus in advance and th…

If the class is easy, then the half letter grade won't matter much and nearly everyone will get high scores, rendering attendance useless. If the class is curved, then boosting those that attend is functionally the same as penalizing those that do not.

Classes shouldn't be easy. I had the privilege as an American of studying at a university abroad that used the English system of marks, where a top grade began at 75%, and that was difficult to attain. The quality of education I received there was exemplary, and the grades were not inflated, at least not to the extent I've seen at American universities.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#188

Post by snvzz »

knzhou wrote: post #33
mod50ack wrote: post #2

I'm a college student myself (my university, as far as I'm aware, has no system such as this). As far as I'm concerned, it's both an insidious creep of social-credit policy and a gross invasion of student privacy. It treats us as children rather than as the adults we are, and seems to me to be a sign of the re-infantalization of colleges. Many generations ago, when the age of majority was for the most part higher, co…

> For example, my assignments are now largely due at midnight, at a very particular second: submit a nanosecond late at your own penalty. From the instructor's point of view, there's no winning here -- there will always be a cutoff, and any position of it will lead to complaints. Even for an informal system, there's always a last person allowed in, and hence a cutoff. If you have a good reason for an extension, you c…

>Even for an informal system, there's always a last person allowed in, and hence a cutoff.

Is there really? In my faculty, doors were kept open. I entered lectures at 20% of time left and nobody would bat an eyelid.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#189

Post by ineedasername »

jahmed wrote: post #160
ineedasername wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spo…

That's great, thanks. I get frustrated as a technical staff person, who personally enjoys being on the cutting edge, often being the one in meetings saying 'data is great but how will we actually use it?'. Honestly, I'll probably retire form higher ed in a few years and go work for an outfit like yours.

Hah, actually the "outfit like mine" is a university that has relatively recently come to some very good conclusions on this sort of thing. 5 or 6 years ago... Not so much. But one nice thing about working for an institution like this is that mostly people are looking to do the right thing for students, and don't just look at the thing as some commercial revenue extraction machine.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#190

Post by WalterBright »

BalinKing wrote: post #164
augustocallejas wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fortunately, I attended a college (Caltech) that as institute policy did not take attendance and no part of the grade was based on attendance. I attended Caltech (BS '01) and given that they allowed us to take exams home with us, it would have been surprising if a professor took attendance. This was part of the overall honor code ( http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/explore/about-caltech/hono... ) that looking back,…

Currently attending Caltech (BS ‘22) and thankfully it is still the same way now. If nothing else, it helps a little to take the edge off of the rigor and difficulty (at least, in my opinion). Specifically, if my finals are going to be ~4 hours long each, at least I can choose when and where to do them :-)

Nice to see that Caltech still operates that way! The Honor System there had a very large and positive influence on my later career and interactions with others.
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