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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

#211

Post by crankylinuxuser »

esotericn wrote: post #143
lonelappde wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discretion works great for the privileged portion of the population.

You'll have to explain again how bad behaviour by US police generalises to professors. As far as I can tell this is simply a strawman. And even if it's not - the solution is to replace dickhead staff with reasonable human beings, not chain them with process so that everyone suffers.

Professors, like cops, have significant power within their sphere. And tenured profs can even go to the point of calling women, gay, and black people less than human. (Indiana University Prof Rasmussen)

The key here is, surveillance shouldn't be used against the students who are of low power, but instead against those who decide if the students succeed or not - the professors.

Trusting power is how one gets to significant asymmetry and gross abuses. Surveillance against those types is how you start to counterbalance "discretion".

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/education/2019/11/24/eri...

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#212

Post by saagarjha »

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…

At my college, the professors that took attendance were almost always the worst ones, teaching GEs to a lecture hall of a hundred students that had no reason to care, and ultimately did little to improve learning. I think if any of the upper division major-related professors tried to force attendance, they’d be laughed right out of the room. But the ones worth going to had steady attendance anyways, even if they put up lecture notes or slides, because they were often genuinely useful lectures to go to.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#213

Post by atdrummond »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #209
WalterBright wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other elite schools take attendance and don't have an Honor System. One interesting consequence of this is the faculty and students become collaborators rather than adversaries.

What elite institutions take attendance?

While I was at UChicago, we had courses with a participation grade - so attendance was effectively taken whether or not a teacher recorded it every class.

At LSE, they used iClickers while I was there for a few lecture hall courses. At least one (LSE100) requires attendance unless one wants to miss their chance of getting a First on the module.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#214

Post by acollins1331 »

seventhtiger wrote: post #208
jeltz wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually all universities in Sweden do the same, and it works fairly well even in those with a very low bar of entry. And while our universities are not for profit they still do get funding based on number of students who complete courses. Do we really want tons of unmotivated students in the classrooms?

I don't understand how not tracking attendance is treating adults like adults. Your workplace will track your attendance until you retire. It's pretty normal. Just because a student has issues with discipline or motivation I shouldn't let them fail. Tracking attendance improves academic results so I'm not sure what the advantage is to not tracking it.

It's a waste of time for people who don't need to go to the lecture. My grades in school were overall made WORSE from attendance grades. I would've gotten all As if I had just been allowed to turn in my work and show up for exams, but going to a joke school means 10% of your grade is showing up and I'm not going to show up to listen to 5 minutes of information get stretched into an hour.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#215

Post by artemisyna »

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…

Caltech of a few decades ago was great... but even it isn't exempt from the infantization that's been happening everywhere. (Just talk to any of the current undergrads or recent alums -- a shift started happening with some new deans towards the late 2000s/early 2010s and hasn't stopped.)

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#216

Post by artemisyna »

artemisyna wrote: post #215
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…

Caltech of a few decades ago was great... but even it isn't exempt from the infantization that's been happening everywhere. (Just talk to any of the current undergrads or recent alums -- a shift started happening with some new deans towards the late 2000s/early 2010s and hasn't stopped.)

As an example of this -- one of the comments below mentions iClickers. Those have been a thing for a few years now (mostly bio, but still).

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#217

Post by sansnomme »

jldugger wrote: post #131
sansnomme wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh that's terrible, I also thought the randomization is constantly on. Is this the case for Android and the desktop operating systems too? Windows, OS X, Ubuntu etc.?

Your connection with the AP is bound to a particular MAC. You could randomize it per AP, but you can't like, randomize the MAC for every packet.

Yes but you can randomize every time you connect to the AP.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#218

Post by crankylinuxuser »

ineedasername wrote: post #130
jdkee wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ 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 en…

> We're also not a high-profile target

Really now? Have you checked your school on Shodan recently?

Long story short, there's enough people doing hacking, with varied enough interests. You don't know what makes someone else tick.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#219

Post by yusyusyus »

seventhtiger wrote: post #208
jeltz wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually all universities in Sweden do the same, and it works fairly well even in those with a very low bar of entry. And while our universities are not for profit they still do get funding based on number of students who complete courses. Do we really want tons of unmotivated students in the classrooms?

I don't understand how not tracking attendance is treating adults like adults. Your workplace will track your attendance until you retire. It's pretty normal. Just because a student has issues with discipline or motivation I shouldn't let them fail. Tracking attendance improves academic results so I'm not sure what the advantage is to not tracking it.

Workplace attendance tracking is certainly not universal.

When I teach classes, if a student does not perform the requisite work to complete the course, I’ve no interest in their success. I am an instructor, not a motivator.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#220

Post by iudqnolq »

snvzz wrote: post #188
knzhou wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They meant for turning in assignments.
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