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Students have to jump through absurd hoops to use exam monitoring software

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Re: Students have to jump through absurd hoops to use exam monitoring software

#21

Post by goldcd »

aaplok wrote: post #8
bitwize wrote: post #7

Makes me glad for things like the Stevens Honor System, which was how exams were administered at Stevens Institute of Technology. Basically, all work submitted, whether tests or homework, require a pledge with a signature that the work is your own and you didn't cheat. Violations of the honor system -- cheating, plagiarism, etc. could be reported by students or faculty and would be investigated by the Honor Board wit…

People are doing that at my institution. The average GPA increased by several points . The thing is, if it's perceived that it's easier to cheat than to learn, people will do that, honor system or not. I admit that there is a difference between an institutionalised honor system, designed with respect toward and in collaboration with students, and a last-minute arrangement by an unprepared organisation. Students have…

I think the problem is pretty human.

(or maybe I'm exposing my weaker moral character than the rest of you upstanding citizens).

I think the vast majority of people who have entered some program of learning, want to 'learn' - and will try to.

Where it gets tricky is when you find yourself backed into a corner. Say you know (for whatever reason) you're 90% going to fail - do you accept that? Or do break out the Hail Mary cheat - what have you got to lose?

What's strange is that the moment you leave academia, suddenly this behaviour is acceptable. From the "Fake it 'til you make it" in acclaimed books, to the "carefully positioned demo that wireframes over the chasms to focus on the bit that exists - but you fully intend to fix the rest if the budget appears"

There's some collective cognitive dissonance that imagines all are equal, they go through the same trials of education (ignoring what people can afford, whether they have to work another job, they're commuting in from miles away and a thousand other variables) - but they can all be compared by their meritocratic grade at the end.

(before they enter the cess-pit of the working world).

I've reached the point where I've even lost my own point. Maybe it's just that the person who managed to cheat themselves to a pass against a barrage of technology, unveiled at the last moment, is a more rounded and useful person than the one that swallowed the book and scraped a pass.

Re: Students have to jump through absurd hoops to use exam monitoring software

#23

Post by _8091149529 »

908B64B197 wrote: post #13
beisner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that you create questions that are ungoogleable. Most of my upper-level CS courses had take-homes that were open-book, open-internet, and the professor basically said “good luck finding the answer to this problem online; you will not”. This is harder for professors to do, and maybe fails in intro courses, but generally is quite effective.

This. Else you might as well call the degree "rote" because that's what you measure. > maybe fails in intro courses If someone cheats their way through intro courses they are up for a bad surprise since the upper level courses assumes a mastery of the intro classes!

Interesting, thanks for the replies.

I'd still point out that the system is not robust against: - Working in groups. (Bad if tests are supposed to assess individual performance.) - Asking outsiders for help.

Also, your downplaying of "rote" learning feels misguided, no matter how advanced/abstract/high-level the domain in question is. Cue the Bruce Lee quote about 10,000 kicks..

Re: Students have to jump through absurd hoops to use exam monitoring software

#24

Post by advisedwang »

cosmie wrote: post #9

Back in the good ol' days, you could just take the exam inside of a VM. The VM is locked down, but the host isn't. Looks like from ProctorU's docs[1] that they got around to probing for the (blatantly obvious[2]) signatures of a VM and stopped that trick. I wonder if those signatures exist in a Windows Sandbox[3] instance, or if you can detect/block the Enhanced RDP Session Windows leverages when running a Sandbox...…

Many of the onerous requirements mentioned in the article are about the test taker and the environment they are in, not hte computer envirionment.

A VM doesn't help you when your professor is requiring you to rearrange your room, set up mirrors, bash earplugs etc.

Re: Students have to jump through absurd hoops to use exam monitoring software

#25

Post by impendia »

_8091149529 wrote: post #6
908B64B197 wrote: post #2

Folks are doing take-home exam wrong. Caltech had tremendous success with a culture of honesty and take-home exams.

I spent a few years at Caltech in an academic role (not as a student). I never understood the rationale behind the unsupervised take-home exams. Could you elaborate what is it that makes it a 'success', in your opinion? The shortcomings that seem obvious to me are: - Penalizes honesty - Implied notion that Caltech students are "honourable" and honest. How is this achieved in practice?

I was an undergrad at Rice where we had a very strong honor code. Unsupervised exams were common, and to the best of my knowledge cheating was very rare. If you were accused of cheating then you went before the Honor Council, which was run entirely by students.

I considered this an enormous success. It created an atmosphere where we were treated with respect, and where we were expected to treat others in the same way. If someone did cheat, then they would certainly be too ashamed to admit to it. It was a community where I was proud to spend four years.

Yes, I would say that Rice students are honorable -- without the scare quotes.

How is this achieved in practice? Wish I knew. This is the sort of thing that every university, and every organization, wants to achieve. Trust is very difficult to build if it's not already there; and it's much easier to erode.

Re: Students have to jump through absurd hoops to use exam monitoring software

#26

Post by ColanR »

conductor wrote: post #15
ColanR wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how feasible it is to remove such fingerprints - find a way to make the VM be functionally indistinguishable from the host.

This is an old problem for reverse engineers, and there are some solutions, for example VBoxHardenedLoader [0]. As per usual with such things, these tools are in cat/mouse category. [0] https://github.com/hfiref0x/VBoxHardenedLoader

That's interesting - I would have guessed that after a certain point, a VM and a physical computer are indistinguishable from the POV of software running inside.

Re: Students have to jump through absurd hoops to use exam monitoring software

#27

Post by aliceryhl »

My only computer has Linux installed on it. I wouldn't be able to take an exam that required a windows computer.

If you make exams online, you should change the format to one that is better suited to people having access to the internet. They did that with our exams, and it worked perfectly fine, sidestepping the issues with these exams.

Re: Students have to jump through absurd hoops to use exam monitoring software

#28

Post by salawat »

goldcd wrote: post #21
aaplok wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are doing that at my institution. The average GPA increased by several points . The thing is, if it's perceived that it's easier to cheat than to learn, people will do that, honor system or not. I admit that there is a difference between an institutionalised honor system, designed with respect toward and in collaboration with students, and a last-minute arrangement by an unprepared organisation. Students have…

I think the problem is pretty human. (or maybe I'm exposing my weaker moral character than the rest of you upstanding citizens). I think the vast majority of people who have entered some program of learning, want to 'learn' - and will try to. Where it gets tricky is when you find yourself backed into a corner. Say you know (for whatever reason) you're 90% going to fail - do you accept that? Or do break out the Hail M…

>Say you know (for whatever reason) you're 90% going to fail - do you accept that? Or do break out the Hail Mary cheat - what have you got to lose?

This is almost the critical pass/fail decision in my opinion, because in the real world, on actually difficult or unsolved problems the correct decision is to escalate, clearly communicate you have an issue, and either be directed to someone who can get you unstuck, or inform resource allocators that additional resources will be required to fulfill their request.

There is nothing more destructive to organized, value producing work than to vouchsafe that it's a'ok hunky dory when it isn't.

I'm pretty sure I made it through some of my own coursework by the skin of my teeth because I could at least describe in enough detail where I was coming up short that the instructor had confidence that with more time and experience I'd get it.

At least, I think. I'm still a bit fuzzy on thoss last couple years of college from the sleep deprivation. I get bits and pieces of lucidity in between the recollections of "Oh God, I need sleep."

Theoretical Comp Sci is still "that one class I'm not sure if I really got anything good out of besides intuition into what is and is not a candidate for being computible", and Linear Algebra was "I've killed more trees writing out the work for these problems than anyone should reasonably have to."

Re: Students have to jump through absurd hoops to use exam monitoring software

#29

Post by sebmellen »

advisedwang wrote: post #24
cosmie wrote: post #9

Back in the good ol' days, you could just take the exam inside of a VM. The VM is locked down, but the host isn't. Looks like from ProctorU's docs[1] that they got around to probing for the (blatantly obvious[2]) signatures of a VM and stopped that trick. I wonder if those signatures exist in a Windows Sandbox[3] instance, or if you can detect/block the Enhanced RDP Session Windows leverages when running a Sandbox...…

Many of the onerous requirements mentioned in the article are about the test taker and the environment they are in, not hte computer envirionment. A VM doesn't help you when your professor is requiring you to rearrange your room, set up mirrors, bash earplugs etc.

I would record a video in advance or failing that flunk out. This calls for absolute rebellion against the system

Re: Students have to jump through absurd hoops to use exam monitoring software

#30

Post by lights0123 »

ColanR wrote: post #26
conductor wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an old problem for reverse engineers, and there are some solutions, for example VBoxHardenedLoader [0]. As per usual with such things, these tools are in cat/mouse category. [0] https://github.com/hfiref0x/VBoxHardenedLoader

That's interesting - I would have guessed that after a certain point, a VM and a physical computer are indistinguishable from the POV of software running inside.

It's easy to make the core device indistinguishable. It's the additional hardware that becomes a problem: QEMU/libvirt hardcodes its hard drive model to include the word "QEMU" (although there is an unmerged patch to make that configurable), and although I don't know how graphics work in a VM, it's far easier to create a higher-level graphics device than e.g. emulating Intel graphics.
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