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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

#81

Post by tzs »

aschatten wrote: post #51
tzs wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Carl Sagan was writing "Contact" he attended a conference that was also attended by his friend Kip Thorne. Sagan knew that one of Thorne's pet peeves was science fiction that just hand-waved away the physics of FTL travel. Sagan told Thorne he was writing a science fiction novel, needed FTL travel, and asked Thorne if he could suggest something that would be reasonable. Thorne agreed to look into it. After the c…

Do you know if it's possible to get ahold of a copy?

As far as I know, he never finished it, so unless he still has and would give out a copy it is probably unobtainable.

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

#82

Post by dheera »

vkou wrote: post #70
dheera wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be in favor of a VM that is indistinguishable from a non-VM host. Is there any project that helps bring such functionality to, say, VirtualBox? Not because I encourage cheating, but because I should never have to install proprietary software on my personal machine to take an exam. I will however on occasion grudingly be okay with installing closed-source software inside of a VM.

Do you have any proprietary code running on your machine, or would you just not install any to take an exam?

I run Linux and I don't believe I have any closed-source code on my machine at the moment that's not inside of a VM except for NVIDIA drivers.

I usually use VMs if I need to run anything closed source.

You don't need to be entirely vegan about closed-source to care about this issue though; there is a notion of a person trusting certain companies' closed source code over others. That is a thing. For example I would probably trust something like Photoshop slightly more than some random exam company's outsourced exam app.

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

#83

Post by progman32 »

sebmellen wrote: post #29
advisedwang wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My rebellious streak would implore me to make the process as awkward for the proctor as possible. Get creative.

Not that it would really help anything.

Tests, like software interviews, are a poor way to determine an individual's ability in anything but synthetic tasks. They are cheap, though.

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

#84

Post by bllguo »

cloud5ir wrote: post #55

To me, this underscores notion that schools continue to test for the wrong thing. With the exception of professions/trades that require impulse application of knowledge, I don't know why I would want/need someone to memorize a concept in order to apply it. Productive members of our society/workforce think critically, they ask good questions, and they research and leverage the information at their disposal to make dat…

while this sounds good on the surface, i think memorization is much more important than you give it credit. imo you absolutely should have key concepts memorized if you have any real understanding of a subject. and as you become more of a specialist, your bar for what constitutes a "key concept" should raise.

Being able to search things up is well and good, but dont you run into situations where you don't even know what to search for in the first place?

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

#85

Post by kenniskrag »

bawolff wrote: post #78
cloud5ir wrote: post #55

To me, this underscores notion that schools continue to test for the wrong thing. With the exception of professions/trades that require impulse application of knowledge, I don't know why I would want/need someone to memorize a concept in order to apply it. Productive members of our society/workforce think critically, they ask good questions, and they research and leverage the information at their disposal to make dat…

From what i remember of uni, most of the tests i took were not testing if you memorized a concept, but if you could apply it. Sure the situation was still extremely contrived, but it wasn't simply regurgitating facts

Same in university of applied science in switzerland.

For example you learn a depth first search and in the exam you have to store some information on each step to print it in the end.

You have to learn different proof schemes and use the easiest one for a given hypothesis. Sometimes you get with the wrong one in an endless recursion for example.

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

#86

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

We must do all things at scale and perfectly standardized! Only multiple choice tests that can be graded by a machine! Make sure the teachers never have a one on one conversation with students! It’s easy if we make sure they don’t have time and resources for that.

Imagine how much harder interviewing would be without having a one on one conversation. And if it had to be perfectly standardized nationwide. It would have a ton less bias, but you’d have a terrible signal and have to do all these crazy things to prevent cheating. In other words, these seem even worse than the state of tech interviewing.

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

#87

Post by musicale »

Dealing with cheating is a complete drag, but I would still never use any of this nonsense if I were teaching a class. It's horribly intrusive and dedicated cheaters are still likely to figure out a workaround.

I'd much rather just assign take-home exams and final projects, or use a synchronous 1-hour exam that everyone takes at the same time.

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

#88

Post by progman32 »

askvictor wrote: post #50

A solution for both this, and the problems with exams in general, is oral exams. Student has to answer questions from the teacher, in real time, one-on-one. Takes longer, but is much more authentic.

This tosses in a whole other layer of stress and meta-game managing the relationship with the teacher.

I do not do anywhere close to my best work with someone staring at my every move.

For undergrad, I'm much more in favor of deliverable-based approaches. Term projects, problem sets, etc. I think it's cruel to boil such a high-stakes decision to a single-point-of-failure event like a big test. I've heard too many stories where someone had a bad event happen before a test, or just slept poorly, or made a trivial mistake, or got sick, only to be told "too bad".

If cheating is a huge problem, locking down the final step isn't going to fix anything in the long run. It destroys all trust. We need to take a look at the motivations to cheat, even if these reasons are uncomfortable.

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

#89

Post by [deleted] »

chillwaves wrote: post #75
maerF0x0 wrote: post #66

I had a teacher that solved this by saying all exams were open book, and then put so many questions that if you didnt know the material you'd just run out of time. Basically you could look up a very low number of things in the amount of time per question allotted

Some people just work more slowly than others. Doesn't seem like a great solution.

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by hombre_fatal »

chillwaves wrote: post #75
maerF0x0 wrote: post #66

I had a teacher that solved this by saying all exams were open book, and then put so many questions that if you didnt know the material you'd just run out of time. Basically you could look up a very low number of things in the amount of time per question allotted

Some people just work more slowly than others. Doesn't seem like a great solution.

Most of my exams were like that in lower school and there was always enough time if you knew the material. It wasn’t open ended essay.

An exam that has too many people timing out just isn’t a well balanced exam.

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