Students have to jump through absurd hoops to use exam monitoring software • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by unishark » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 4:57 AM UTC

acbart wrote: post #127

gravypod wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you make your class project based and give everyone different, but equally difficult, projects of their choosing. Each check in into master would then be merged after a code review with you where you ask questions about why implementations are done specific ways to solve the problem/refactor. Code is only merged when it hits a quality marker you set. Students are graded by percentage of deliverable hit from ori…

This will never work because it absolutely fails to scale, at a time when we have a complete lack of computing educators. Customized projects for each student? I have 159 students in my CS1 this semester, and I can barely keep track of them with the massive amounts of data I collect. The idea of making individualized assignments is beautiful but unrealistic.

I think it can be automated in the more basic courses at least. But wouldn't solve the problem of students getting someone else to do the project for them anyway.

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

#132

Post by poulsbohemian » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 4:59 AM UTC

sn41 wrote: post #119

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…

I teach programming. What prevents students from colluding over their tablets/mobiles/laptops while taking the exam from another device? Can't the student mirror the screen elsewhere, leading to interesting possibilities for cheating? Proctoring is not a solution that I am comfortable with. I do not want to peer into the private lives of students and their home environments. Not every student is well-off, and has a p…

I'm genuinely curious to learn your option on cheating - does it actually matter?

What I mean is - certainly you don't want to harm the reputation of your school, and you want your students to have actually learned the material and be prepared for whatever they do in life that requires that knowledge... but what I'm wondering is... if there's presumably some tiny percentage of a class that is going to actually cheat or act in ethically questionable ways, are we in fact putting more effort into the prevention of that cheating than is warranted?

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

#133

Post by fuyu » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 5:01 AM UTC

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.

The video game anti-cheat world has been playing this cat and mouse game for a while. A few months back I saw an interesting article [0] describing some of the detection methods being used. It's fascinating to think about how much effort gets put into this.

[0] https://secret.club/2020/04/13/how-anti-cheats-detect-system...

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

#134

Post by alach11 » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 5:06 AM UTC

poulsbohemian wrote: post #132

sn41 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I teach programming. What prevents students from colluding over their tablets/mobiles/laptops while taking the exam from another device? Can't the student mirror the screen elsewhere, leading to interesting possibilities for cheating? Proctoring is not a solution that I am comfortable with. I do not want to peer into the private lives of students and their home environments. Not every student is well-off, and has a p…

I'm genuinely curious to learn your option on cheating - does it actually matter? What I mean is - certainly you don't want to harm the reputation of your school, and you want your students to have actually learned the material and be prepared for whatever they do in life that requires that knowledge... but what I'm wondering is... if there's presumably some tiny percentage of a class that is going to actually cheat…

Of course it matters. In a class where cheating is permitted, the students who choose to cheat will perform better than they otherwise would have. That will give them an advantage over the students who choose to not cheat.

I personally experienced this in undergraduate with a professor who chose to ignore obvious cheating and I think it negatively impacted the motivation of students to learn the material.

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

#135

Post by ouid » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 5:07 AM UTC

sn41 wrote: post #119

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…

I teach programming. What prevents students from colluding over their tablets/mobiles/laptops while taking the exam from another device? Can't the student mirror the screen elsewhere, leading to interesting possibilities for cheating? Proctoring is not a solution that I am comfortable with. I do not want to peer into the private lives of students and their home environments. Not every student is well-off, and has a p…

The main problem, of course, is that receiving a credential and receiving an education are very different things that we do at the same time out of tradition and convenience. When testing was easy, it made sense to lump it in with teaching, but now that testing is impossible, I say we ditch it for the time being.

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

#136

Post by gravypod » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 5:10 AM UTC

acbart wrote: post #127

gravypod wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you make your class project based and give everyone different, but equally difficult, projects of their choosing. Each check in into master would then be merged after a code review with you where you ask questions about why implementations are done specific ways to solve the problem/refactor. Code is only merged when it hits a quality marker you set. Students are graded by percentage of deliverable hit from ori…

This will never work because it absolutely fails to scale, at a time when we have a complete lack of computing educators. Customized projects for each student? I have 159 students in my CS1 this semester, and I can barely keep track of them with the massive amounts of data I collect. The idea of making individualized assignments is beautiful but unrealistic.

Most code reviews I've done at work take between 5 minutes to 10 minutes. To assume the worst possible case of 200 students, 20 deliverable per student, and a 10 minutes meeting per MR you'd be at ~28 days (~84 8hr-days). Get 1 TA and you now have 42 days of the semester dedicated to 1:1 time (35%) and the remainder of the semester dedicated to producing learning content. Learning content (lecture videos, etc) can be produced ahead of time and in this case you can replace this with more 1:1 tutoring time effectively allowing you to give each student ~10hr (10 min * 20 sessions * 1/.35) direct 1:1 time over the course.

From the students perspective all they need to do is:

1. Write a "project proposal" where they define a project, define goals, schedule a checkin with you to see if that project is large enough (1/20th the grade of the class)

2. Watch lecture videos and go through exercises on their own time.

3. Write code and bring it in to teacher. (18/20th of their grade)

4. Demo their finished project to professor (1/20th their grade)

This does work for later classes. I never had the ability to test this workflow out for earlier (100-level) classes as all of those classes I TA'd for followed the same model you're talking about.

The 200+ level classes that followed the model I'm talking about had ~10% to 30% pass rate which was in line (~2x) with the pass rate of similarly leveled courses from our college's Math and Physics department which was used as a sanity check.

edit: that's not to say you're incorrect that it would be difficult to do at scale, this is just the way I've seen it done at moderate scale (20 to 40 students).

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

#137

Post by danmur » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 5:10 AM UTC

olyjohn wrote: post #128

I feel so bad for the students that have to deal with this. I worked at a Community College in IT for a while. Students would come into a lab that was specifically set up for testing. The anti-cheating software was such total trash, it would crash, crash the browser, crash the whole system. Students would have to start testing over... At least twice a month, their systems would be down, and nobody could take tests at…

This could be describing plenty of enterprise software too. Boxticking crapware.

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

#138

Post by powersnail » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

olyjohn wrote: post #128

I feel so bad for the students that have to deal with this. I worked at a Community College in IT for a while. Students would come into a lab that was specifically set up for testing. The anti-cheating software was such total trash, it would crash, crash the browser, crash the whole system. Students would have to start testing over... At least twice a month, their systems would be down, and nobody could take tests at…

What kind of cheat does it prevent?

I imagine it wouldn't be terribly hard to run the machines so that only one full-screen window is shown, or a user for whom the internet is disabled. Is that not enough?

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

#139

Post by Shared404 » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 5:20 AM UTC

powersnail wrote: post #138

olyjohn wrote: post #128

I feel so bad for the students that have to deal with this. I worked at a Community College in IT for a while. Students would come into a lab that was specifically set up for testing. The anti-cheating software was such total trash, it would crash, crash the browser, crash the whole system. Students would have to start testing over... At least twice a month, their systems would be down, and nobody could take tests at…

What kind of cheat does it prevent? I imagine it wouldn't be terribly hard to run the machines so that only one full-screen window is shown, or a user for whom the internet is disabled. Is that not enough?

> I imagine it wouldn't be terribly hard to run the machines so that only one full-screen window is shown, or a user for whom the internet is disabled. Is that not enough?

Many of the anti-cheating software will also run the webcam and yell at you if it thinks you aren't paying attention to only the screen, while recording everything on your screen.

And students are being forced to install this on their home machines.

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

#140

Post by ehvatum » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 5:26 AM UTC

Jesus Christ, as a student, I am absolutely positive that I would spend 100% of my effort fucking with this software. This is “The lessons being taught are not the ones being learned” in extremis. Do we really want our best and brightest to have such practical education in subversive techno-syndicatetry?! I would be proud as a parent, but I’m also a bad parent.

Edit: my plan is to home school in a lumber mill / cnc machine shop. The strong will survive.