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

#161

Post by vengefulduck » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 6:57 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…

Just last week I had to help my sister reinstall windows because she used respondus and now her computer blue screens every time she turns on her webcam. It runs as root and appears to mess with the kernel, so a clean reinstall seemed like the only solution. It’s really so much worse than I imagined at this point I’d classify this software as straight up malware.

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

#162

Post by chillwaves » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 6:58 AM UTC

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #102

chillwaves wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Some people are slower runners, that doesn't mean we should slow down everyone else on a ball field.

A person taking a test more slowly has no effect on the people who finish more quickly.

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

#163

Post by chillwaves » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 6:59 AM UTC

smabie wrote: post #97

chillwaves wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And the real world penalizes people for that, for good reason. As such, I don't think there's anything wrong with time pressure on tests.

That's not what the test is supposed to measure.

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

#164

Post by whoisburbansky » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 7:04 AM UTC

weehoo wrote: post #124

centimeter wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. I honestly can’t identify with your comments in the slightest. The only part of math that I ever learned by memorization was addition and multiplication tables in elementary school. Every subsequent revelation was based on pure understanding - zero repetition required. Up to what level of math have you studied? I honestly can’t imagine anyone thinking they’re good at undergrad-level math if they do it…

The great grandparent to your post (the one who initially brought up the necessity of rote learning) is a quant at a market maker. Anecdotally, my favorite professor from undergrad (born in China, PhD from the best department in his field [my personal opinion]) said he thought the reason for Russian/Chinese dominance in certain areas of math was due to how those areas benefitted very much from rote practice. He advis…

+1 on the drilling specific techniques. Any skill is reinforced by consistent targeted practice, and to think that math is an exception where you can break through with pure genius is just deluding yourself.

The only way I got through my undergrad math was by doing problem set after problem set until the concepts were second nature, and the courses that didn't have a sufficient breadth of exercises to drive home fundamental concepts ended up being the ones I struggled with the most.

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

#165

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 7:11 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…

[deleted]

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

#166

Post by YungSven » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 7:15 AM UTC

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #153

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…

The problem is less that students can look up answers online, its that they could hand the laptop to someone experienced and have them complete the exam for the student. An ideal situation would be allowing students to use online resources but not to communicate with other people during the exam.

My university in Germany uses this approach. We have to livestream ourselves from the side so the supervisor can see the whole desk, before each exam we have to authenticate with our Student ID so nobody else can write the test for us and we are allowed to use everything - except direct communication. This form of testing is called "Open Books" or "Open Material". Before the pandemic we were allowed to bring our books and even handwritten sheets to the exam. What I like about this is that you don't get points for just remembering things. On the other hand, this probably wouldn't be possible in subjects like economics where you have to remember a lot.

Edit: typo

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

#167

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 7:18 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…

[deleted]

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

#168

Post by asdff » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 7:21 AM UTC

Zeturic wrote: post #146

aliceryhl wrote: post #27

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.

This is a good point. My Organic Chemistry class had tests that were open-book, open-note, open-internet. Pretty much the only thing you couldn't do was talk to other students. Even if you tried to contact other students by the internet (which they didn't even try to police), there were several versions of each exam, so you were unlikely to find help. They were still by far the hardest exams I took at University, bec…

That's the thing with ochem, if you don't know it right away it could take you 4 hours even with the book in front of you. 50% got me a B+ in that class with the curve. Humbling.

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

#169

Post by asdff » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 7:22 AM UTC

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.

Universities make accommodations for people who need to take more time.

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

#170

Post by asdff » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 7:30 AM UTC

Green_man wrote: post #92

Online classes really emphasize how irrelevant closed book/notes/neighbor tests have always been. In cute terms, this environment is the strongest possible counterexample to "you won't always have a calculator with you!". All students are literally doing the test on a computer with internet access in the present tense. Their connectivity is considered so robust that a student may lose points or time if their internet…

I think cheating in most science classes is still not easy. The killer is the short answer section. You would waste a lot of time searching for an answer, and if the professor made their own questions you will need to take some time to synthesize bits of information from here or there into an actual answer. Even referring to your notes or lecture materials will chew up valuable time. Sometimes even if you do know everything you are working till the bell.

But if you do have repeated questions, there is software that will basically grep the internet for you to catch plagerism. All the students know that going in, so copy and pasting is no go. Sharing answers can land you in trouble if two students don't rephrase their answers well enough.

All of this can get you kicked out of college and potentially ruin your life with that mark, not to mention the money spent. Still, people do get caught cheating with those risks even before the pandemic.