Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 242 posts

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

#171

Post by Green_man »

smabie wrote: post #96
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…

Memorization is absolutely crucial to getting good at math. In fact, I don't think there's any other way to get good at math besides memorization and doing problems, over and over and over again. It's rote, sure, but it has tremendous value. If you think you understand something, but can't actually solve problems without referencing anything, you don't actually understand it.

I'm very curious about the type of math you have learned this way. Every math class was heavy on repeated exercises and memorization, but real understanding didn't come until outside of class (or after the semester) where reflecting on larger ideas lead to mental connections and analogies. I'll freely admit that I have to look up the integral/derivative of simple trigonometric functions every time, despite every attempt from the instructor to hammer those in during Calc II. Doing hundreds of integrals on homework and study guides kind of worked to learn those rules, but only imperfectly and temporarily. Doing hundreds of exercises over and over again has been even less useful for my later math classes. If some proof doesn't make sense, the next step is not to go through 100 examples, it is to break down the pieces into logical structures that are recognizable. All real understanding of math fundamentally works this way. (disclaimer, my math past calc/linear algebra has been in CS classes, so I'm definitely open to hearing how those from other backgrounds or those with more formal math education disagree with me)

If you think you understand some mathematical rule, but can only show 100 problems from memory, you don't actually understand it that well. If you can convincingly show why no counterexample exists, then you understand it in the strongest possible way.

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

#172

Post by asdff »

chrisseaton wrote: post #52
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.

I think in the US some class sizes are in the hundreds , so this does not seem scalable for their case.

In all my 300 student classes, we had recitation sections with maybe 20 students to a TA or teaching professor to go over the homework/take quizzes/serve as extended office hours beyond the time the professor and this TA already made available themselves every week. It wouldn't be much more work for the TA to give each student in their section a 1 on 1 hour meeting over the course of a week or two.

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

#173

Post by topkai22 »

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.

Yeah, I have slow hand writing. In one class I took a midterm and got marks for every question I answered, but ended up with a low C because I couldn’t physically write fast enough to finish the test. I thought that was ridiculous, went to the office of disability and went though the process to get an accommodation. I got to use a laptop on the next test and got an A instead.

I’m sure there are some exceptions, but anything but the most generous time limitations in academic courses don’t seem to the improve the measurement of anything meaningful.

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

#174

Post by asdff »

jackson1442 wrote: post #20
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.

I think the most important part of "proctoring" exams should be that it is individual work. Let's face it- you will almost always have access to the internet. The only thing that should matter is that the assigned student can solve the problem _in some manner._ This may include the internet, notes, or really anything. The real problem is people paying others to take exams, or simply copying answers from others. I wor…

That was certainly a problem in person too. At my undergrad, for larger exams you would just pass your ID down the row to the person in the aisle and a TA would collect them all then check everyone in. Wouldn't be hard to just hand your ringer your ID to pass on up. Not unusual to look nothing like your freshman year ID photo in person.

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

#175

Post by topkai22 »

asdff wrote: post #169
chillwaves wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You mean for people, like me, who know you can ask, feel no shame doing so, and believe it won’t hurt their reputation by doing so? Oh, and possibly pay for expensive third party testing.

It would be better to just provide tons of padding to everyone.

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

#176

Post by Talinx »

adrr wrote: post #64
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...…

Just get a monitor that supports Picture in Picture use two computers instead of one.

Or a HDMI switcher and switch between your main PC and an (easily hideable) Raspberry Pi.

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

#177

Post by forgotmypw17 »

hansvm wrote: post #156
powersnail wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> What kind of cheat does it prevent? Not much. When lockdowns first started I remember seeing _tons_ of first and second hand accounts of all the ways anti-cheating software failed when exposed to the real world. > 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? It can be a little tricky. We put…

Next step: Webcam device which simulates student watching the screen :)

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

#180

Post by iso947 »

chillwaves wrote: post #162
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I’m employing someone I don’t care if they look up a few things in google or ask for occasional help. If they take 2 days rather than 2 hours though, that’s a problem.
Post reply on HN