Burn the universities to the ground.
College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software
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Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> How about writing open-book tests in ways that are impossible to cheat on if you don't understand the material? You've had almost a year to adapt. So in a remote test situation, explain how this is possible without use of these software. I can think of many scenarios where a second person can be in the room and doing the exam.
What stopped people from having someone else do their take home tests before the pandemic? On a more constructive note, it seems pretty simple to require some portion of responses to reference the lectures such that only someone who attended the class in this semester would be able to correctly answer, for example "use the method we discussed in the first half of lecture 3, use the third of the four numbers I told yo…
>> What stopped people from having someone else do their take home tests before the pandemic?
Nothing except these tests were not take home prior to COVID.
>> On a more constructive note, it seems pretty simple to require some portion of responses to reference the lectures such that only someone who attended the class in this semester would be able to correctly answer, for example "use the method we discussed in the first half of lecture 3, use the third of the four numbers I told you to write down that day as variable y, if you weren't in class that day instead do X" If a test comes back and someone claims to not remember the material from any classes but still got everything right, that warrants scrutiny. If someone currently enrolled in the class is helping a person cheat, you can use standard anti-cheating techniques like comparing answers.
So you are expecting the student to remember 100% of what they heard in the online classes? Or more likely the student would write down these details and handle it to the cheater to use during the take home exam. Or the cheater would "do X". In most cases the one doing the helping is not a current student, so it doesn't help.
I've passed college classes not attending any classes. Doing assignments, exams, and mid-terms. So would I be penalized for not attending classes?
Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software
#23I just got rid of my exams for my deep learning courses once the pandemic hit. It doesn't make sense to have these traditional exams with remote education.
Boom. That’s it. It’s not cheating that’s the problem—that would be an epitome of a red herring. Emulation of a traditional environment with online learning software is not how it was intended to be used, nor is it practical.
Even when I was in college, the number of traditional courses serving additional content through Moodle/Blackboard was stupid high. I understand honor system and all that jazz. But really, if the ~15-some athletes in a business 200-level section are going to gather in the library to cheat together...then maybe the quiz should have been delivered traditionally. At least then, I wouldn’t have to hear the half-a-class rant from the professor about what losers the cheaters are.
Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software
#24Burn the universities to the ground.
Interesting strategy. What after that?
Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software
#25The thing that has always frustrated me about anti-cheating/anti-plagiarism software is that it almost always only hurts people that did something by accident or unintentionally. When I took the one kubernetes certification exam as part of an old job, you used software like this and at one point I leaned too close to the screen and the proctor couldn't see my face and that got me flagged.
People that want to cheat or game the system will find ways, it isn't hard to do. In undergrad we setup a copy of the code checking software that our department used so that we could share code without it getting flagged as copies. I'm sure there are ways to game these systems too if you are motivated enough.
One of the issues is also just academia being so hyper-focused on thinking everyone is there to become an academic which is not the case for the vast majority of people. So these exams and the guidelines for student evaluation is grounded in that expectation instead of the reality.
Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software
#26I'm a professor in the humanities so I can write tests that make it harder to cheat than some other fields. I cringe whenever I hear someone using these invasive kinds of software. There has to be a better way than making students install spyware.
> I can write tests that make it harder to cheat than some other fields
This might be my prejudice speaking (I studied math) but isn't this basically because grading is that much more subjective? So it would cut both ways, harder to cheat but also less objective / impartial assuming no cheating.
Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Certainly I had many take-home exams in college and grad school. (Of course, I had many proctored in-person exams too.) So one solution is to switch to open book take home exams as much as possible. The other frankly is to have an honor code and, at some point, recognize that some people will cheat but they're mostly hurting themselves.
Scholarships, internships and grad school spots are a scarce resource. Students who cheat can secure a higher GPA with less effort. That effort can be redirected towards looking for internships and improving grad school applications. So I fail to see how cheaters are only “hurting themselves”. Morality aside, if you pursue a cheating strategy your pay-off will be much higher when we consider the scarcity of resources…
That's why I wrote "mostly." Some reasonable measures to deter casual cheating may well be worthwhile. At some point though you draw a line where you start hurting honest students more than cheaters. You're not going to prevent it 100% absent draconian measures.
Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software
#28From the many students I know, I can tell you that cheating is rampant in online learning. The average GPA has gone up 0.3 points at my alma mater. I don't think people understand just how widespread it is. This software isn't ideal but there's no good solutions here short of major rethink of how these classes, and possible all of the college, is structured.
Certainly I had many take-home exams in college and grad school. (Of course, I had many proctored in-person exams too.) So one solution is to switch to open book take home exams as much as possible. The other frankly is to have an honor code and, at some point, recognize that some people will cheat but they're mostly hurting themselves.
> recognize that some people will cheat but they're mostly hurting themselves.
This assumes that what you learn in university is the useful part, not the grade or the allocation of time that could be used for hackathons, projects, clubs, or internships.
Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software
#29From the many students I know, I can tell you that cheating is rampant in online learning. The average GPA has gone up 0.3 points at my alma mater. I don't think people understand just how widespread it is. This software isn't ideal but there's no good solutions here short of major rethink of how these classes, and possible all of the college, is structured.
Make exams that are harder to cheat. For example:
- oral exams via video call
- written exams where students are distributed over a larger area (e.g. the university rents a warehouse for the examination time) so that the COVID-19 spreading risk is nevertheless kept very small.
Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software
#30I have never once seen this software meaningfully work in any reasonable manner other than be a massive privacy violation and be a massive waste of time for the GSIs being forced to go through a timestamped log of every time a student blinked. How about writing open-book tests in ways that are impossible to cheat on if you don't understand the material? You've had almost a year to adapt. Why outsource student PII to…
>> How about writing open-book tests in ways that are impossible to cheat on if you don't understand the material? You've had almost a year to adapt. So in a remote test situation, explain how this is possible without use of these software. I can think of many scenarios where a second person can be in the room and doing the exam.
And yet I had many open book tests/assignments decades ago before there were even personal computers. Technology doesn't solve everything and some things aren't worth trying to solve 100%.