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College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software

voiceofsandiego.org

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Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software

#81

Post by CamperBob2 »

iandanforth wrote: post #52

A few points: Their "powerful AI engine" is almost certainly just humans. It might have a few off-the-shelf components like face detection but most of what they claim to do is just so easy to outsource that almost all companies do it. If there is any delay between the system observing a suspect behaviour and the student being told to correct it then they are definitely using humans. An institution using a service lik…

Or you could just set the speed limit appropriately, at a level that most drivers will naturally conform to.

This optimizes for both expediency and safety, but, sadly, not for revenue, or for readily-available probable cause to pull over essentially anyone the police want to pull over.

Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software

#82

Post by primroot »

This reminds of what Filtered.AI does. Except that it does it for some sort of automated job interview. When interviewing through them, I had to install a Chrome Plugin that recorded audio, video, and browsing activity at all moments. But I guess they're just trying to fix the software engineer interview process.

Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software

#83

Post by MengerSponge »

Balgair wrote: post #67
pdkl95 wrote: post #53

> At the self-described “heart” of the company’s monitoring software is Monitor AI, a “powerful artificial intelligence engine” that collects facial detection data [...] to identify “patterns and anomalies associated with cheating.” > "... people who have some sort of facial disfigurement have special challenges; they might get flagged because their face has an unexpected geometry.” So this company is extrapolating "…

> This is just phrenology ... It's probably worse. I'd bet that in addition to humans with non-'normal' heads, it would also flag the blind, deaf, sufferers of Tourette syndrome, certain muslim women, bearded men, humans of african descent, humans of asian descent, etc. > even if the calipers[1] are replaced with a bunch of linear algebra. I love this line. If your head does not fit the space of eigen-heads, throw an…

Yup https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/07/1006132/software...

Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software

#84

Post by driverdan »

primroot wrote: post #82

This reminds of what Filtered.AI does. Except that it does it for some sort of automated job interview. When interviewing through them, I had to install a Chrome Plugin that recorded audio, video, and browsing activity at all moments. But I guess they're just trying to fix the software engineer interview process.

Gross. If someone asked me to install spyware for a job interview I'd blacklist the company as a place I'd never want to work.

Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software

#85

Post by njarboe »

0xffff2 wrote: post #79
jbob2000 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My partner recently finished her PhD and has started working as a medical writer. During her academic career, it was beat into her head don’t plagiarize, everything must be yours . In her first review after a few weeks on the job, her manager says that she takes too long to do her work; they just need her to take what the client says verbatim, fact check it, and then slap it in a document. She was treating her work l…

Why would she take a job as a glorified typist after completing a Phd? Why is the company hiring a Phd to be a glorified typist? Academia was never meant to be a jobs training program. The fact that many students treat it as such is not really the fault of the institutions.

Unfortunately each faculty member produces about 30 PhD students in their career (one per year). The number of faculty positions has been close to flat since the 1970's. So one in 30 PhD's will get to be faculty member. She probably took the job because she wants/needs a job and the company likes to have the status of PhDs doing the work.

Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software

#86

Post by nlh »

I found myself brewing with rage while reading this article. The approach of closely inspecting a student's words & physical actions while taking a test just feels...dated. Ancient. Anachronistic. Embarrassing.

In the real world of 2020+, almost everyone has a portable Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in their pocket. Let people use calculators. Heck, let people use Wikipedia! If they copy an incorrect fact from Wikipedia, well, that's their problem and penalize them for that.

Education needs to be considered in the context of the world we live in. If you want to test students, then develop ways of TESTING students - move to live oral exams. Written long-form essays. Develop education techniques that USE the tools we're blessed to have around us instead of fearing them.

I don't have all the answers as I haven't thought about this deeply enough. But I've got to imagine there are ways of testing learning & knowledge that aren't based on fact memorization & regurgitation or performing calculations in your head that can easily be done on a calculator.

Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software

#87

Post by whatshisface »

iandanforth wrote: post #52

A few points: Their "powerful AI engine" is almost certainly just humans. It might have a few off-the-shelf components like face detection but most of what they claim to do is just so easy to outsource that almost all companies do it. If there is any delay between the system observing a suspect behaviour and the student being told to correct it then they are definitely using humans. An institution using a service lik…

This is getting really far off topic, but the solution is clearly to make speeding fines a "dollars per mile per hour, per hour" system. It should scale continuously both with speed over the limit and with time spent speeding. Programmers who focus on discrete systems are too prone to forget about real analysis. ;)

Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software

#88

Post by searchableguy »

I curious if proactive measures to curb cheating like inthe parent post results in lesser people cheating outside of college environment.

Any controlled studies?

Are college students more ethical and honest than their non college counterparts?

Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software

#89

Post by RC_ITR »

gruez wrote: post #80
mcphage wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People don't seem to have a problem with strictly enforced rules in finance. eg. "your bank account can't below zero without triggering a overdraft". I think a lot of people have problems with strictly enforced rules in finance. Especially when banks re-order daily transactions in order to maximize overdraft fees.

>I think a lot of people have problems with strictly enforced rules in finance They have problems with it because the rules cost them money, not because it's hard to understand or rigidly enforced. If the rules just resulted in a "transaction declined" they wouldn't really care either way. For instance, I don't think anyone thinks that it's unreasonable for your debit card to get declined if you don't have enough mon…

I think you missed the reference to reordering.

In the case referenced, there were 3 transactions on one day, 2 of $10 & 1 of $20. User has $20 in account. Do you take the true chronological order of transactions (10/10/20) & charge 1 fee, or do you go highest to lowest (20/10/10) & charge 2 fees?

A bank executive would likely argue why it's 'fair' to charge 2 fees because a business day is the relevant period for a bank (closing at end of day, etc.) & that method of accounting is mentioned on page 85 of the checking account TOS that a user signed.

Many consumers would argue that the bank's relevant period is meaningless, especially in the age of computers. They would also argue that it is unfair to lay out complex rules like this in an opaque way because of the asymmetrical information advantage that a bank has. They wouldn't complain that the rule was enforced per se, they would complain that the rule (which is plainly anti-consumer) exists.

Same is true of this cheating stuff - I think in general, students want a fair platform for grading. They just want that platform to be actually fair.

Re: College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software

#90

Post by kart23 »

Voice of San Diego has been doing some great reporting. This is yet another example.

Profs who use these things are examples of teachers who just don't care enough to revamp their courses to involve more project, critical-thinking assignments, or exams where cheating won't help. They don't want to do the work to adjust the course for remote learning, and just give the course that they always teach, and do whatever it takes to get as close to the in-person exam that they used to have.

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