College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by JadeNB » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:37 AM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #106

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…

> Their "powerful AI engine" is almost certainly just humans. I wonder how parents feel that an anonymous foreign, most probably male, can watch their daughter in her room working on her exams and she can't opt-out else she'll be treated like a criminal. Wonder if at some point we'll find a zip file shared among employees with screenshots of students from one of these outsourced proctoring vendors.

> I wonder how parents feel that an anonymous foreign, most probably male, can watch their daughter in her room working on her exams and she can't opt-out else she'll be treated like a criminal.

Why does foreign matter?

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

#202

Post by lazyasciiart » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:41 AM UTC

waterhouse wrote: post #175

philsnow wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a real difference, in both actual safety and perceived safety, between divided roads and undivided roads with the same number of lanes. Wider lanes seem (and are) safer than narrower lanes. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming for more. Reasonable drivers conform their driving habits to the environment. Unreasonable drivers should not be allowed to drive.

> There is a real difference, in both actual safety and perceived safety, between divided roads and undivided roads ... Wider lanes seem (and are) safer than narrower lanes. > [Wiki] Traffic calming can include the following engineering measures ... Narrowing traffic lanes ... Converting one-way streets into two-way streets forces opposing traffic into close proximity, which requires more careful driving What is happ…

> If everyone drives as fast as they can while meeting some perceived safety level, then does that mean these efforts are unlikely to affect safety and merely to slow everyone down?

No. It means that people are usually wrong when they judge the safety level of their driving speed on a nice clear road that happens to have pedestrians next to it or trying to cross it, but are more accurate at judging safety when they are primed to expect obstacles, steering challenges, other actors moving not in parallel with them on the road itself.

https://www.ite.org/technical-resources/traffic-calming/

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

#203

Post by Anon1096 » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:42 AM UTC

pushrax wrote: post #196

Anon1096 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most proctoring software that records the student would trivially root out the cheating method you mentioned about reading aloud the questions to someone else. They usually record audio as well, and if the software detects significant microphone input, will flag the test.

Just mute your mic in hardware?

A lot of proctoring software will flag you for that as well. Then when the professor reviews the footage it will be obvious that you're talking to someone off screen.

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

#204

Post by technion » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:42 AM UTC

throwaway201103 wrote: post #183

low_key wrote: post #108

I took an online class in 2015 that used Proctorio. Even at that time the proctoring/anti-cheat software was a nightmare. I was semi-accused of cheating because of "anomalies" during one of my tests. It was quickly cleared up by talking to the professor. The software is a privacy disaster and any computer that has had any of this spyware installed should be considered compromised. I kept a separate hard drive and wou…

What if you only have linux computers at home and can't run their spyware?

I've never dealt with this software but when I did my CS degree, several of the applications we worked with throughout the course were distributed as Windows binaries. If you'd ever done homework or study at all, you don't only have Linux.

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

#205

Post by csa » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:43 AM UTC

schoolornot wrote: post #193

colechristensen wrote: post #189

Fuck grades. They were already a problem in universities and this is their final and worst form. University systems have the major problem that a significant portion of students are only there for a degree, and their participation is playing the game in order to get that piece of paper, and the GPA number rating them. The core of this problem is the question “will this be on the exam?” Testing of course can be an imp…

Got a BS/MS in CompSci in my twenties when I was immature as a person, now doing online classes for a non-tech major. As an "adult student" the system seems 10x more broken than it was when I was a high school graduate. Being young and tuition-free it was easy to grind through the material just worrying about the next test in the next class. Now, here I am as a tricenarian trying to relax and understand hundreds of p…

I agree with a lot of your comment, and I basically think large swathes of education are just fundamentally broken for a variety of unfortunate reasons.

That said, I would like to answer this question:

> Why are there still weeding-out classes?

In majors that are oversubscribed (e.g., pre-med, CS, etc.), these classes weed out the people who like the idea of the major/career more than the actual work involved. Good weeder courses (and I think that these exist) allow later classes in the major path to be more focused on the capable and motivated learners rather than baby-sitting the less-capable and less-motivated.

There are two reasons why this is desirable:

1. There is no way that a department could get through the same amount of material if they had to accommodate the less motivated and less capable in all of the courses.

2. Your department will get a reputation in the field for having students who are capable of X, Y, and Z.

Typically, if someone can't make it in the weeder classes at their school and they still want to enter that career path, then maybe it's better to go to a less competitive school. This sounds elitist, and maybe it is, but that's the workaround in our current system.

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

#206

Post by KallDrexx » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #117

ege_erdogan wrote: post #7

I see online synchronous 1-2 hour exams as a mistaken result of the "let's emulate in-person teaching in a remote setting" mindset. You don't succeed in remote teaching and learning by trying to make it as close as possible to the in-person setup. You have to treat it as an entirely different problem. Consider the synchronous exam. It is a perfect method of grading in-person. It is hard to cheat and all people take t…

> You don't succeed in remote teaching and learning by trying to make it as close as possible to the in-person setup. You have to treat it as an entirely different problem. I agree at a high level, but practically speaking it's not realistic to expect colleges to completely reinvent their entire teaching systems for a temporary, 1-2 year remote learning period. Now that we've been dealing with COVID for almost an ent…

> I agree at a high level, but practically speaking it's not realistic to expect colleges to completely reinvent their entire teaching systems for a temporary, 1-2 year remote learning period.

I don't really understand what you mean by this though. I graduated college in 2007, and all throughout my time from 2003-2007 I had half my courses online, including the quizzes and tests.

Online courses and asynchronous testing isn't something new to Covid, colleges have been doing it for well over a decade now.

Yes you had people try and cheat their way through asynchronous testing by having friends take them earlier, but why is that more of a big deal now than it was previously?

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

#207

Post by Balgair » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

schoolornot wrote: post #193

colechristensen wrote: post #189

Fuck grades. They were already a problem in universities and this is their final and worst form. University systems have the major problem that a significant portion of students are only there for a degree, and their participation is playing the game in order to get that piece of paper, and the GPA number rating them. The core of this problem is the question “will this be on the exam?” Testing of course can be an imp…

Got a BS/MS in CompSci in my twenties when I was immature as a person, now doing online classes for a non-tech major. As an "adult student" the system seems 10x more broken than it was when I was a high school graduate. Being young and tuition-free it was easy to grind through the material just worrying about the next test in the next class. Now, here I am as a tricenarian trying to relax and understand hundreds of p…

It sounds like you are in a pre-med class?

My SO once TA'd for a pre-med class. Holy hell, the students were something else as compared to other disciplines. They literally would not leave my SO's office until they had argued up their grades on every assignment. My SO had to get security to escort them out, I am not joking. If they forgot, say, to multiply by 2 and then got the answer wrong, they still argued for full credit despite the very clear error.

There was no shame whatsoever. We figured the other Profs and TAs just didn't want to deal with them, so the pre-meds learned to just wait out the graders to get their grades.

To be clear, this was maybe ~15% of the class, but still a lot of students. The Prof was no help with this either and just advised to pass them along. What a mess.

I understand that med school admissions is about as cut-throat as it gets, but my lord! It's these pressure cookers that lead to MD burnout and mis-selection. After all those shameless hours in undergrad, then med school hell, you finally get to practice on people just looking for their preferred opioid.

Sorry to hear about the mess you are in, but you are right, it's systemic.

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

#208

Post by csa » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:47 AM UTC

JadeNB wrote: post #201

908B64B197 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their "powerful AI engine" is almost certainly just humans. I wonder how parents feel that an anonymous foreign, most probably male, can watch their daughter in her room working on her exams and she can't opt-out else she'll be treated like a criminal. Wonder if at some point we'll find a zip file shared among employees with screenshots of students from one of these outsourced proctoring vendors.

> I wonder how parents feel that an anonymous foreign, most probably male, can watch their daughter in her room working on her exams and she can't opt-out else she'll be treated like a criminal. Why does foreign matter?

>Why does foreign matter?

No or weak legal recourse in the event of wrongdoing being discovered.

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

#209

Post by ZephyrBlu » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:54 AM UTC

ouid wrote: post #185

low_key wrote: post #108

I took an online class in 2015 that used Proctorio. Even at that time the proctoring/anti-cheat software was a nightmare. I was semi-accused of cheating because of "anomalies" during one of my tests. It was quickly cleared up by talking to the professor. The software is a privacy disaster and any computer that has had any of this spyware installed should be considered compromised. I kept a separate hard drive and wou…

The main problem 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.

> The main problem 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

Unfortunately I think most of the world sees them as one thing :/.

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

#210

Post by 8organicbits » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

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…

I've seen something related actually play out 20 years back. My dad needed to drive through a particular toll booth multiple times one weekend. He figured out that same weekend you could go pretty fast and the ezpass would still register. So he went fast every time.

A week later he got a half dozen letters in the mail all at once:

* warning do not speed * warning (+fine) * final warning (+fine) * ezpass revocation (+fine) * etc.

I think he ended up arguing that he didn't get the first warning before the others, and they agreed to waive the fines and roll back to the first warning. I.E. human judgement applied after the fines "fixed" the issue.

In any case: toll booths are a workplace, there's people there, go slow.