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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

#211

Post by colechristensen »

wccrawford wrote: post #6

IMO, the problem isn't the software. It's how humans are using the software. The software itself shouldn't have any control over the student's grades. A person should have to review the flags and actually find some wrongdoing. Not just push 'yes' and walk away.

No the problem is software.

You give people a tool and they’ll use it. Taking a measurement changes the subject being measured, showing a metric changes the judgment of the watcher. You have to be an extremely thoughtful and interested person to be shown a metric and have it not color your opinion if it has no value.

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

#212

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

technion wrote: post #204
throwaway201103 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If you'd ever done homework or study at all, you don't only have Linux.

Speak for yourself; at my school, even the class that used C# worked with mono.

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

#213

Post by interestica »

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…

What's most insane to me with a degree system: Everyone who has the same 'degree' could have had wildly different classes. What's the point? Maybe we need to dial it back to more of a 'certificate' based approach? Instead of the letters-beside-your-name, list the completed certificates. And this also gives the opportunity to better upgrade skills in the specific problem area. And maybe it can encourage more interdisciplinary study.

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

#214

Post by KMag »

searchableguy wrote: post #88

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?

> results in lesser people cheating outside of college environment

What metric are you using to determine which people are "lesser"? Less educated? Less motivated? Less intelligent?

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

#215

Post by bigger_cheese »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #122
mercurialshark wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> move to live oral exams. Written long-form essays. Yes. The application of principles, concepts and information is not terribly difficult to test in either a timed or take home setting.

Live oral exams can be an effective method of assessment. They can also be confounded by the testee's charisma. (See: any discussion of programming interviews, which are live oral exams.[1]) They do have the advantage of degrading fairly gracefully from in-person examination to remote examination. They're also tremendously expensive compared to a test given en masse. [1] Oral exams in a school setting would feel much…

My Engineering Thesis had an oral component it was legitimately of the most nerve-wracking things I ever went through. I had to spend about half an hour in a room with 3 professors getting absolutely grilled over everything from basic theoretical knowledge to detailed technical nuances specific to my experiment. At times it felt like they were deliberately trying to trip me up by asking leading questions and trying to steer me in the wrong direction.

It would be very, very hard to bluff your way through something like this with Charisma alone. You have to be damn sure you know your topic in and out. For once off exams before graduation I think it is acceptable but I'd pity students who had to go through a grilling like this every couple of months.

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

#217

Post by Analemma_ »

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…

> 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.

In defense of the students, they're just following the incentive gradient in front of them.

For all the romantic notions about how college should be optimized for exploration and "real learning", only a small percentage of people actually want that. And that's fine! Not everyone needs to be that sort of person; you should be able to have a reasonably comfortable career even if you aren't.

But the world is set up right now such that, without a university degree, you fall through the cracks and it's game over. In lots of high-earning jobs, a degree is either de jure required (law, medicine), or de facto required as most major employers won't look at you without one (finance, most tech stuff). So universities become degree mills because that's what the market demands, and students are only there so they can get a job afterward.

To fix the universities, you have to fix the incentives.

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

#218

Post by 542458 »

da_big_ghey wrote: post #184
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #139

I wonder if all disciplines have this problem. Most of my engineering higher level classes were open everything not electronic. If you don't know how to tackle the problem, you're not going to finish on time.

I remember some math classes that did it well: send students home with original assignments to do proofs. I guess it's theoretically open to having someone else do the assignment, but so are lots of other things. Because I could just sit and attack the problems like problems, without massive time pressure and my every action monitored, I enjoyed those assignments and exams. Similarly, in CS classes, I always enjoyed…

“Original assignments” as in everybody has a different assignment? If so, dang that sounds like a huge time investment to create and grade for the prof and TAs.

WRT legal consequences for cheating: I mean, you can get kicked out of university. That’s a loss of thousands of dollars invested. And as a TA, if I knew I could be called in to testify in court every time I caught a student cheating... I’d never call it out. I don’t have time for that! And that still wouldn’t change that we’d have to be on the lookout for cheating.

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

#219

Post by 542458 »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #216

This sounds like a nightmare. Just use all this time we have to give 1:1 verbal exams to test knowledge and gaps.

Then you’re mainly testing oral English skills.

Also, in most subjects I could mark an exam in a fifth of the time it took a student to write - whereas with oral exams it takes at least as long as the exam took. Quintupling the load on TAs and profs sounds like a raw deal.

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

#220

Post by cambalache »

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?

Because it is another way for OP to say "brown"
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