College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software

These 'anti-cheat' softwares don't actually prevent cheating. One of my teachers tried to use one called MyPerfectice (thankfully we persuaded her to switch). I think most of these are built without any understanding of the constraints set up by the browser. I don't know about the others but MyPerfectice gives you 4 or 5 window going out of focus events before making your attempt invalid. The funny thing is that they allow students to upload files from their system and allow focus to be lost during that. So if you click the upload button, it opens the OS file selection window and you are then free from all the checks they set up. Open a new window and cheat as much as you like.

I'm wondering if it's possible to just do a custom build of Firefox/Chrome that does not trigger these out of focus events.

Coming to the video streams, just record a 1-2 minute video of yourself staring into your screen from your webcam and loop it through OBS. No one will notice anything. For MyPerfectice, it is even easier, they have their camera controls exposed as unobfuscated global objects. So you can essentially do something like `camera.stop()` and the webcam light turns off.

I was a TA for the department head in CS, and he gave us free reign to handle grading and such however we felt was best. More important things to do, I guess :)

We had Homework, Quizzes, and Tests, 33.33 each. Homework was graded like you said. Quizzes and Tests were open notes but on a relatively tight timescale. If people missed a homework, they could turn it in late for some linearly scaled penalty. If they missed a quiz or test question, they could come in and demonstrate/defend a solution off the cuff during office hours for 70% credit or something similarly high.

Students loved it. They no longer had to stress about getting an A, and they could instead focus on understanding the material, since that was the easiest way to (eventually) get the points.

I will say, though, this strategy was very time consuming for a large class. It also requires the TAs to have mastery of the material, which (shocker) is unfortunately not all that common.

> I got one teacher to chat off the record and he basically said to "get through it." What a disservice to students. Why are there still weeding-out classes? How many doctors, surgeons, programmers, engineers would there be in the world if it wasn't for these classes? The Montessori education system and the like seem so superior. College should be pass/fail.

Honestly, that's typical of most Biology lower division courses. The theory goes 'if you cannot pass this, you have no chance of the MCAT.' which may be true but some of us had no desire to be a physician. Someone replied to such an absurd structure explained to me that's 'how the system works.' Many of us that finally passed would not have anything directly to do with medicine and would AT BEST be considered ancillary service status to Medicine, and we were not amused. I personally will only take Industry-centric certifications, and I will never consider going back for anything degree related.

Google really is making the smartest move out of all the FAANG corps in that regard, by placing grater value on their own rather than degrees.

With that said, that's really what its there to do, isolate those who can commit to high loads of dated and rather antiqued (my near College credit HS Biology graded us on Kingdoms as Domains were already well established in the University lectures I attended) rote learning the best and 'thining the heard' for the upper-divisions which were super-capped when I was in University as all fields in Biology were impacted.

I at least thought now with Online learning being the default for so many it's sad to see the tech still hasn't solved this problem of mainly distribution/class seats.

I think it's one of the 2 elite schools in the UK (Cambridge or Oxford) that have an actual in-person skill assessment for your final rather than a test and most of your grade depends on that. My Inorganic Chemistry professor said his final exams were always the most preferable, albeit impractical, way to go about it. As a regular at his office hour lectures, I wish I had the pleasure of seeing what that may have been like.

> My SO once TA'd for a pre-med class. Holy hell, the students were something else as compared to other disciplines.

Been there, seen that as a Biology major just trying to get my foot in the door to get a graded paper during office hours. It's really sad now that I think about it as an adult that left the Industry long ago, you have no idea the weight on those kids shoulders to make it pass the openly touted 'filter' process, be it self-imposed or from their family. Its a sad reality how few end up using it all in these 2 horrible job markets for young inexperienced graduates.

My heart goes out to anyone who has to graduate in this Market, 2008 was bad but I think this may end up being worse as automation wasn't as big of threat as it was in 2008 as it is now in 2020 with COVID.

PS: Also, its well known amongst Biology majors that adderall abuse doesn't just start in Medschool, its a well established habit by undergrad possibly even the HS level for some.

I have taught at multiple honor-code institutions (and still do). It does not prevent cheating. However, it shifts focus: I can go about my teaching life starting from an assumption that students are not cheaters—and I'm personally convinced that most aren't.

The flipside is that when you do catch a cheating case, you completely throw the book at them. It's legitimately easier to cheat under an honor system, if that's what you're wanting to do... so my assumption is that if we catch you at it, it's likely part of a pattern, and if we catch you multiple times the pattern is irreformable. It is not uncommon at honor-code institutions to expel students on the second offence (sometimes even on the first).

I do think that cheating is less prevalent at my institution (and my previous institution) than it is in the larger university population.