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Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

baneproctoring.com

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Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#81

Recent gatech OMSCS graduate here. I fail to recognize any real issue with proctoring. I have used proctortrack and honorlock. * proctoring software can be installed before an exam and uninstalled afterwards. It doesn’t need to stay on your pc/browser, and its activation is very obvious. I have no info about permanent security issues caused by such software. * what proctoring does is mostly recording video and audio…

1. The software should’ve never existed, it’s a testimony to the failure of our education system.

2. You are far luckier than most when it comes to your circumstances, i have seen myself people failing exams for similar mishaps to yours.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#82
post #2

We employed the method of mixing the order of questions, not giving question titles, and having a pool of subtly different questions (a negation or a different constant slipped in) in order to vastly increase the amount of necessary communication to collaborate. We had the students turn on their webcams just to discourage them sitting in the same room, which basically would negate our former efforts. Neither did we f…

Especially at universities I don't see the reason for invasive e-proctoring. When I was studying (physics, early 2000s in Germany), we didn't even have a honor system, we had the assumption that everybody is there to learn something. If you cheat, you harm yourself. Progress was assessed by weekly excercise sheets where you were encouraged to work together with others, and to learn how to use the library to find solu…

When a university grants a degree, they are attesting that the student has demonstrated mastery of the subject matter, because that’s important to both employers and postgraduate programs. Without that it’s harder to justify paying a university’s price, or spending such a large fraction of your adult life there.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure about curving the grades. It creates a level of adversarial competition between students that I don’t think is healthy in an academic environment. Sometimes it can be necessary, but it’s not fair to punish people for having better peers than last year.

In most cases, at least for medium and large courses (over 30) the curve is calibrating the exam contents more than the peer group.

I agree with you on that point, especially with extremely large sample sizes (think national exams like SATs or A-Levels).

My point is more that universities (in my opinion) should hope to foster a cooperative rather than ruthlessly competitive learning environment, and students know that curves mean that there’s effectively a quota of good grades available, and they’re competing with their friends for them. I feel this massively impacts peer learning dynamics.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#84
I wonder to what degree is the cheating epidemics rooted in the fact that we have made a college title something of a Golden Calf. Or at least Bronze Calf with a thin gold finishing. (Even idol vendors cheat...)

Too many people feel the push to have a degree even if their capabilities (not just raw intelligence, but things like grit) aren't on the necessary level. Then they resort to cheating.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#85
post #2

We employed the method of mixing the order of questions, not giving question titles, and having a pool of subtly different questions (a negation or a different constant slipped in) in order to vastly increase the amount of necessary communication to collaborate. We had the students turn on their webcams just to discourage them sitting in the same room, which basically would negate our former efforts. Neither did we f…

This semester all my exams are open note, no proctoring. I think it is harder for professors to write a good exam this way (they need to make the questions things that test understanding instead of just recall.) I’m certainly doing way better with this method, but I think I am still learning the subject just as well as I would in the “old” method of stressful proctoring and memorization.

It seems like with software, you could easily write math questions with different inputs, as you suggest (in fact, our homework software already did that for math last semester), but it seems that those tools are not built into the testing software so much. It definitely seems like a solvable issue though!

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#86
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely anecdotal and not in the US: My experience as a TA are quite different, though this in in Europe. Especially with the algorithmic courses there was quite a lot of copying since there were multiple TA's and they thought we didn't compare notes. Several of them got reported (you get a mark, two marks is suspension, three is out) and I know of at least one case who got caught again at a different course and w…

Another anecdote (Britain): I was a part-time visiting lecturer in computing, paid by the lesson. Cheating was rife; I often got duplicate submission of coding exercises. Scoring was mainly by coursework, not exams. I asked my colleagues what to do about it. They said: 1. You can ignore it. 2. You can report it; you will be accused of racism (the majority of the class were people with brown skin). You will be require…

That's a very sad state of affairs. I think that's partly due universities having indeed taken the easy and lazy path of making the least waves possible while collecting tuition fees. (2) is also a product of the current climate in society but that's a wider anbd bigger issue.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#87
When I was TAing last year we had to proctor the students via zoom (trust me its not fun for anyone). Quite frankly I found different professors approached things in different ways. All the exams were made open book, because its impossible to figure out if people are looking at their notes.

One of the profs decided to make it impossible to cheat by basically making the exam so hard that even the A+ students would have a hard time solving it. This worked well in preventing cheating because for the A+ students to collaborate with others they would need spare time. On the other hand it left lot of students very demoralized.

Some of the other profs came up with question randomization schemes. So the assesment tool would shuffle questions for different students. People were still on discord channels but to not much effect. Of course this required that the professors (or the TAs) were conversant with basic programming skills.

For humanities oriented assessments however, I know most of the profs chose to do things via project work (it's a bit hard to cheat when writing essays. You can't possibly have the same argument as someone else so...)

One thing I can't help but wonder is that I realized when we moved things online we missed out a lot on student interaction. Students were generally far more aggressive for their own grades, often at the cost of other students. Furthermore, I found students were far more ready to abuse the teaching staff than when we were physically there. Conversely, teaching staff was far more strict and stressed out than before. I can't help but wonder if the same courses were conducted face to face whether there would be more kindness all round.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#88
post #16
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did this through the exam software (Browser-Based). Everything not checked automatically (multiple choice) was sorted by question in the backend. We (the examiners) had all the information. It was just hidden from the students.

Glad that you had an automatic system going, but most universities don't have one and can't fund its development, and wanting to shift this burden to professors is unreasonable.

You are misinformed. Moodle (LMS) and STACK (maths quiz system with symbolic comparison etc.) are open source and fit that description.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#89
post #29
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your stance is that it’s unaffordable for a university to spend a small amount of money on randomized browser tests, therefore they should spend a large amount of money on intrusive spying software?

I don't believe a public institution would be able to come up with a system like this that works reasonably and have it developed in a reasonable amount of time within a reasonable budget.

Your belief is contradicted by reality. For example: https://stack-assessment.org/

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#90
post #8

I took a course recently and the final exam had this kind of eproctoring setup where I would have to install proprietary software, show the examiner around my room, under my desk and so on. I did not take the exam.

I took a test like this in the bathroom. Real easy to clear the room.
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