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Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

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Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#161
post #142
post #138

An adjacent issue, not from a privacy standpoint, but from an "inappropriate use of tech" standpoint, is anti-plagiarism software. A relative of mine recently took an English course, and constantly had to lobby for re-evaluation of low grades caused by false positives with Turnitin[1]. The issues were varied, but the most frustrating one was that passages in her paper that were quoted and footnoted were marked as "so…

In turnitin’s defence, in my recollection their training material explicitly and repeatedly tells you not to do this - that a positive turnitin result is not the same as plagiarism, and that all positives should be manually reviewed. The student-facing side of it can be bad, as it errs on the side of extreme caution. When I (as a TA) had to mark dozens and dozens of papers pre-screening for obviously copied paragraph…

I do agree that instructors hold a fair amount of responsibility for using the tool right.

But the tool is shite. It misses some very basic stuff. Like "stuff in quotes followed by a footnote/citation" is copied, by definition, on purpose.

It also notes things like missing commas as if it's 100% authoritative. Even though the passage in question passed Grammarly, Word, etc. There's no notion of nuance or suggestion, just "right/wrong".

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real story here is that cheating is rampant, everyone knows it, and that the universities (as opposed to individual professors) are not prepared to do what is necessary to stop it. I'm speaking, of course, of measures like expulsion. Too much of a hit to the bottom line, too much messy litigation, and too much bad PR. All of this is another way of making your point, which is that the core mission of universities…

Again, I think the problem is elsewhere. Where I'm from(Poland) cheating is rampant and universities have absolutely no trouble kicking people out over it. Got caught cheating? Good bye, apply again next year. It doesn't lead to litigation or messy PR. Maybe it's because all universities are free to attend so no one can argue that they paid for something they aren't getting - all they are losing is their own time.

I'm not sure that would fly in the Western world.

Poland has a completely different culture from Western Europe or the US. It's rapidly Westernizing, but it's still a world of difference. I think it's a pity. I prefer Slavic cultures to Western. One of the things which bugs me most is how modern Poland is starting to have the same surface, insincere friendliness as the West.

- EU membership is clearly a net win, but doesn't help preserve Polish culture.

- Many of the cultural differences are not recognized on either side -- people say the same things sometimes, but it takes deep digging to understand that they mean very different things.

- Historically, Poles also looked up to and tried to emulate the West, which is part of the reason the culture is shifting so rapidly.

So the change was rapid, but far from complete.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're 0-2 on those assumptions, though.

Seriously. Even assuming those things--I would say the program I went through was very relevant and I don't think cheating happened very often. It was a really small program and everybody got to know everyone else. So while I can't say for certain, I never saw cheating amongst my friends, nor was ever approached to assist in cheating (though I was frequently asked for help in studying). The problem is, I knew some of…

> though I was frequently asked for help in studying

Your type of social group is not the one that this behavior happens in.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The real story here is that cheating is rampant, everyone knows it, and that the universities (as opposed to individual professors) are not prepared to do what is necessary to stop it. I'm speaking, of course, of measures like expulsion. Too much of a hit to the bottom line, too much messy litigation, and too much bad PR. All of this is another way of making your point, which is that the core mission of universities…

A sibling was caught cheating in university. This would have been around ten years ago. He wasn't expelled, but he was suspended for the remainder of the semester and failed on all his classes that term. I don't remember if he finished uni late as a result or did makeup work during the summer.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, this, in the rare cases it is applicable. In my current course we have 400 students with 3 Prof. ... So it is not really applicable. Another thing to note is that undergrades' first job usually depends on having good grades. Some people will get lower grades and those will complain to the point of suing the university into having a more seemingly fair and unbiased process. (Note actually fair, but I'm pret…

I thought of this when posting. Honestly, universities are the educational equivalent of industrial farming. We need a rethink. When I was in university (some time ago!), it was always the large courses that were easiest to game. They were also generally the subjects I was least interested in. My small comp sci courses were amazing in contrast. Easily worth the cost of admission. I think the education system would be…

Fewer courses that are also smaller? Wouldn't that mean the number of students has to go way down? Paying the same price seems unlikely.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#166

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…

I was a TA in the first OMSCS cohort. I think the biggest difference between the OMSCS experience and what other people are giving here as anecdotes is Georgia Tech was prepared for this. They created an online program on purpose that was well thought-out and planned in advance. Many universities that did this in the past year, in contrast, were forced into it by the pandemic and scrambling to do whatever they could with no real plan, bad or no policies in place, professors and TAs that were not properly prepared.

Though I actually agree here with the people saying this type of software is usually a rootkit by design and unacceptable for that reason alone. I understand why the school did it, but in my experience, we never caught a person cheating on an exam. Where we caught cheating was in project submissions, and that was often quite blatant with people turning in identical code or code identical to code on the Internet, sometimes even identical comments. No need for malware on student's personal home networks to catch that.

There is somewhat of a fundamental conflict in the structure of the OMSCS courses, though. Personally, I don't think there is much value in even having the exams at all on top of the usually extremely comprehensive practical project assignments, for the terminal masters students. But that's everyone in OMSCS. The exams tend to test your knowledge of prior research, which is mostly valuable for people going on to a PhD afterward.

Of course, some students do that, even if you need to separately apply after completing the terminal masters and can't just move straight into it like the on-campus grad students. So I don't really know the answer, but the structure right now is imposing a heavily research-focused curriculum on students who are overwhelmingly not going into research. And the OMSCS program largely exists because of sponsorship from industry that wanted stronger industry-focused CS education for their own workers from a school more reputable than a plain MOOC with no university behind it.

They do an amazingly good job of best of both worlds right now, but it is a conflict as I think many of the exams are unnecessarily difficult for people who are never going to become researchers. I guess it's the classic Google approach to hiring, though. You end up filtering a bunch of students who may have been perfectly good as programmers, but you're probably never going to let anyone through who wasn't, and that is ultimately more important for maintaining the school's strong reputation in industry.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe making questions that you have to think about instead of just looking up the answer would help?

Depends on the subject. In a long form essay where you need to cite sources or technical details you could make a big difference to your score by quickly looking these up. Nobody can go into the exam blind but they can improve their answers significantly by looking up the details that others have to spend a long time trying to remember. For example in an English exam, direct quotations from literature. Or in a law ex…

It sounds like the root problem is that your exam grade is boosted more by a direct quote or case name more than by your comprehension of the message from the quote or by the case name rather than the precedent established by the case.

It should not matter if you have the exact line "To be or not to be" verbatim if you can explain what Shakespeare tried to convey about suffering and the meaning of life. More importantly, you should be allowed to have the book! You can't expect to jump from confusion to comprehension by reading the whole thing during the exam.

It shouldn't matter if you can regurgitate "Miranda v. Arizona, 1966" or not if you can explain when a person is giving voluntary statements or is under custodial interrogation. Access to the full PACER database wouldn't enable you to understand those distinctions.

And as comes up here all the time, it shouldn't matter in a whiteboard interview whether you have the arguments reversed in your strcmp(), an editor, compiler, or reference (or just running the code) would show you which way it was supposed to be. The important thing is the planning, algorithm tradeoffs, data structures, and debugging process that you used to write the thing. Heck, it shouldn't even matter if you can remember that the function is called 'strcmp'.

Reliance on these factoids usually indicates that the grader is taking the easy way out - scanning for expected quotes, for case names, or compiling the code and seeing if it works or not - rather than gauging comprehension. I'll grant that it is far easier to do the former, but that's not what the goal is supposed to be.

Edit: What can't be allowed is regurgitating someone else's comprehension of the question while having none of your own. If that's a possibility, you need to either ask different questions or have some way to prevent people from accessing that explanation. Remote exams need more of the former and less of the latter.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#168

Me and my roommate are first year undergraduate students. We do different bachelors; I have taken all my tests this year with online proctoring, my roommate has had all his tests without online proctoring. The proctoring process is actually pretty simple: I have a Google Chrome extension installed that I enable when I have to take an exam. It takes 5 extra minutes before the exam: I have to show my identification, th…

What proctoring product is it you're using?

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The real story here is that cheating is rampant, everyone knows it, and that the universities (as opposed to individual professors) are not prepared to do what is necessary to stop it. I'm speaking, of course, of measures like expulsion. Too much of a hit to the bottom line, too much messy litigation, and too much bad PR. All of this is another way of making your point, which is that the core mission of universities…

Idk cheating in the college I was in (Top #30 US Institution) was punished severely. I fondly remember my Data Structures professor, bluntly telling us she'd end our academic careers if we were caught cheating. Fondly because she was a great professor who clearly had no time or patience for that kind of bs. It was school policy for expulsion, and this is a very well known school.

This of course may have changed dramatically in the last two years given the major shift in how we all live but I would suspect that this is more common than you think.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The real story here is that cheating is rampant, everyone knows it, and that the universities (as opposed to individual professors) are not prepared to do what is necessary to stop it. I'm speaking, of course, of measures like expulsion. Too much of a hit to the bottom line, too much messy litigation, and too much bad PR. All of this is another way of making your point, which is that the core mission of universities…

Universities will definitely expel cheaters, though they may give a couple chances first (with increasingly-worse penalties like failing grade and violation on transcript). One of the things people are complaining about with this software is people claiming to be wrongly punished.

Typically there's a faculty union or senate which negotiates policies with the administration. Individual professors aren't all alone in the fight. Though they may individually choose to give lax punishments or look the other way.

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