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Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

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191–200 of 324 posts

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#191
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good bye, apply again next year. Apply again next year? In Germany, a university expulsion usually comes with a lifetime ban on studying the same subject again.

in Canada you'd likely be unable to get into ANY university with a note about plagiarism in your records.

Same in Germany, but universities don't always share records. You are supposed to fill in a form on immatriculation where you state previous universities and why/how you left there, and you will get expelled if you lie on that form. However, if you pass your final exam without getting caught, there is a good chance you'll get away with it.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#192
post #169

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…

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 drama…

How many people do you know of who failed a class or were expelled for that kind of thing?

Where there ever any rumors of that kind of thing. In a large enough class someone will be tempted to cheat, and if the school is taking decisive action there will be rumors even if they are making great effort to protect the students privacy and make the discipline a learning experience

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#193

Just to throw it out there, I graduated during the pandemic, and it was so frustrating not only the amount of cheating that occurred, which meant that if you didn't cheat you fell behind; but also how professors responded. I had a few professors who made exams ridiculously hard with strict time limits, just because they expected people to cheat. So the exams were designed in a way they cheating was the only way to ge…

Does anyone in academia know if tests are designed on a curve? You can give a test that everyone gets 100% on (assuming they show up) and you can give a test that everyone fails. Is part of creating a test thinking about how many students in your class are capable of scoring A’s, etc or is it just a side effect

If school is using grading curves that school has already failed and there is no saving it before grading system changes.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#194
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord accounts are tied to real identities and the company is pretty aggressive about removing duplicate accounts. It should be possible to ID most of the people in that chat and report them to the administration.

> Discord accounts are tied to real identities Since when? My discord account doesn't have my name or phone linked at all, just email.

You got grandfathered in then, congrats.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#195
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an experience like this in Numerical Methods in university years ago. The exams were incredibly difficult for bad reasons: you had to calculate many iterations of an algorithm by hand. You also had to memorize a bunch of algorithms (rather than understanding how they worked or how to modify them to solve different problems). The professor also had a "can't do anything about it" attitude, and so the entire class…

My AP calculus teacher allowed us to use calculators on our tests. Why? Because he knew exactly how to design questions such that the calculator would switch from exact to approximation mode. So you could enter any problem on the test into the calculator, and all it would spit out is a useless answer with as many decimal places as it could handle. Of course the calculator worked fine on every homework question. But y…

I don't follow. Do you mean to say that the calculator would produce .333333333 repeating but the student was expected to write 1/3 ?

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#196

Just to throw it out there, I graduated during the pandemic, and it was so frustrating not only the amount of cheating that occurred, which meant that if you didn't cheat you fell behind; but also how professors responded. I had a few professors who made exams ridiculously hard with strict time limits, just because they expected people to cheat. So the exams were designed in a way they cheating was the only way to ge…

In engineering school, our professors wanted to treat things like the real world (as much as you could during test time).

Their solution was to let us use whatever we wanted except other students. Cellphones, textbooks, laptop, Internet.

You had 2 hours to answer 2 or 3 questions, it was definitely reasonable if you studied... But the questions were insane.

You know how homework would be assigned 1-50 odds? These were like the problems 74 and 76, 1/4 page long and difficult, multiple parts.

That seems as similar as engineering school got to the real would outside our sophomore and senior design projects.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My AP calculus teacher allowed us to use calculators on our tests. Why? Because he knew exactly how to design questions such that the calculator would switch from exact to approximation mode. So you could enter any problem on the test into the calculator, and all it would spit out is a useless answer with as many decimal places as it could handle. Of course the calculator worked fine on every homework question. But y…

I don't follow. Do you mean to say that the calculator would produce .333333333 repeating but the student was expected to write 1/3 ?

I suspect think more along the lines of spitting out a numerical answer instead of sqrt(pi) when fed with \int_-\infty^\infty exp(-x^2) dx...

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#198
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an experience like this in Numerical Methods in university years ago. The exams were incredibly difficult for bad reasons: you had to calculate many iterations of an algorithm by hand. You also had to memorize a bunch of algorithms (rather than understanding how they worked or how to modify them to solve different problems). The professor also had a "can't do anything about it" attitude, and so the entire class…

My AP calculus teacher allowed us to use calculators on our tests. Why? Because he knew exactly how to design questions such that the calculator would switch from exact to approximation mode. So you could enter any problem on the test into the calculator, and all it would spit out is a useless answer with as many decimal places as it could handle. Of course the calculator worked fine on every homework question. But y…

Calculators are generally useless in Calculus. Or at least they should be. Calculus is a process, and normally you are graded on that process, not on the answer.

We were allowed calculators too, but the problems were designed that anyone even mildly good at mental math didn't need them. In theory you could teach all of calculus without ever even using numbers (perhaps except 0).

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#199
Imagine a business that sells deliverable medical testing kits. This business is the best at what they do; they sell more kits than any other organization, they cost less, they're delivered faster, and are superior in any way, shape, KPI, or form imaginable to traditional alternatives. The only issue being that each kit is in fact a bloodletting kit, and their intended use is to inform you which of your four humours is out of balance.

I'm of the opinion that e-proctoring, whatever its privacy concerns, is fundamentally an exercise in "doing the wrong thing faster". Our exams are a poor reflection of student ability. Our exams have no bearing on actual proficiency in the subject matter. Our exams are ineffectual at catching cheaters. Leaving aside any discussion of privacy, e-proctoring (and traditional proctoring) fails to accomplish its fundamental goals.

To automate these exams, to make them ever-more scalable and easier to distribute, is not a victory. We've merely perpetuated a flawed system.

If we want a meaningful assessment of student ability then we need to use better methods. Dethrone exams from our curriculum. Leverage project-based assessments. Use oral exams where feasible. Replace the infinitely looping lecture halls with recorded videos and open-source textbooks. Use the recovered instructor time for something meaningful. This is not a Gordian knot. It can be solved with a little courage and a little pragmatism.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#200

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…

It's preparing them just as well as primary education + college. It's just that college degrees were more meaningful back when the old people running most companies got them, and employers need a weed out, so we still use it.
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