201–210 of 324 posts
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?
I can see why universities want to use a system like this. A friend of mine is a University lecturer for physics and one of his students gave him an invite to the discord channel where half his students are in there sharing all the answers during the final exam. He basically told me there is nothing he can do about it. He talked to the head of department and they basically said if you have proof of specific people ch…
Spitballing here, but maybe exams need to be reconsidered. What if instead, the professor has a 1:1 conversation with each student, Socrates-style? You’d know pretty quickly whether or not the student was familiar with the material, and if not, where they were weak and needed more focus. Maybe systematizing everything about education is the wrong approach.
The largest part of the grades came from delivering projects, where you were graded both on result and process (you would present an end-product, and deliver a report documenting the product & the process of creating it). At the start of each project you would get a document explaining what categories the product & presentation would be graded on and what a failing, passing and excellent grade would look like, so you had a clear goal.
I have the feeling the system only works with great teachers (which was the case in 90% of the teacher I had during my 4 years).
They would also have feedback rounds after each semester and actually change things based on feedback, applying the design process on the course itself.
It was a really great experience and I would whole-heartedly recommend that program to anyone interested in design/programming.
Without the credential it's definitely created some challenges in my career, but I took the far more valuable /education/ with me into my career and have been very successful overall. When I look up most of my former classmates, they have not achieved near my level of success, partly because they failed to learn due to their rampant cheating. They may have received the credential, but they failed to learn anything they could take forward in life with them.
I'm of two minds on this. I think that rampant cheating greatly undermines student morale for those students that don't cheat, but on the other hand it doesn't really matter because in the long-run it cheats the student who's cheating, not the class. The piece of paper at the end doesn't matter.
All that aside, the way e-proctoring is done now, and new "advancements" with facial recognition being added into it, is horrifyingly privacy invading and often done in a way which is effectively malicious software being forced to be installed on a student's personal equipment. As a strong advocate for privacy and security, I cannot be anything but opposed to the way things are going. When I do remote proctored certification exams for continuing education, I've always preferenced taking them in a testing center kiosk specifically so I don't need any such software installed on my own computer systems.
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…
Cheating is never OK. Look what that lead to. A few bad apples ruined it for the other students. People have to learn, that their behavior in such a setting does not only affect themselves. In this case it very negatively impacted everyone studying with them.
When I was in college, cheating was already rampant. I ended up dropping out the semester prior to graduation, despite performing well, because I just couldn't muster the desire to continue. Part of that was because of seeing how many people around me were blatantly and consistently cheating compared to the work I put in. Without the credential it's definitely created some challenges in my career, but I took the far…
As someone who actually has learning disabilities (ADHD, dyslexia) this definitely isn't universally true. I have yet to complete a degree, but the most progress that I have ever made was in one was almost completely thanks to eproctoring. I had virtually no anxiety because I was in the comfort of my own home, and couldn't over-hear worrying discussions other students were having prior to the exam. It almost a complete 180 from every other examination experience that I've had.
I had a few courses which required on-site (Pearson Vue) examination, and I experienced far more anxiety (by virtue of experiencing none at home).
I can certainly understand how certain (potentially the majority of) disabilities could face discrimination, as described by the linked article, but this is worded as a blanket statement.
> Want to tell Fight for the Future about your eproctoring horror story? We’d like to hear it.
I'd prefer to submit my in-person horror stories. I have more than a decade of them.
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.
Might I ask, was the exam software you used something you acquired from a third-party, or was it something you built yourselves? Would you recommend it? I have been dissatisfied with everything we have tried so far in my organization, and what you used sounds pretty good.
It's a whole platform for e-learning. The exam system is ... usable. The fine arts, law, and social silences like it very much, because long form answers are readable.
The natural sciences with the math bit have to work around it. We manage.
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 ?
Lets see if the kids know how to multiply fractions:
factorial(256) times ( 1 divided by factorial(256) ) equals ?
And yes, there will unfortunately be kids trying to brute force it by typing it in instead of cancelling the factorial(256).
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…
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).
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…
He convinced one professor, possibly two, but if he had any more luck than that, I wasn’t in those classes with him.
Most of what we do is synthesizing facts into knowledge. But I know from copious personal experience that there is a wide grey area between recalling a fact at will and forgetting it exists entirely. I am fairly good at recalling concepts in general terms. Y might be applicable in this case, but I need to check the details to be sure/explain how.
Which is also why I think banning computers from planning meetings is stupid. You want us to agree to do things without being able to spot check any of our hunches that will drastically effect our estimates? That’s a winning plan /s.