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Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

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251–260 of 324 posts

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#251

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…

> Honestly I don't think I can fault students who cheated during the pandemic, it was just so abnormal that most people did whatever they had to to cope. I beg to differ. Saying that dishonesty is acceptable in certain scenarios will only motivate them to further partake in bad acts. In extreme cases, the child will end up as a criminal.

"In extreme cases, the child will end up as a criminal."

these are university students pressured to have high grades for internships/first jobs, not some impressionable elementary schooler. Thinking way too obtusely for this to be a factor and compare this to some middle schooler getting into drugs.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#252

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…

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.

being forced to do an extra semester costing like 50k+ results in some very interesting incentives, or lawsuits, when profit is involved..

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#253
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those reciprocals are too small. 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).

The TI-89 comes with a excellent symbolic solver that can do solve this or any calc problem and give the proper symbolic result. It can even do things like equation simplification and give the results in terms of the variables. Looks like this https://imgur.com/a/FmdCyYU

Saying any calc problem is a stretch. Just pull up the MIT integration bee and see how many the 89 can get symbolic results for.

I think the 89 is awesome for algebra because typing in an equation and doing an ans(1) with an operation will let you do the algebra process without making stupid arithmetic mistakes. I wish someone made a calculator that does this only and not one that does all the other CAS tricks for integration and derivatives. Oh and I wish they would make it RPN but that is a whole other story.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#254
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The permanent security issue is that violating a security assertion (eg running an untrusted program) on your machine means you can never trust that machine until it gets completely wiped. That hasn't been the case ever since firmware became updatable. Nowadays, even wiping the machine completely is not enough, because the firmware might have been maliciously modified by whatever violated the security boundary. And…

I hadn't wanted to go into that level of detail, but you're right to. My own definition of wipe includes reflashing libreboot.

My point was, even reflashing libreboot wouldn't be enough, you'd have to also reflash all the small controllers here and there (hoping you hadn't missed some), and somehow do it in a way each controller cannot lie to you and just pretend it has been reflashed.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#255

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).

>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.

Yes.

It's been so long since I took calculus but that's the reason why we weren't allowed calculators in my Calculus class. All the formulas needed for the test were also provided (as we weren't being graded on our memorization skills either)

My professor also said don't bother doing simple arithmetic just to simplify an answer - leave it at 12/56 or whatever.

Turns out, it was a really, really great system.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#256
post #212
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…

I think professors should ask themselves if their exam would make a good CAPTCHA. If a machine could solve the exam easier than a human, it's a bad exam.

Calculus captchas do exist, which I guess proves the point!

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/03/09/a-complicated-ca...

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#257
post #183

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…

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…

Have you considered that memorization is a good thing?

I memorized a lot of information, but I still search just as often on google and stackoverflow whenever I needed to check something.

It also help that I don't try to memorize a bunch of a crap before an exam.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#258
post #120
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…

I teached a C class during coronavirus lockdown in France and I also did something of the sort (having different question per student, mixing their order, etc). But I think, most importantly, I put a lot of emphasis on group work & home work. This has also its own issues. I like to do group homework because I believe that in the real world, you rarely work alone, and group work allow to have more fun project than wha…

> I believe that in the real world, you rarely work alone, and

Real world work is nothing like group work. In real world, you can carve part of project on yourself and be judged on that. You can complain about co workers doing nothing. The teamleader deals with interpersonal or productivity issues.

And ultimately, you can leave team or find new job if above dont happen.

> group work allow to have more fun project than what you can do in a 1-2h exam.

Or someone else from the group do the fun parts and will try to offload only boring parts on others.

School group work is less fun then individual, unless you are lucky to work with really good matching people. It has none of the processes and structures that mediates political issues in real work.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#259
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certain that this Socratic professor has preferences and biases, like everyone else in the world, some of which he will be unaware of. How is he to avoid these biases affecting the conclusion he draws?

Who is to say these biases dont already exist in exams?

Your charizma certainly plays less role.

We had oral exams in university. They are less fair then written ones for sure. For the record, I did well and tendes to know what to say. Could also bluff my way when encountering edge of my knowledge.

And seen a lot of bluffing, appeals to emotion, negotiation for better grades or special advantage. Once I have seen a guy negotiate C all the way to A - and no, no additional questions were asked.

Oral exams are not fair in any way.

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