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Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

baneproctoring.com

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Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#261

Post by cvwright »

an_opabinia wrote: post #218
TravisHusky wrote: post #175

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…

> it was so frustrating not only the amount of cheating that occurred Yeah, it's crazy that cheaters are the protagonist of the ban e-proctoring story. What if the university only admitted students who don't cheat? How do we know that policy works for real at a place like Caltech? Academic culture is accommodating, and you feel that way too. But universities must know that cheating harms everyone, it's a losing propo…

Or just grade other work that doesn't require proctoring.

Personally, I removed exams entirely in the last courses I taught in Spring 2020, and it seemed to work out OK. I had no faith that the proctoring systems would catch everything, and I had no desire to inflict them on my students in any case.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#262

Post by zepto »

an_opabinia wrote: post #218
TravisHusky wrote: post #175

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…

> it was so frustrating not only the amount of cheating that occurred Yeah, it's crazy that cheaters are the protagonist of the ban e-proctoring story. What if the university only admitted students who don't cheat? How do we know that policy works for real at a place like Caltech? Academic culture is accommodating, and you feel that way too. But universities must know that cheating harms everyone, it's a losing propo…

> What if the university only admitted students who don't cheat?

It’s a common fallacy to attribute behavior to innate qualities of people, rather than situations.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#263

Post by 0xffff2 »

alanfranz wrote: post #59
hrnnnnnn wrote: 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.

Was that a curveball? Nobody had told you beforehand?

It's certainly possible. Thankfully I graduated before Turn-it-in was fully mainstream and before online tests were even a thing AFAIK. Nonetheless, I had one professor decide midway through the semester that our final paper would need to be submitted to Turn-it-in. I had to go to office hours, point out that this requirement was not in the syllabus, and that if it was I would not have taken the course, and finally threaten to go complain to the dean. I was incredibly lucky to make it through school without ever having to submit to this kind of BS, but I rather think it's simply impossible today.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#264

Post by j605 »

unishark wrote: post #176
christophilus wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then it's like a job interview. If the answer doesn't pop into your head the instant after you hear the question you go into panic mode and can't even answer questions you should know. Though I suppose it would make people a lot better at job interviews if done for every class.

I had oral exams in Belgium where usually you are given time to prepare your written work. In the oral, the task then is to expand on your written work and answer questions that probe your understanding a bit deeper than the question itself. The professor might also ask you to hypothesize by changing some assumptions in the questions to check that you actually know the theory and have not regurgitated the book or copied it from someone.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#265

Post by sandworm101 »

cowpig wrote: post #183
TravisHusky wrote: post #175

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…

You must not have seen a modern home cheating rig. The student read/scrolls through the entire test to read each question, as is recommended. A small camera that sees the screen transmits the questions to a team in another room. Each team member works on one question at a time. A single person then communicates the prepared answers back to the test taker via an earpiece, one small enough that it isn't detectable on the camera. Such a rig costs a few hundred dollars at most.

Another common trick: looking at your keyboard isn't cheating. Any small display secreted on your keyboard will go unnoticed. You will just look like you aren't a great typist, someone who needs to look at the keys.

Want to go real hardcore? Cut into your laptop and send the screen/keyboard/mouse signals to a different monitor. Then you can have an actor sit in front of the webcam pretending to take the test. I doubt they are correlating keypress sounds to characters appearing on the screen... yet. As any security expert would tell you: if the attacker has unfettered access to your hardware then all bets are off.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#266

Post by nyanpasu64 »

jarcane wrote: post #28
dna_polymerase wrote: post #13

> A federally-funded study found that even the best facial recognition algorithms fail to work on Black and brown people, trans and non-binary people, as well as children and women in general. I assume it is black and brown trans and non-binary people. I don't see an algorithm fail because someone identifies as anything. However, why even mention it here, in this context? It makes the people behind this sound ridicul…

Recognition algorithms often make assumptions about the way people "should" be shaped according to their recorded gender or the way the machine attempts to "guess" said gender, and a clash in expectations gets flagged and generates false negatives because things aren't in the "right" places it thinks they should be. For a really simple example if this problem, the TSA body scanner machines flag on trans people consta…

Is there a source or explanation for how a proctoring service running on a computer webcam (not a body scanner) would flag students because their outward appearance doesn't conform well to a particular gender distribution? I didn't see any links in the article.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#267

Post by SiempreViernes »

sandworm101 wrote: post #265
cowpig wrote: 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…

You must not have seen a modern home cheating rig. The student read/scrolls through the entire test to read each question, as is recommended. A small camera that sees the screen transmits the questions to a team in another room. Each team member works on one question at a time. A single person then communicates the prepared answers back to the test taker via an earpiece, one small enough that it isn't detectable on t…

How much does the team cost?

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#268

Post by SiempreViernes »

cowpig wrote: post #183
TravisHusky wrote: post #175

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…

Fundamentally, what you are complaining about is teaching being under resourced: making lots of variations of questions obviously takes more effort both to create and to score so that's why it's not done. Making questions that require critical thinking is very hard because you need a very good understanding of the students mind to test the correct thing, so it's usually not done.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#270

Post by TravisHusky »

ModernMech wrote: post #189
TravisHusky wrote: post #175

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 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 get through it, which just encouraged more people to cheat. That’s such a strange response to that expectation. For the class I teach, I made my exams open book, open notes, open internet and gave them a extended time to wo…

I had a couple professors do exactly what you did and it was much more enjoyable. I feel like I leaned a lot more in classes like that, and now that I have a real engineering job I have realized this style is a lot more accurate to what the real world is like.
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