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Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

nytimes.com

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Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#141

Post by Cerium »

jrpt wrote: post #140
wolframhempel wrote: post #72

This has been eluded to by a few other comments already, but I think it's worth stressing: Maybe the problem is that our definition of "cheating" doesn't make sense anymore. Our methods of teaching come from a worldview in which the information stored in your head is your only resource. That wasn't true in the past where you could consult colleagues, look things up in books or call experts - and it's certainly not tr…

That sounds nice in theory, but how would you write a test for, say, basic physics, when every type of question can be Googled? Even if you make brand new questions, it's still just generally available categories of problems, like inclined planes and stuff. It's even worse with algebra, because there's software that can both solve it for you and show the steps (which you can then copy onto a test). Unfortunately, in…

I had a basic physics teacher that allowed notes and gave us a chest sheet of his own which literally listed equations, described variables and explained the situation you might want the equation. People still failed. In a basic thermodynamics class the teacher said it was open everything but the person next to you: laptops, internet, the book etc. For fun I took the test without either book or laptop and did just fine. Others found it hard. In both cases the problems required thinking about the situation posed and which basic principles should be used to evaluate the problem.

In my opinion, cheating from internet access or outside resources is not the problem, cheating by gogling exact problems is.

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#142

Post by squarefoot »

davisoneee wrote: post #104
squarefoot wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most tests are essentially nothing more than tests for the ability of rote memorization This a hundred times. If I had to hire someone for a job, I would rather hire someone who knows how to search online the answer to a problem than the one who repeats the book word for word without knowing what he/she is talking about. Exams are crap like that because better exams would require the use of one professor asking non…

How do the candidates know _what_ to search? That's memorisation. How do you get creativity, how are candidates better able to combine idea together? By forming each idea into a memory 'chunk' that can be handled as a single concept, and then working to combine these chunks. If you hire people who can search google, then you get people who can search what is easily searchable, and who can create what has been previou…

I used the wrong terms to describe skills like creativity and problem solving beside pure superficial knowledge. Of course I wouldn't hire anyone who can only search Google.

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#143

Post by nolroz »

forgotusername6 wrote: post #119
tarakat wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to look things up, even in seconds, is not equivalent to knowing them. When someone suggests "let's do X", you cannot reply with "but that would cause Y", if Y is buried in some pdf file on your computer, or one Bing search away - how do you know you should search for Y, when there are infinite other things you could search for.

Back at university one of the first things we were told about being an a good engineer was: "You don't need to know everything, but you do need to know where to look it up". It's a statement that I agree with. There is just too much knowledge to know it all. These days there is a very real skill in knowing how to search i.e. a second order version of the above statement "you need to know where to find out how to look…

Yep, my dad used to sum this up as "All Engineering school does is teach you where to shit." I guess I may have gone with "where to eat" but he had a flair for the dramatic.

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#144

Post by willio58 »

tarakat wrote: post #107
wolframhempel wrote: post #72

This has been eluded to by a few other comments already, but I think it's worth stressing: Maybe the problem is that our definition of "cheating" doesn't make sense anymore. Our methods of teaching come from a worldview in which the information stored in your head is your only resource. That wasn't true in the past where you could consult colleagues, look things up in books or call experts - and it's certainly not tr…

Being able to look things up, even in seconds, is not equivalent to knowing them. When someone suggests "let's do X", you cannot reply with "but that would cause Y", if Y is buried in some pdf file on your computer, or one Bing search away - how do you know you should search for Y, when there are infinite other things you could search for.

The thing is, if you search for something enough you will end up learning it. It's a natural way to learn things.

This is how people become software engineers these days. They _constantly_ look stuff up, watch videos, and learn by doing that. Yes, you can still go to college and take tests that require you to "know" things, but honestly the vast majority of what I "knew" in college turned out to be short-term knowledge stored for tests.

By searching and learning, you

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#145

Post by wruza »

tarakat wrote: post #107
wolframhempel wrote: post #72

This has been eluded to by a few other comments already, but I think it's worth stressing: Maybe the problem is that our definition of "cheating" doesn't make sense anymore. Our methods of teaching come from a worldview in which the information stored in your head is your only resource. That wasn't true in the past where you could consult colleagues, look things up in books or call experts - and it's certainly not tr…

Being able to look things up, even in seconds, is not equivalent to knowing them. When someone suggests "let's do X", you cannot reply with "but that would cause Y", if Y is buried in some pdf file on your computer, or one Bing search away - how do you know you should search for Y, when there are infinite other things you could search for.

When someone suggests "let's do X", you cannot reply with "but that would cause Y"

This is reasonable. E.g. sure a person can google how to build a house, but also sure that at planning phase they’ll mess and conflict with a half of good rules of thumb. Or forget them right after reading, because there is no habit nor knowledge in their head, and all that info is pretty transient. Pro is not the one who has read an article, but the one who can tell a couple of their own notes about it.

Otoh, gp is also correct that tests should check how you are doing in a real life situation. So maybe use both ways of testing?

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#146

Post by pksebben »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #60
pksebben wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one sort of wonders what the value in standardized testing is, in a world with such easy access to information.

There are two main purposes: 1. You can't look for information if you don't know it exists. 2. Most standardized tests aren't used in the expectation that the testee's knowledge will matter in the future. Instead, the idea is that people who score higher will be generally more competent at whatever it is you want them to do.

>2. Most standardized tests aren't used in the expectation that the testee's knowledge will matter in the future. Instead, the idea is that people who score higher will be generally more competent at whatever it is you want them to do.

I fail to see how information retention maps to skill in this case. I guess it could be a vague indicator of the amount of practice done, but some folks memorize so easily, it makes this system incredibly easy to game.

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#147

Post by tester756 »

forgotusername6 wrote: post #119
tarakat wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to look things up, even in seconds, is not equivalent to knowing them. When someone suggests "let's do X", you cannot reply with "but that would cause Y", if Y is buried in some pdf file on your computer, or one Bing search away - how do you know you should search for Y, when there are infinite other things you could search for.

Back at university one of the first things we were told about being an a good engineer was: "You don't need to know everything, but you do need to know where to look it up". It's a statement that I agree with. There is just too much knowledge to know it all. These days there is a very real skill in knowing how to search i.e. a second order version of the above statement "you need to know where to find out how to look…

But still, there's "minimal required knowledge".

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#148

Post by sam0x17 »

tarakat wrote: post #107
wolframhempel wrote: post #72

This has been eluded to by a few other comments already, but I think it's worth stressing: Maybe the problem is that our definition of "cheating" doesn't make sense anymore. Our methods of teaching come from a worldview in which the information stored in your head is your only resource. That wasn't true in the past where you could consult colleagues, look things up in books or call experts - and it's certainly not tr…

Being able to look things up, even in seconds, is not equivalent to knowing them. When someone suggests "let's do X", you cannot reply with "but that would cause Y", if Y is buried in some pdf file on your computer, or one Bing search away - how do you know you should search for Y, when there are infinite other things you could search for.

Right but you shouldn't be tested on things that can just be "looked up". You should be tested on your ability to apply what you know, and teachers should be taking the time to write globally unique problems for every single test (gasp)

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#149

Post by sam0x17 »

tester756 wrote: post #147
forgotusername6 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back at university one of the first things we were told about being an a good engineer was: "You don't need to know everything, but you do need to know where to look it up". It's a statement that I agree with. There is just too much knowledge to know it all. These days there is a very real skill in knowing how to search i.e. a second order version of the above statement "you need to know where to find out how to look…

But still, there's "minimal required knowledge".

Like how to use google

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#150

Post by godshatter »

willio58 wrote: post #144
tarakat wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to look things up, even in seconds, is not equivalent to knowing them. When someone suggests "let's do X", you cannot reply with "but that would cause Y", if Y is buried in some pdf file on your computer, or one Bing search away - how do you know you should search for Y, when there are infinite other things you could search for.

The thing is, if you search for something enough you will end up learning it. It's a natural way to learn things. This is how people become software engineers these days. They _constantly_ look stuff up, watch videos, and learn by doing that. Yes, you can still go to college and take tests that require you to "know" things, but honestly the vast majority of what I "knew" in college turned out to be short-term knowled…

A person can certainly become a software engineer without a college education, but I worry that constantly learning things just in time for using them will give them disconnected snippets of knowledge in a lot of areas rather than a good concept of how the underlying system functions. I guess it depends on if they are studying computer architecture, complexity theory, and whatnot in those videos or if they are just copying snippets of code from SO.

I learned by doing, initially, because I started learning programming with minimal resources before going to college and had to unlearn or restructure a lot of the knowledge I had gained up to that point once I did. I would probably have gotten there in the end, but it would have taken me a lot longer. The world was different then, though. Instead of easy access to info before going to college I was lucky to find a book somewhere that someone threw out that talked about things in a peripheral way that I needed to know, or ran into someone I could discuss things with that were as info-deprived as I was.

That's where my skepticism of this approach comes from, I guess. But I didn't live in a world where knowledge was at my fingertips from a very early age, so who knows?

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