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Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

dailyprincetonian.com

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Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#211

Post by BalinKing »

pdonis wrote: post #189
throwup238 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just the propaganda they sell during college visits. When I was at Caltech the honor code didn’t inspire any pride, because the only way anyone got through that course load was by “cheating”*. No one had any time for pride (GO BEAVERS!) An honor code is an admission that your curriculum is so sadistic, not even cheating will help. Princeton just isn’t prestigious enough to keep up that charade. * At Caltech th…

> every exam was take home When I was at MIT, most exams were in-class, but open book, open notes, open whatever you wanted to bring with you. And of course that just meant the exams were much harder, because they could assume you had all the necessary reference materials at hand and didn't have to conjure things up from memory. "Cheating" was pointless, because everyone else in the room was struggling just as hard a…

The advantage(?) of take-home exams à la Caltech is that they can be open everything and 3–5 hours long :-P (For what it's worth, being able to listen to music during an exam, ctrl+F a digital textbook, etc. was super awesome; it would deeply sadden me if that becomes infeasible in the future once enough students stop caring about the Honor Code....)

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#212

Post by AnnikaL »

hgoel wrote: post #201
Aurornis wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of my friends teach university classes. Mostly undergrad. I get to hear some of their interesting stories when we game together. My impression is that there was a sharp shift around COVID. Doing classes over Zoom with a talking head broke the connection they had with their professors and other students. College felt closer to a video game operated through your screen than a community. When I was in college n…

This fits with my priors. I was in grad school during covid and had some professors I was close to (and whose class I was taking) reach out asking for feedback on their exam because students were blatantly cheating despite the allowances the professors were making (up to being open to the internet, just no direct communication). They couldn't punish them, and they were perplexed why anyone would bother cheating on ev…

Wait, why can't the students be punished?

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#213

Post by onetimeusename »

john_strinlai wrote: post #5

huh, i had no idea princeton specifically disallowed proctors, and instead relied on an honor system. seems... like a poorly thought out system, especially given: " 29.9 percent of respondents reported that they had cheated on an assignment or exam during their time at Princeton. 44.6 percent of senior respondents reported knowledge of Honor Code violations that they chose not to report. " crazier is the people prote…

Not just Princeton, my uni had a similar honor code and changed it a couple years ago to have proctors after a bunch of cheating events. I don't really get it either. Cheating has been going up exponentially since 2020 but it existed before then. I don't think it's COVID related strictly. Things moved online so cheating became easier and then LLMs became popular and from what I hear that's the most common way of cheating now. I have tested LLMs on undergrad level algorithms problems and was surprised it easily solved them so I think their use goes well beyond just coding assignments.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#214

Post by AnnikaL »

gavinsyancey wrote: post #146
twoWhlsGud wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who went there (albeit many decades ago) I can tell you FWIW when I was there folks took it seriously. I literally knew of no one who ever cheated on an exam. And I'm pretty sure that anyone I knew who observed cheating would have taken it seriously enough to bring it to the process. It was pretty much a fixture of how students thought about things. So it worked (near as I could tell) back then. But instit…

Which is bad, someone who cheats on a test or someone who rats out their friend for cheating on a test? It really is a cultural thing, and that sort of culture is primarily passed down from upperclassmen to underclassmen. I went to a different college with an honor code (Harvey Mudd) and when I graduated in 2019 it was still doing relatively well, but from what I've heard COVID really killed students caring about / a…

I'm in Mudd's class of '27 (and I was on the honor board for 2 years), and I do think the honor code system has gotten somewhat less functional over the time I've been here. But I think a majority of students and faculty still want to make it work.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#215

Post by pcrh »

With reference to the "cultural" allusions of many posts in this thread, I can assure you that in the WASP UK universities of Oxford and Cambridge, all exams are "proctored".

It is assumed that students will attempt to cheat, so exams are designed so that cheating is not a viable strategy to obtain high grades. So-called invigilators also patrol the exam room and will report any violations.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#216

Post by twobitshifter »

mmooss wrote: post #23

Comments express surprise that this honor code has been in place. Many schools have similar honor codes. Despite HN trendiness, SV and business world advocacy of 'animal instincts', and current cultural trends, humans are generally honest and honorable - obviously people in many places have thought that. It's good news, though many will resist it because, I think, it violates the anarcho-libertarian norms that are fu…

Taking the ‘generally honest and honorable’ point without challenge, corruption is unavoidable at a level of 1500 students per year despite students generally being honorable. As the article shows 2/3 students never cheated (or would never admit it) but that doesn’t do much to soften the blow that 1/3 did cheat and got away with it.

As a result, we still have 1/3 of the future leaders of American business/politics cheating and not facing any consequences. Princeton appears to be an unprincipled institution and is shown to lack any useful standard to evaluate the quality of its graduates. When you see a Princeton graduate with high marks you should always consider that they may have cheated to finish their degree.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#217

Post by travelalberta »

I’ve never heard of a non-proctored exam. Every exam I took in university was proctored. If you got caught (happened every once in a while and made everything very awkward) you failed the exam immediately, got kicked out, and had a department hearing. I have a vivid memory of two girls almost killing each other as a result of one such failed scheme during a CS Logic exam of all things.

I had the Naruto Chunnin Exam episodes where they write the written test on dvd as a kid and watched it all the time so it might have altered my philosophy but I’ve always viewed proctored tests as a mini game. The ability to gather information under stress, maintain composure, and evaluate the likelihood the person you were borrowing answers from knew what they were doing was always fun to me. Even on tests where I was going to get 90% guaranteed I liked seeing how much information I could parse from other people. I remember one exam I could make out another girls scantron and knew she was going to fail. She was the first person to hand in her answers and the proctor joked “wow that was quick, we’ll have to make the next one harder”.

When I was a proctor I loved trying to catch people cheating. Lots of wandering eyes but never a phone. I’d have thrown someone out so quick if the pulled out a phone and that’s before ChatGPT. I can’t imagine not having proctors. Honour systems sound great and all but not in an evaluation. Tribe mentality prevents most people from ratting on others (except for those with limited social status to lose from the jump), especially when you are 19.

I saw someone mention that having proctors “punished” students who followed the honour code which is insane. If you know what you are doing in an exam you’ll forget all about the proctors being there. The only people who will notice them are those trying to cheat…

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#218

Post by eecc »

hgoel wrote: post #201
Aurornis wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of my friends teach university classes. Mostly undergrad. I get to hear some of their interesting stories when we game together. My impression is that there was a sharp shift around COVID. Doing classes over Zoom with a talking head broke the connection they had with their professors and other students. College felt closer to a video game operated through your screen than a community. When I was in college n…

This fits with my priors. I was in grad school during covid and had some professors I was close to (and whose class I was taking) reach out asking for feedback on their exam because students were blatantly cheating despite the allowances the professors were making (up to being open to the internet, just no direct communication). They couldn't punish them, and they were perplexed why anyone would bother cheating on ev…

Hmm, anxiety of making the wrong choice and have it on record? I’ve read that later gens are extremely aware of “the internet never forgets” and are terrified of any choice being the embarrassing and defining moment of the rest of their life

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#219

Post by Krasnol »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15
hcurtiss wrote: post #2

Princeton is a strange place. What on earth could be the objection to proctoring? I'd much rather have a proctor than have to narc on a classmate. And even then, the proctor just reports the matter to a student-run body? Wild.

> What on earth could be the objection to proctoring? There is a unique pride in being part of a community built around honor. You see this on the Swiss metro and in small-town vegetable stalls. Unproctored exams force every student to weigh the value of their honor against a better grade. That's a personal moral reckoning that might be worth the entire degree.

Seriously, if you are a lazy or too slow son of a wealthy family, do you care about "honour" or what your daddy will give you if you pass?

It smells like a backdoor.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#220

Post by Krasnol »

toephu2 wrote: post #118
wps wrote: post #27

I've sat in classes where people at my table genuinely took pictures of the exam while the professor's back was turned (being kind to us and giving us useful information on the board) and uploaded the entire exam to the Gemini app. Cheating is all around disheartening and is now incredibly easy with all the free multi-modal models around. Real active proctoring is needed and devices need to be confiscated during exam…

Have a phones-free classroom. Problem solved.

I can't imagine why you would be so stupid to allow phones to exams.

Is this normal in the US?

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