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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

#371

Post by userbinator »

mynameisash wrote: post #311
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…

My son is taking an AP chem class - he's doing really well, super interested in the subject. It's a difficult class, to be sure. Many of his peers are just goofing off and don't understand things. My son regularly tells me about people in his lab group that are cheating off his papers (and, I think, even his test). He tries to cover up answers, but it's not always possible to do. What is even more frustrating is that…

What is even more frustrating is that the teacher knows this and does nothing about it.

When teachers are evaluated based on how students perceive them, and are in turn evaluated by others based on the grades their students receive, there's a perverse incentive/conflict of interest for them to allow cheating.

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

#372

Post by userbinator »

MyHonestOpinon wrote: post #221
neilv wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very interested in how this cheating is perceived by other students. There is no peer pressure not to cheat? Students aren't considered sketchy or jerky for cheating? Being seen cheating has no adverse affect on their ability to date, to join group projects, to join student startups, etc.?

Covid and Chatgpt are no the only changes in society in the recent years. If you are an all around liar and cheater you can even be president!!

It's not just "the recent years". There's a reason the phrase "honest politician" is an oxymoron.

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

#373

Post by marsten »

busyant wrote: post #346

I was a grad student @ Princeton a handful of decades ago. I was a TA for a few classes and, given the honor code, we did not proctor the exams for undergrads. We just handed them out (left the room) and returned to collect them at the end. - One of the exams in a course that I TAed had 5 free-response questions. - There were also 5 TAs in that class, so we un-stapled the exams and each TA graded one question (for co…

Academic integrity committees at prestigious schools are horribly lax. They want these types of issues to go away quietly.

I have a friend who in college had another student take his test from the "complete" pile, erase my friend's name, and put on his own instead. It was only through blind luck that my friend figured it out. He, the TA, and the professor reported it – with smoking gun proof – but nothing happened.

The same laxness applies to academic research integrity. Universities rarely punish academics who are discovered to falsify data.

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

#374

Post by scoofy »

CSMastermind wrote: post #275

People blame AI but in reality it's more about America transitioning from a high-trust society to a low-trust one.

I mean, I find myself saying this all the time. It explains so, so much about American culture. We're transitioning from an honor culture to a "don't be a sucker" culture.

The example I always point to is golf. I'm a huge golf nerd, and if there's one thing I hate it's professional golf. They sit there and pretend it's a "gentleman's game" and then let people like Patrick Reed openly and obviously cheat... repeatedly. They even got rid of the ability for fans to call in rules violations. Why? Because it's no fun, boo. Players used to want to not win when they broke the rules.

Gambling in college and pro sports? We went from the Black Sox shame and a Pete Rose being banned, to now players getting slaps on the wrist. Our society does not reward honor, so most people will not be honorable, plain and simple. Yes, there are plenty of us who will care more about integrity, but the vast majority of us won't care.

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

#375

Post by array_key_first »

heggerd wrote: post #318
throwaway198846 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the USA a high trust society?

[flagged]

It is most definitely disputable that it destroy social cohesion. The US was cohesive after WWII, by that point we already had a LOT of non-white people. Also black Americans have been here since the start.

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

#376

Post by csiegert »

busyant wrote: post #368
chatmasta wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If OP remembers her name I’d be really curious to hear what she’s doing now (anonymized of course).

I have no recollection of the student's name. ~150 students in the class, so they were all a blur. This was also a few years before the web took hold, so I could not have "Google-stalked" her even if I had been so inclined. I do remember my fellow TA's name! But that's probably not surprising.

[flagged]

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

#377

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

heggerd wrote: post #318
throwaway198846 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the USA a high trust society?

[flagged]

Chicken or the egg: multiculturalism doesn’t work or multiculturalism doesn’t work because assholes treat people with different cultures like shit.

Also what’s the definition of multiculturalism? Can orthodox Christians be chill with Catholics? How about Japanese with Korean?

Stupid shit.

Also what’s your definition of white? Does it include Mediterranean climates? Fair-skinned Arabs? How about the Irish? What about a French citizen born in Morocco who has a passing French accent but is fluent in Arabic, but isn’t Muslim - is he white?

Can’t believe in the year of our lord 2026 we’ve still got buffoons writing shit like this in earnest.

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

#378

Post by morkalork »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #345
paulpauper wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ivy league schools , imho, tend to operate differently--more hands-off approach. The assumption is if you're smart and determined enough to get in, that you will not cheat. The filtering to get in is intense, so this presumably filters out less honest people.

The only possible reason for a school like Princeton that is drowning in cash to not proctor exams is to allow students to cheat. Also: admissions at all these schools are heavily biased toward wealthy legacy hires, regardless of talent, and the "most determined" are the most likely to cheat. What's next, claiming the wealthy don't steal?

Of course, why would they need to steal, they're already wealthy!

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

#379

Post by marsten »

osculum wrote: post #112
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…

Im surprised to hear that. I went to Caltech for my postgrad and never collaborated on an test, and it would have never ocurre me to do so (and no, the professor didn’t have to explicitly say they collaboration was not allowed. It was just the standard honor code). We all suspected of people that didn’t adhere to the honor code and it was frowned upon, and they could have faced repercussions if anyone had reported th…

I was an undergrad at Caltech in the late 80s and likewise it never even occurred to us to cheat on take-home exams. Maybe things have changed.

People did plenty of collaboration on homework sets. Some of the harder ones were almost impossible unless you did, like those 20 page Phys98 homework sets...

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

#380

Post by hammock »

busyant wrote: post #346

I was a grad student @ Princeton a handful of decades ago. I was a TA for a few classes and, given the honor code, we did not proctor the exams for undergrads. We just handed them out (left the room) and returned to collect them at the end. - One of the exams in a course that I TAed had 5 free-response questions. - There were also 5 TAs in that class, so we un-stapled the exams and each TA graded one question (for co…

There is an easy solution to Princeton’s problem, and it’s to have an honor system with a backbone. The way honor historically worked.

At my private high school, and at my university (although they later gutted it), we had a “single sanction” honor code.

That is, if you were caught lying, cheating, or stealing - in any way, and in or out of school, though usually it was in - you were immediately expelled. No mitigating circumstances. No negotiation.

To many of my peers this sounded very harsh, especially since these were very good schools you worked hard to get to and succeed in. But part of why they were good schools was because of this.

We do zero tolerance for so many things but integrity is the one thing that misses it for some reason.

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