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Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

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Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#111

Post by MikeTheGreat »

msgodel wrote: post #85
MikeTheGreat wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Online instruction / learning can work for some people, and that's good. I don't understand how anyone ever thought that an online exam could be made secure. There's just no way to ensure that the person who registered for the course is the one taking the exam when you don't control anything about the hardware or location, when students have a wide variety of hardware that you must support, and any attempt…

The way you do online exams is by contracting other universities proctored test centers and making students attend the nearest one on exam day. There's a whole system for this, it already works very well if people actually wanted to make online exams work. Of course it's not "social distancing" so it didn't help with covid.

For what it's worth I've tried that (here in WA state, in the US) and most colleges (including mine) don't have a test proctoring center. Occasionally you'll find one but the center will frequently will only proctor tests for their own college (i.e., it's not public service - it's just for that college).

So here in WA, USA there's definitely a system for this. If you don't mind sharing - where do you live? Have you used this proctoring-for-other-colleges system? How do you know about it?

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#112

Post by MikeTheGreat »

nlawalker wrote: post #107
MikeTheGreat wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Online instruction / learning can work for some people, and that's good. I don't understand how anyone ever thought that an online exam could be made secure. There's just no way to ensure that the person who registered for the course is the one taking the exam when you don't control anything about the hardware or location, when students have a wide variety of hardware that you must support, and any attempt…

Chiming in here just because I happen to have taken a handful of online-proctored certification exams through Pearson OnVUE recently. The gist of it is that I think someone willing to put a lot of work in could probably cheat using the strategies you suggest, but it would be a pain. During your checkin you have to send a selfie, photos of the front and back of your photo ID, and four photos of the space you've prepar…

I'm curious what the live video stream captures. Is it you, your desk, and several feet around you (i.e., enough to confirm that there's nothing else near you)? It seems like they need enough to do ongoing, real-time confirmation that your workspace keeps matching the still images you sent in.

FWIW the 'privacy' concern is often voiced by students who find the test proctoring intrusive. On the one hand I agree it's intrusive but on the other hand it seems reasonable for the short-ish amount of time (several hours) that they'll be taking the test.

I'm guessing that some fraction of the students complaining about privacy genuinely object to the privacy issues, some folks may object to having to pay a fee for the oversight, and some fraction are objecting in an attempt to get the oversight removed so they can cheat. I'm sure there's overlap, and other reasons that I haven't thought of.

The scalability problem(s) comes from the need to have a human watching each student take the test. The more people each watcher needs to watch the less effective they'll be, but the lower the watcher-student ratio is the more expensive it will be. Especially since a good fraction of the students won't cheat (so you'll be paying people to watch students not cheat for several hours).

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#114

Post by i_am_proteus »

pragma_x wrote: post #75
i_am_proteus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People bring in second phones: one to have confiscated, one to use on the exam. A common mode I have seen is phone in lap, front-facing camera ingests an exam page hung over the edge of the desk. Student then flips the page and looks down for the answer.

Seems easy to thwart with two exam proctors, one at each end of the exam room. Hypothetically, the whole affair is going for maximum manual effort (grading), so why not double down on test-taking labor too?

It's thwartable with adequate proctoring. I know about this mode because I found students doing it, and the students in question endured substantial academic consequences.

Large lectures have hundreds of students, and to properly proctor an exam for one of these classes, one needs dozens of proctors.

It can be done, but observe: for most faculty, maintaining the integrity of their course does not aid them on the path to tenure/advancement.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#115

Post by 8bitsrule »

Tests are not about technology or blue books.

The question is: what does an exam measure better: the aptitude or hard work of the student, or the creative effectiveness of the teacher?

I experienced this question firsthand one year. I taught a branch of math in the way I (remembered being) taught to a class of students who were not receptive to that approach. When I tested them, I was very disappointed.

After a few weeks of mulling, I went back to that branch with some new ideas about how to approach the topic. This time with a graphic rather than an abstract approach. More grounded in their likely life experiences. Almost immediately I started hearing "oh, now I get it!" and "well that's easy". Same test, but -much- better results. It wasn't their fault. What they taught me was invaluable.

Yes, exams measure the effectiveness of teacher presentations as much as they measure what students have learned. Good teaching is not a part-time job ... many students are ill-served by this approach. A person who resents teaching as a part-time burden is unlikely to shine at it. And students sense it.

Nor is good teaching a gift from the divine - any more than great lab technique, or crisp programming. Many teachers don't recite the same notes year-after-year, because they're 'good enough'. Their exam results help them to learn from their mistakes.

If the exams don't measure teacher effectiveness as well, then what does? What their paying students walk away with. Is it a treasure, or a wheelbarrow of dirt?

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#116

Post by msgodel »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #111
msgodel wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you do online exams is by contracting other universities proctored test centers and making students attend the nearest one on exam day. There's a whole system for this, it already works very well if people actually wanted to make online exams work. Of course it's not "social distancing" so it didn't help with covid.

For what it's worth I've tried that (here in WA state, in the US) and most colleges (including mine) don't have a test proctoring center. Occasionally you'll find one but the center will frequently will only proctor tests for their own college (i.e., it's not public service - it's just for that college). So here in WA, USA there's definitely a system for this. If you don't mind sharing - where do you live? Have you u…

People often say Virginia has a lot of good universities and I always thought they were overstating it. Maybe they're right.

Both the University I attended and the ones near my home town proctored tests for the public. I actually used that service very heavily in high school to test out of ~50 hours of gened classes.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#117

Post by sarchertech »

nxobject wrote: post #106
sarchertech wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP was saying that paid student proctors couldn’t possibly be caring. I pointed out that most of the student assistants in similar positions were in fact very caring.

I've done both – in my undergrad I staffed a drop-in help night for a required freshman comp class, and later on in grad school I made extra cash proctoring a "alternate testing center" for students needing retakes and ADA accommodations. I can see the comparison to drop-in homework help centers. But as a test proctor my job was to get out of the way of students as much as possible while keeping things quiet – I'm no…

I think the author’s description was closer to a homework help lab than to a traditional test proctoring center. I see no reason why you couldn’t aim for that.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#118

Post by xphos »

umbra07 wrote: post #93
xphos wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But like you don't have that because AI will lie to you but kindly. People who are learning don't have the tools to point out those types of mistakes yet either so they will learn things the wrong way. Not to say teachers dont teach the wrong thing most of math is learning the wrong way only to later distill the right lesson but I think the automation of it is much worse

You can literally just system-prompt-fix that kind of problem though.

Then why do chat bots still make stuff up? If it is so easily fixable. I think knowing what is actually true is very difficult and chat bots are struggling against a hard problem

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#119

Post by smelendez »

armchairhacker wrote: post #105
smelendez wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably someone will build and sell a dirt cheap laptop with nothing on it except a basic word processor for this purpose. It’s still a hard problem though. If the students have the laptops outside of the testing site, they can load cheating materials on them, or use them to smuggle questions and answers out if the test is used in multiple class sections. You realistically will not lock down a laptop students can ta…

Store in each classroom a custom-made rack for the laptops (with at least one laptop per seat plus backups). Distribute the laptops at the start of exams and collect them at the end. The rack charges the laptops, streamlines distributing/collecting tests, prevents tampering, and reports defects. A professor uploads the test to their LMS and specifies the exam time-frame and location. Before the exam, the LMS transfer…

Yeah, it’s implementing it well that’s the issue. And securely: Now the laptops have Bluetooth and WiFi, and you can assume some talented and obsessive CS students have access and are regularly finding ways to jailbreak them.

Also, having classrooms full of laptops full of tests assume classrooms are secure and at many colleges they’re unlocked by default. There could be a 9am class and exam, then the room is empty until 11, then the same thing until a class at 2 and a night class at 6, and at 8 the PenTesting and Lockpicking Club meets in the room.

Keeping dozens or hundreds of laptops in every classroom also dramatically shifts the reward for burglars which colleges will not like.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#120

Post by umbra07 »

xphos wrote: post #118
umbra07 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can literally just system-prompt-fix that kind of problem though.

Then why do chat bots still make stuff up? If it is so easily fixable. I think knowing what is actually true is very difficult and chat bots are struggling against a hard problem

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