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EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

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Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#131

Post by moistbar »

mkl wrote: post #128
moistbar wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The expense isn't justified for 10 students, since this may well be the only year that course is offered online. So instead you'd rather waste money on a barely-functional piece of software that actively invades your students' privacy?

It seems to function just fine (I'm not talking about Proctorio), and it doesn't invade privacy any more than the Zoom-based tutorials, which is barely at all. It is also better than any other alternative I know of, many of which have been tried already and found wanting. Privacy is not a god to whom all things must be sacrificed. All education involves losing a little privacy (in person people will know what you loo…

>the fact that software is involved doesn't suddenly make things worse.

When that software is required to be installed on private machines and is difficult to remove, yes, it absolutely does make things worse.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#132

Post by ayewo »

koonsolo wrote: post #125
ayewo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small correction: he’s being sued (by a US company) in Canada, under a new Canadian law.

Aha, that might change it indeed. Do they have the "loser pays the costs" policy or not?

Kind of.

According to the EFF [1], he might be able to recover his legal costs: “ But Proctorio’s bad behavior has inspired a broad community of people to fight for better student privacy rights, and hundreds of people donated to Linkletter’s defense fund, which raised more than $50,000. And the PPPA gives him a greater chance of getting his fees back.”

1: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/student-surveillance-v...

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#133

Post by mkl »

necovek wrote: post #122
mkl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When your institution's reputation is at risk, you want to prevent it. Honest students don't get a lesser grade; that's not the problem. If the cheaters want to cheat their way through life, that's their problem. My problem is to make sure the rest of my students end up with a well-respected degree. I.e. the problem is being solved for the honest students, the ones I want to spend my time on.

I get what you are getting at, but I'd rephrase it as "cheaters should remain a minority". When we phrase it like that, a number of other solutions might pop up to discourage cheaters from enrolling in the first place (eg. lots of custom projects through which students learn anyway, potentially invalidating the need for a final exam too). And suddenly, privacy invasion gets off the table quickly (as soon as you are n…

Well, people aren't born cheaters or not, they choose to cheat as a result of circumstances [1]. Opportunity is one factor. Another is perceived unfairness about what they're asked to do. Our institution becomes better as our students do, when they don't feel the need to cheat. Avoiding opportunities to cheat and unfairness incentives is key to doing that. Invigilation software, the same test for online students as local students, and plenty of online tutor help are three approaches we're using for remote assessments. A small, brief reduction in privacy comparable to their online tutorials is proving perfectly acceptable to students. Unfortunately custom projects and the like won't work for teaching fundamental maths skills.

[1] There's quite a bit of research on this. Bretag is a key author.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#134

Post by mkl »

moistbar wrote: post #131
mkl wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to function just fine (I'm not talking about Proctorio), and it doesn't invade privacy any more than the Zoom-based tutorials, which is barely at all. It is also better than any other alternative I know of, many of which have been tried already and found wanting. Privacy is not a god to whom all things must be sacrificed. All education involves losing a little privacy (in person people will know what you loo…

>the fact that software is involved doesn't suddenly make things worse. When that software is required to be installed on private machines and is difficult to remove, yes, it absolutely does make things worse.

The software we use is easy to remove, and students have a lot of software installed on their private machines already, some of it more invasive in software terms (e.g. games with anti-cheating features). I have more qualms about the software and the privacy implications than the students do, and I'm resigned to it for now; the students just went ahead and installed it without comment.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#135

Post by moistbar »

mkl wrote: post #134
moistbar wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the fact that software is involved doesn't suddenly make things worse. When that software is required to be installed on private machines and is difficult to remove, yes, it absolutely does make things worse.

The software we use is easy to remove, and students have a lot of software installed on their private machines already, some of it more invasive in software terms (e.g. games with anti-cheating features). I have more qualms about the software and the privacy implications than the students do, and I'm resigned to it for now; the students just went ahead and installed it without comment.

Right, but that software was their choice to install, not forced upon them by their academic institution. It's good that it's easy to remove, but other people's computers are not your property.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#136

Post by xoudini »

mkl wrote: post #47
Guthur wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually very disappointing that this whole monitoring system was deemed necessary to begin with. How screwed is the system that anyone one would believe this level of intrusion should be part of the education process.

When you've seen exam-sitting-for-hire in action, you believe it. Most students are honest and genuinely want to learn, and the few that are dishonest cause everyone to be subjected to this. It sucks for everyone, students and staff.

I'm not familiar with the software in question, but I'm quite sure it'd still be possible to have someone else to sit your exam. For instance, you could have an external webcam pointed at yourself, and have someone else in front of your computer writing the actual exam. Maybe even mirror the display so that you can see what your accomplice is doing.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#137

Post by elliekelly »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #101
christophilus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to see it in any other light. You could always have online exams happen in front of an online board— take the human interaction we’ve always used and just move it online. Proctorio reflects the cost cutting, hyper systemization of education, which is a trend that— every time I see it— seems to be antithetical to actual education.

In a room, I can make sure that there is no other person there, that there is no big monitor with solutions, notes, whatever. I can also not see whether the students has another browser open with one of the cheat-websites where one of his faster colleagues has already uploaded the solution. I'm luckily in a field where we can do open-book exams without too much problems, which makes the "hidden notes" a non-issue, bu…

If someone can use hidden notes or google to get the answers then the exam isn't testing for knowledge or subject-matter understanding.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#138

Post by maxk42 »

toyg wrote: post #26
jcelerier wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s as if nobody has ever read George Orwell’s 1984 no, they read it and think "how can we do even better"

Orwell is the modern Machiavelli. In about 100 years, people will be wondering if 1984 was satire/criticism or an actual blueprint for effective government in the digital age, in the same way the real aim of Il Principe has been endlessly debated for centuries.

Machiavelli gets a bad rap. I read Il Principe and the primary message is moderation. I dunno how people contorted that into evil scheming.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#139

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

mannykannot wrote: post #90
necovek wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which does not make tracking everyone a solution to the problem of cheating in exams. Higher level education is largely voluntary, and it's up to the person taking it up to decide what they gain from it. If they are only in it for a diploma, they'd get there one way or another. To me, focusing on finding "cheaters" makes education a competition. I never felt cheaters got anything over me in my studies, and I never fe…

Realistically, if all existing diplomas were invalidated and the entire system of diploma-granting were to be stripped away from educational institutions, an equivalent would quickly be re-established by the free market - and it would probably resemble Proctorio. > So my question is: who are we trying to solve the problem for? What is the expected outcome, knowing that there will always be people who "cheat" their wa…

Is there a correlation between having a degree and competence? Because my experience is that there very much isn't.

I would go so far as to say that the information age has made educational material so widely and easily available that the only value universities provide is signaling and wealth/class filtering.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#140

Post by oxylibrium »

mkl wrote: post #127
sireat wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will have to agree to disagree then. The whole term invigilation is a bit dystopian. It is a huge slippery slope because this privacy invasive software ends up being used for such mundane things like weekly quizzes. Do you really want to live in the future/present where we have to submit ourselves to daily monitoring? How about adding some monitoring via sensors of performance boosting substances? My answer is tha…

I think you're extrapolating way too far, and hence your arguments aren't hitting the mark. The total amount of invigilation in the entirety of each course I'm involved in is 3-5 hours. This has been the case for many decades. This year, for some students, it is aided by software, due to the fact that they're unavoidably thousands of kilometres away. It is not a slippery slope, and none of your dystopian ideas seem l…

> During the test, the student is only working on the test, which is not private or secret.

You fail to consider the circumstances in which the test takes place. Students take the test in their personal spaces, and earlier in the thread, you mentioned essentially inspecting a student's living space (...angle of camera, light, checking environment, etc...) "Checking environment" is really just a cold, "process" word for inspecting a student's living space.

A student's room can often have private or secret things about them. Before you ask, not every student has the privilege to use a separate, clean, blank room to take tests. A personal space is inevitably going to have personal, private things. I've brought this up before; I personally know friends who were outed to professors as trans because their personal space has things like needles - and then you even have stuff like naive professors assuming "drugs" when its really just medications.

It could be anything else besides that, in fact - calendars with things scribbled on them; family photos; posters for political organizations; if you look in someone's bedroom, you're inevitably going to find out things about them that they would rather you not know.

Would you take your students on a tour of your bedroom while you're teaching an online class?

EDIT: In addition, there's non-traditional students and high risk students, and interruptions in general - there's not _only_ a test going on - I've had someone from my family interrupted in the middle of an exam because someone from the government knocked the door to take our temperatures and ensure we're healthy and don't have COVID. There's always more things going on, too.

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