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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

#131

Post by arcbyte »

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…

There's a HUGE difference between looking something up to reactivate sleepy memories and learning something new for the first time.

There are some really technical things ive done in the pasy that I couldn't do without a reference right now, but once I've got the reference I don't need to be reminded about low level details or edge cases or gotchas - it's all still there in my head I just need to see the road map and it will all come back to me.

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

#132

Post by janekm »

necovek wrote: post #129
janekm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could accept that in this day and age, expecting kids to recite factoids broadcast to them by a "teacher" doesn't make any kind of sense any more, with google in everyone's pocket. And testing in the typical style that fails when a student can use a textbook or google makes just as little sense.

In university, I was notoriously bad at "remembering" things (iow, I was lazy to learn things by heart). I was pretty good at making connections, and I could prove theorems from only knowing a couple of definitions and simpler theorems in advanced math courses. I generally scored average in tests, but I rarely failed (though I occasionally had "original" solutions that teachers commended on even though I failed to re…

Well... I have deeply explored a scientific field (in computer science, not math) the way you are talking about. By reading other's research papers, implementing what they proposed, trying to improve upon it, coming up with novel solutions etc etc.

Very little of what I used on a day-to-day basis came from rote learning, a lot came from the deeper understanding that I got from actually actively engaging with the concepts.

I'm not proposing doing away with schooling completely, but the model should change (much in the way more progressive schools are doing anyway, just a shame that not many parents can afford to send their kids there).

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

#133

Post by Alex7845 »

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…

In online tests, students cheat by asking the answers to other people online (eg. chatrooms with other students in the same class) or by having someone else do the test.

Teachers don't care about students looking into their books/pdf, what they want to prevent is them getting the answers from a snapchat group.

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

#134

Post by Alex7845 »

p1necone wrote: post #19
Claude_Shannon wrote: post #4

It is terrible, but what is the alternative to prevent cheating? I had quite a few on-line exams by now and I've seen very creative attempts at cheating so far.

Design better tests. If you can "cheat" on a test by just googling things/looking at notes then the test isn't testing anything but rote memorization anyway.

Students typically don't cheat in online tests by looking at their notes. What they do is ask other students or have someone else do the exam for them.

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

#135

Post by Alex7845 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #3

The problem at the core is not spyware and "room checks", they are just a symptom - the question rather is how exams are designed and why schools and universities go to such drastic lengths to prevent cheating. Most tests are essentially nothing more than tests for the ability of rote memorization - they don't (really) check if the students actually understood the material and are able to apply it to new situations (…

> The problem at the core is not spyware and "room checks", they are just a symptom - the question rather is how exams are designed and why schools and universities go to such drastic lengths to prevent cheating.

You got the premise wrong. The main way that students cheat in online test is by communicating with other students/tutors and by having other people take the tests for them.

Doesn't matter how perfect your exam is if the student has a friend coaching them during the exam and telling them all the answers.

And it is far more common than you think. I have been tutoring for a for 5 years and there was a massive amount of students who tried to hire me to do online exams for them during the 2 years of covid. I probably would have done it if I was still a student full of debt at that time.

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

#136

Post by jononomo »

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.

It is a lot faster to have things stored in your head than to look them up. You can just put a time limit on the test and tell people that they can either spend a year before the test starts learning the material and getting it into their heads, of they can try to learn biochemistry from scratch using Google after the 40-minute timer for the test starts.

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

#137

Post by happyopossum »

dosman33 wrote: post #116

Tape your notes to the lid of the laptop and it's out of sight from even the most complete "scan" of a room. If people can cheat during an in person exam it's not possible to enforce cheating restrictions off-site, it's a completely useless loss of privacy to enforce an unenforceable idea. I'm not pro-cheating, but this is just another example of tech trying to show that it can solve any social problem through even m…

I’ve done online proctored tests where the selfie cam on your phone was held up to the laptop cam to check for this exact thing.

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

#138

Post by cguess »

PeterStuer wrote: post #31
titoCA321 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on now, some of the college instructors weren't even teaching the offline classes. 200 students in a lecture hall and some random TA grading and assigning the tests. Do you honesty believe the TA knows each and ever student and that someone else didn't show up on exam day?!

At every university that l took exams photo id was required to sit the exam.

Where? In the US I've never had to do so.

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

#139

Post by thayne »

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…

As a physics student in college, almost all of my (physics) exams were open book to some degree. Some were even take home tests where I had a few days to complete it, and was allowed to use software like Mathematica and Matlab.

I definitely think that is a better way to test.

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

#140

Post by jrpt »

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 order to progress to more advanced topics, you need to understand the basics yourself. It's not sufficient to just be able to research it online. This is true in every field I can think of. That's why you can't just give people online access for every kind of test.

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