Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines • Hacker News Board

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#191

Post by pjmorris » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:31 AM UTC

pickdenis wrote: post #114

WalterBright wrote: post #43

> logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade. Fortunately, I attended a college (Caltech) that as institute policy did not take attendance and no part of the grade was based on attendance. The result was nobody was disruptive in class, because if students didn't want to attend, they didn't attend. I remember sitting in class as a freshman thinking about this and e…

This sort of thing doesn't work at schools that don't have such a high bar of entry. Caltech can afford to treat their students like adults, because they're picked from the cream of the crop. On the other hand, schools like the one I went to would have a horrible(r) matriculation rate if students were not forced to attend certain classes. It infuriurates me (and I think students who want to fail should be allowed to…

I think adults should be treated like adults, no matter the bar for entry into whatever organization they're part of.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#192

Post by ineedasername » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:32 AM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #120

ineedasername wrote: post #85

Speaking from the Devil's Advocate side, as I work in Higher Education analytics: First: this data is, by the vast majority of institutions, used very respectfully in terms of privacy rights and it is ABSOLUTELY never sold. Third part vendors that provide hosted systems are REQUIRED to affirm that they pass nothing on to any other party whatsoever. (I should note that this is the case in public and traditional privat…

> Beyond this, students are apprised of these uses of data with the ability to opt out. What happens if they opt out? And can they opt out of assessment by default, while still allowing data collection? That is, could the data be collected, but go into a secure archive, which only the student could access? So if the student isn't doing well, they could release selected data to advisers.

Unfortunately it's not as granular as that, so there is still lots of room for improvement. There are some specific things that can be opted out of as required by FERPA, but otherwise it's a bit all or nothing.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#193

Post by WalterBright » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:34 AM UTC

BalinKing wrote: post #166

WalterBright wrote: post #43

> logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade. Fortunately, I attended a college (Caltech) that as institute policy did not take attendance and no part of the grade was based on attendance. The result was nobody was disruptive in class, because if students didn't want to attend, they didn't attend. I remember sitting in class as a freshman thinking about this and e…

Not terribly related, but I personally think it’s really cool that you went to Caltech! It bums me out that Caltech doesn’t have as many associated giants of the tech world as e.g. MIT or Berkeley, which might just owe to Caltech’s smaller size, so I always love it when I learn about an awesome alum like yourself :-) If you don’t mind me asking, what Hou(v)se were you in?

Page.

Caltech is quite a bit smaller, only 130 undergrads in my graduation class, or something like that (don't recall exactly).

Bill Gross is likely the most famous alumnus of my class. Quite a few in my class (79) became quite wealthy in the tech business, though not the really big money.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#194

Post by bsder » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:34 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #138

userbinator wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been an instructor for CS courses before so I know what you mean. I never made deadlines anything but absolutely final, which is appropriately not unlike a lot of other things in life --- from what I've heard from others, any leniency just tends to cause more whining. Someone who waits until the last second to do something is not going to do any better if given a tiny bit more time (nevermind the question of how…

I had one professor in college who went hard in the other direction—she told the class "I don't care if you turn in assignments late", and gave no limit on how late you could be. As a student, it was, well, nice. It was true that it was a bit harder to be motivated to finish a paper right away, but it also made the process far less stressful. When I turned in papers I thought they were the best they could be. Of cour…

> I had one professor in college who went hard in the other direction—she told the class "I don't care if you turn in assignments late", and gave no limit on how late you could be.

This doesn't work if your class builds on earlier material (most STEM classes). As the professor, I need some feedback as to how well the class understands what I just taught.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#195

Post by WalterBright » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:34 AM UTC

hyperbovine wrote: post #146

WalterBright wrote: post #43

> logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade. Fortunately, I attended a college (Caltech) that as institute policy did not take attendance and no part of the grade was based on attendance. The result was nobody was disruptive in class, because if students didn't want to attend, they didn't attend. I remember sitting in class as a freshman thinking about this and e…

But that's CalTech.

Caltech, lower case t.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#196

Post by jahmed » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:38 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #189

jahmed wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great, thanks. I get frustrated as a technical staff person, who personally enjoys being on the cutting edge, often being the one in meetings saying 'data is great but how will we actually use it?'. Honestly, I'll probably retire form higher ed in a few years and go work for an outfit like yours.

Hah, actually the "outfit like mine" is a university that has relatively recently come to some very good conclusions on this sort of thing. 5 or 6 years ago... Not so much. But one nice thing about working for an institution like this is that mostly people are looking to do the right thing for students, and don't just look at the thing as some commercial revenue extraction machine.

Ahhhh now I get it. It's so rare for institutions to do internal projects like this I didn't even consider it to be anything but a commercial revenue extraction machine.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#197

Post by WalterBright » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:38 AM UTC

ellius wrote: post #73

WalterBright wrote: post #43

> logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade. Fortunately, I attended a college (Caltech) that as institute policy did not take attendance and no part of the grade was based on attendance. The result was nobody was disruptive in class, because if students didn't want to attend, they didn't attend. I remember sitting in class as a freshman thinking about this and e…

I attended a private high school that gave us a remarkable degree of freedom at a young age. We were allowed to drive off campus as upper classmen, choose a wide range of electives, and generally were treated as the near-adults we were. Recently I read that my high school is instituting a random drug testing policy. I wrote a letter (that I'm sure they promptly ignored) saying how the thing I most remember about my h…

I tend to agree with you. I witnessed that simply expecting people to behave had the result of people living up to those expectations.

As for me personally, being dropped into Caltech was like going from 0 to 60 in 5 seconds. I didn't even know how to do my own laundry :-) Getting from LAX to the campus by myself across LA was a very intimidating experience. These days parents bring their kids to college and even set up their quarters for them.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#198

Post by WalterBright » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:40 AM UTC

aiddun wrote: post #155

WalterBright wrote: post #43

> logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade. Fortunately, I attended a college (Caltech) that as institute policy did not take attendance and no part of the grade was based on attendance. The result was nobody was disruptive in class, because if students didn't want to attend, they didn't attend. I remember sitting in class as a freshman thinking about this and e…

In college right now, and last semester I had an experience similar but someone different in my data structures class. The professor didn't take attendance, and stated that while we didn't have to show up, a. It was strongly recommended in order to do well in the course (a difficult honors course), and b. He wanted to make the class interesting enough that we wanted to show up. The class almost always had perfect att…

Yup. The difference, though, was this was your professor's choice, while at Caltech it was institute policy.

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#199

Post by bsder » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:41 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #68

knzhou wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, my assignments are now largely due at midnight, at a very particular second: submit a nanosecond late at your own penalty. From the instructor's point of view, there's no winning here -- there will always be a cutoff, and any position of it will lead to complaints. Even for an informal system, there's always a last person allowed in, and hence a cutoff. If you have a good reason for an extension, you c…

I've been an instructor for CS courses before so I know what you mean. I never made deadlines anything but absolutely final, which is appropriately not unlike a lot of other things in life --- from what I've heard from others, any leniency just tends to cause more whining. Someone who waits until the last second to do something is not going to do any better if given a tiny bit more time (nevermind the question of how…

> I've been an instructor for CS courses before so I know what you mean. I never made deadlines anything but absolutely final

As a CS professor, the one thing I could do that flipped things on their head was running an automatic submission and testing system for any assignment.

You're getting 0% or 100%, but you know at all times over roughly 2 weeks exactly what score you are getting. You can resubmit over and over. Yes, I'm going to run extra tests once the deadline passes to make sure no one is punking me, but it's rare that someone who gets 100% on the initial tests doesn't get 100% on the later tests.

And, for those of you who think that 0%/100% is a poor programming assignment scoring system--I'll ask you the same question I ask my students: "0%/100% is bad? So which of you are cool with partial credit when I miscalculate your grades?"

Re: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

#200

Post by counterpoint1 » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:42 AM UTC

toomanybeersies wrote: post #165

pickdenis wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of thing doesn't work at schools that don't have such a high bar of entry. Caltech can afford to treat their students like adults, because they're picked from the cream of the crop. On the other hand, schools like the one I went to would have a horrible(r) matriculation rate if students were not forced to attend certain classes. It infuriurates me (and I think students who want to fail should be allowed to…

I disagree. I went to the University of Canterbury (the New Zealand one), the bar to entry was literally to pass your high school exams. We were treated like adults, and attendance was entirely optional for most lectures and tutorials. If you failed a paper because you didn't go to any lectures, that was your problem.

If you fail out, it's not just your problem though. It's also the taxpayers who paid for the school that the student wasted.

That remains true whether that's a Scandinavian model of fully-paid schools, a US public university model of a partially taxpayer funded & partially student funded or even a private university if it ultimately results in a taxpayer funded loan forgiveness or other subsidy.