Live data from Hacker News

Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

baneproctoring.com

221–230 of 324 posts

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#221
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spitballing here, but maybe exams need to be reconsidered. What if instead, the professor has a 1:1 conversation with each student, Socrates-style? You’d know pretty quickly whether or not the student was familiar with the material, and if not, where they were weak and needed more focus. Maybe systematizing everything about education is the wrong approach.

I had class where the final exam was indeed a socratic style oral. It was for an ancient philosophy class (300 or 400 level - this was well beyond the 101 level) where we had studied Socrates (the dialog was on platonic forms). The exam was a 2:1 and lasted an hour if I recall correctly. For a class of 30, this took the professor 15 hours (three hours a day over the course of a week) to have all of the students go th…

This is exactly it.

It's not scalable, and it's way too open to professor bias.

Except for in some niche seminar classes, it's a non-starter.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#222

Recent gatech OMSCS graduate here. I fail to recognize any real issue with proctoring. I have used proctortrack and honorlock. * proctoring software can be installed before an exam and uninstalled afterwards. It doesn’t need to stay on your pc/browser, and its activation is very obvious. I have no info about permanent security issues caused by such software. * what proctoring does is mostly recording video and audio…

> * proctoring software can be installed before an exam and uninstalled afterwards. It doesn’t need to stay on your pc/browser, and its activation is very obvious. I have no info about permanent security issues caused by such software.

I wouldn't trust a computer that had spyware installed on it without a full system wipe.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially at universities I don't see the reason for invasive e-proctoring. When I was studying (physics, early 2000s in Germany), we didn't even have a honor system, we had the assumption that everybody is there to learn something. If you cheat, you harm yourself. Progress was assessed by weekly excercise sheets where you were encouraged to work together with others, and to learn how to use the library to find solu…

That was Germany in the 2000's. This is the USA in the 2020's. College is a game. They are getting rid of even having tests as a requirement for your application. And the admissions process is openly racist, even though this is directly banned by our constitution (for public universities). But don't mention this, or you will be called racist. You will be required to take "distribution requirements" (courses that have…

> There is no way to distinguish yourself

If you actually learn something in a class, that distinguishes you from many other students.

I agree though, university is not a good system for determining who is capable and deserves the best jobs. It’s unfortunate that our society leans on it so much as a sorting hat.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

instead let's teach them that if they cheat, nothing adverse happens.

Replace exams with vivas and see how far the cheats can get. At least make a viva voce a large proportion of the final score.

Probably the best way to evaluate people, I guess it just doesn’t scale that well…

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#225

Recent gatech OMSCS graduate here. I fail to recognize any real issue with proctoring. I have used proctortrack and honorlock. * proctoring software can be installed before an exam and uninstalled afterwards. It doesn’t need to stay on your pc/browser, and its activation is very obvious. I have no info about permanent security issues caused by such software. * what proctoring does is mostly recording video and audio…

> proctoring software can be installed before an exam and uninstalled afterwards. It doesn’t need to stay on your pc/browser, and its activation is very obvious. I have no info about permanent security issues caused by such software.

The permanent security issue is that violating a security assertion (eg running an untrusted program) on your machine means you can never trust that machine until it gets completely wiped. I'm well past the age where I have to worry about bullshit like eproctoring and my computing environment has become much more deliberate, but even in college I was running Linux as my primary. Reading how it's being normalized that in order to pass a class you're forced to install random spyware on your own machine gives me the willies. This is not what we should be teaching kids for information security practice!

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know some student hate it because there is always a slacker in every group My experience is that there is sometimes somebody who is not a slacker, and it's usually the only one doing the work for the entire group.

That's why this is good training for the real world.

As most things in school, it's an artificial situation that bears no resemblance to the real world.

IRL:

- people has much higher stakes, while in school tanking a class project is no big deal for most slackers. IRL, they can get excluded, isolated, shamed, fired and so on.

- such group would exist rarely in the first place, because institutions filter people;

- if you are in the rare situation it happens, you can get out of it, but you it's very hard to move in the school structure, not to mention out of it.

Anecdotally, I've seen the scenario playing out many times in schools, but rarely in a restaurant, a dev team, a NGO or a sport club. There are productivity differences, sometimes immense, and an occasional slacker, but that's not the same order of magnitude at all.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone thinks they are that one person. It is hard to be objective when different people are doing different things.

Nah, it's very easy to be objective when on a 5 pages homework, one write 5, and the others 0. Or if only one person has compiling code on their machine the day before the project. Of if only one person speak on the conf because the others don't have anything to say.

I've never personally seen that. I've seen cases where one person writes four pages, and one writes one page claiming it was the hardest. I've seen cases where one person writes the code, and one writes the paper about the code. The only case I've seen where one person does all the work the person who does all the work refuses to allow the others to help.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#228
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk cheating in the college I was in (Top #30 US Institution) was punished severely. I fondly remember my Data Structures professor, bluntly telling us she'd end our academic careers if we were caught cheating. Fondly because she was a great professor who clearly had no time or patience for that kind of bs. It was school policy for expulsion, and this is a very well known school. This of course may have changed drama…

How many people do you know of who failed a class or were expelled for that kind of thing? Where there ever any rumors of that kind of thing. In a large enough class someone will be tempted to cheat, and if the school is taking decisive action there will be rumors even if they are making great effort to protect the students privacy and make the discipline a learning experience

Rumors yes, there were rumors of people getting caught cheating, but I didn't know anyone personally.

The people I knew on a personal basis weren't the kind to do that or really care about it enough to do so and without going into a story about the people I know and how we're all doing well in life you'll have to take my word for it.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. Even assuming those things--I would say the program I went through was very relevant and I don't think cheating happened very often. It was a really small program and everybody got to know everyone else. So while I can't say for certain, I never saw cheating amongst my friends, nor was ever approached to assist in cheating (though I was frequently asked for help in studying). The problem is, I knew some of…

> though I was frequently asked for help in studying Your type of social group is not the one that this behavior happens in.

I'm saying, I knew all the other students in the computer science program on a first name basis. Most of us even partied together. There were really only about 20 or 30 of us. We all knew what each of us were really capable of, and I didn't see anyone have any unexplainable wins in tests or assignments. The people who were failing just transferred to a different program.
Post reply on HN