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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

#241

Post by kbenson »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #212
MattGaiser wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I think people here are underestimating the volume of cheating in school. It isn't a minority. It is an overwhelming majority if they think they can get away with it. https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2017/02/cheating_in_college_... https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-academic-cheating-1....

> I think people here are underestimating the volume of cheating in school. Not defending Protorio here, but I didn't really understand how rampant cheating was, either, until I became friends with someone who works at a University. Growing up, my friends and I would never dream of cheating and would fear the consequences of getting caught, so the entire concept feels foreign. We also grew up in the era of in-person…

We can't stress the importance of school and how it will affect the rest of their life, and then not expect them to do whatever it takes to make sure they do well there. For some, it might be a matter of making sure they have an excellent record, for others, it might a case of keeping them in the system at all if they didn't get there though merit, or feel like they can't keep up enough to stick around. I imagine the latter might by even more of an issue for large big name schools, of the type you often hear that one of the real reasons to go is the connections you make.

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

#242

Post by earth_walker »

soperj wrote: post #220
liminalsunset wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, at the school this happened at, UBC, Proctorio is now effectively banned, along with other similar "algorithmic" proctoring tools, and exams are no longer allowed to use it with some exceptions. They've moved to Lockdown Browser without the recording, and to Zoom proctoring. In my opinion, neither are particularly effective measures against cheating, and I'm sure they are trivially bypassable. Th…

This is silly. Make the exams open book and then the only thing you really need to worry about is the correct student taking the exam. If you're testing based on memorization of things in this day in age, then the course is useless.

This. Our engineering exams were all open book and tested understanding rather than rote memorization. If you didn't understand the material well there was no amount of googling that could help you.

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

#244

Post by arp242 »

yowlingcat wrote: post #189
arp242 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people will likely never have heard of this, and it's not like you or I as a student will have any choice in the matter anyway; it's not like we can choose to not use this software. And universities generally don't care. They have nothing to lose, except a comparatively small amount of money. Given that the CEO has previously gone on Reddit to bollock a student complaining and post part of the private suppor…

After my years in the industry, I have to say that it at least feels like there's an overrepresentation of this in the CEO population. But I'm not sure whether that's statistically the case, or whether it's more because, as you say, a single vindictive and nasty C-level can set these things in motion without necessarily any checks and balances to stop it -- and that more over, it's really really visible and memorable…

To be honest in my experience a lot of people tend to be kind of vindictive. See some of the responses to the Linux bogus patch research for example, with people calling for things like "destroy their careers". That seems a bit overly vindictive to me; yes, they screwed up and yes, there should probably some consequences. But destroying the entire career of a 20-something? Sjeez...

I've gotten death threats over email because ... reasons? These are of course entirely hollow threats, and it's easy to just shrug them off as "assholes internet crazies", but there's no reason you can't be crazy or an asshole and have a successful career.

Add to this that a lot of these people put a lot of hard work in these kind of comparatively small businesses and that criticising the company feels like an attack on you ... and you end up with this.

The difference, as you say, is that most of us aren't actually in a position to enact these kind of things.

Maybe there's also some bias towards certain personality types, I don't know.

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

#245

Post by Godel_unicode »

smolder wrote: post #197
silexia wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we should stop endlessly pushing and insisting on degrees... Maybe skills tests in an interview process is not such a bad thing. As an employer, I don't care what piece of paper you have from what school. I only care about how well you can do the job I need to be done.

I don't think you want a doctor without a degree, and there are many similarly difficult professions with a lot of impact.

Yes and no. Doctors go to (effectively) trade school after undergrad, and it's actually that degree you care about. Does anyone care where they went to undergrad?

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

#246

Post by leetcrew »

908B64B197 wrote: post #231
lostcolony wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a CS degree a better solution is make it project based. Even if someone uses code found somewhere, just changing it up to not be obvious, that's not that different than actual industry, AND means they had to understand it at some level. And that's for stuff they -can- search for (such as 'implement a data structure/algorithm').

There's software to detect copy-pasted code or plagiarized (it analyses the syntax tree so renaming the variables and changing indentation won't fool it!). The best however, is a 1:1 code review with a TA or Prof. Randomly jumping to files, reading the code and asking questions about it. Extremely hard to copy a codebase and learn it well enough you can explain it but really easy to do if you wrote it yourself.

I have to wonder how well that analysis code works in practice. for a lot of intro-level (and some mid-level) course assignments, there's only one or two straightforward ways to write the code. sometimes these assignments are just pasting together sample code from the powerpoint with a couple tweaks. I was a TA for a few of these courses, and the correct solutions tended to be very similar. I was only sure students were cheating when they made several of the same mistakes.

re the 1:1s with TA/professor, I agree. if you can explain code that you didn't even write, you might be even more deserving of that A.

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

#247

Post by MattGaiser »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #212
MattGaiser wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I think people here are underestimating the volume of cheating in school. It isn't a minority. It is an overwhelming majority if they think they can get away with it. https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2017/02/cheating_in_college_... https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-academic-cheating-1....

> I think people here are underestimating the volume of cheating in school. Not defending Protorio here, but I didn't really understand how rampant cheating was, either, until I became friends with someone who works at a University. Growing up, my friends and I would never dream of cheating and would fear the consequences of getting caught, so the entire concept feels foreign. We also grew up in the era of in-person…

Consequences?

A friend of mine copied an assignment to the point that he even included the other person’s name in the code.

He got 100% and a note telling him not to copy again.

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

#248

Post by samkater »

soperj wrote: post #220
liminalsunset wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, at the school this happened at, UBC, Proctorio is now effectively banned, along with other similar "algorithmic" proctoring tools, and exams are no longer allowed to use it with some exceptions. They've moved to Lockdown Browser without the recording, and to Zoom proctoring. In my opinion, neither are particularly effective measures against cheating, and I'm sure they are trivially bypassable. Th…

This is silly. Make the exams open book and then the only thing you really need to worry about is the correct student taking the exam. If you're testing based on memorization of things in this day in age, then the course is useless.

I would add some nuance to this view. For nearly every undergraduate course I agree - the ability of knowing where to look for resources in a particular subject matter, synthesizing the available information to solve a reasonably novel problem, and presenting the information in a coherent way is a skill/art that should be one of the primary goals of the education.

For advanced degrees, though, I'm not so sure. I expect someone which a masters or Ph.D. to actually be an expert in the subject matter, not just someone who is really good at figuring out how to solve problems. A big part of that is being able to internalize the information so well they you in effect become a resource that could be used by an undergraduate student. This internalization goes beyond rote memorization, but memorization is a big part of it too.

Just a disclaimer, though - I do not have an advanced degree, so maybe I expect too much from those who do? A big reason why I have no interest in pursuing one is that many people with a masters degree I find have little expertise to show for it, they could have just as easily learned the same information by self-study or being fortunate enough to find interesting work. (the hiring landscape is a separate topic)

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

#249

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn »

soperj wrote: post #220
liminalsunset wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, at the school this happened at, UBC, Proctorio is now effectively banned, along with other similar "algorithmic" proctoring tools, and exams are no longer allowed to use it with some exceptions. They've moved to Lockdown Browser without the recording, and to Zoom proctoring. In my opinion, neither are particularly effective measures against cheating, and I'm sure they are trivially bypassable. Th…

This is silly. Make the exams open book and then the only thing you really need to worry about is the correct student taking the exam. If you're testing based on memorization of things in this day in age, then the course is useless.

Well, that's the problem. Someone can read out the question and receive results from someone else or be actively sharing their screen. It doesn't really matter what kind of test you have.

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

#250

Post by touisteur »

soperj wrote: post #220
liminalsunset wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, at the school this happened at, UBC, Proctorio is now effectively banned, along with other similar "algorithmic" proctoring tools, and exams are no longer allowed to use it with some exceptions. They've moved to Lockdown Browser without the recording, and to Zoom proctoring. In my opinion, neither are particularly effective measures against cheating, and I'm sure they are trivially bypassable. Th…

This is silly. Make the exams open book and then the only thing you really need to worry about is the correct student taking the exam. If you're testing based on memorization of things in this day in age, then the course is useless.

I think part of the idea is to discourage sharing of answers... But then you should build open book personnalized exams. But then the student might hire someone to answer for them. But then why bother everyone because of those cheating people...
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