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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

#301

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

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 never understood the concept of cheating.

If you don't know the answer to a question and you look it up, that's not cheating, it's research, or at least referring to reference material, which is always permitted in real life. Except for some contrived or rare circumstances someone will now point out. Even the Apollo 11 crew had support.

Any professional in any industry is allowed to say: "I don't know" and "I'll get back to you" and "let me look that up".

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

#302

Post by kbenson »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #264
kbenson wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. That's basically what happened here: The school expected students to cheat and looked for solutions to address it. I think it's very important that universities have very significant consequences when students are caught cheating. Cheaters don't ge…

> If Universities made examples out of students who were 100% confirmed cheating beyond reasonable doubt, the amount of cheating would decline significantly.

I don't think that actually follows. As I understand it, many universities and zero tolerance plagiarism and cheating policies. The problem is, when you have no middle ground and your policy is extreme, you leave yourself very few options in the cases where you don't want to or can't easily expel the student. If your policy is expulsion for cheating, then not doing so and providing a lesser punishment is seen as favoritism if the student has resources, or is used as ammunition for their own case by students with resources if offered to a deserving student otherwise.

I think the actual solution is well defined, less flexible, but not overly harsh punishments. Any student caught cheating or plagiarizing is not expelled, but immediately either fails the class or drops two letter grades (and a second time in the same class would be failing the class no matter what if the more lenient option was chosen initially).

With extreme consequences teachers are going to be hesitant to report small and borderline cases, because the consequences are so large. Make the consequences manageable for the single occurrences but problematic if they keep happening, and you'll correctly catch those serial cheaters and those occasional ones that are better off just taking the hit (and maybe dropping and retrying the class) instead of letting them slide because the punishment is disproportionate to the crime.

Think of it this way, if the crime for stealing a candy bar was life in prison, would you call attention to the person next to you that you just saw steal a candy bar? Does the store attendant actually call the police, or just take the candy bar back and tell the person to leave? What if the person is rich, and it actually causes you problems to turn them in, because it's worth it to them to make sure they don't suffer that major negative consequence be exerting their influence? If the punishment is seen as disproportionate to the crime, people will make their own decisions to avoid what they see as a problem with the system, and it also means that people with resources are more likely to exert those resources to avoid those problems, to the detriment of those around them (and they'll mostly get away with it, because who wants to die on the hill of making sure someone is punished for something so inconsequential?).

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

#303

Post by checkyoursudo »

smiths1999 wrote: post #287
soperj wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 teach at the university level and this is what I have done with my exams. Everything is open book and in my experience there is no difference in the average exam score between open book online and closed (or open) book in person. It is also way easier for me to not have to worry about who is cheating and where everyone is looking (I also don't like the idea of forcing students to turn on their webcams).

I finished up the coursework for my masters degree at the start of the pandemic. My university was quite flexible for how instructors would examine us, given how sudden everything had to change.

One of my courses, which only had about 8 students and two instructors, decided to do an oral examination, which ended up being basically a very in-depth, one on one conversation about the course material and based on the expectations set in the syllabus (so, no surprises).

While obviously not practical for large rosters, this was by far the best exam format that I have ever done in my many, many years of schooling. I'm sure not everyone would prefer it, but the students unanimously agreed to try it (wouldn't have done it that way otherwise), and it was just so great. It was not at all like an oral thesis defense, which was what I was a little worried about.

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

#304

Post by reedjosh »

samkater wrote: post #248
soperj wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 expe…

Often the tests at this level are difficult enough that the need for memorization is implicit.

Open book is also fine in this case because without a base of memorized understanding an open book isn't that helpful anyway.

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

#305

Post by nradov »

ModernMech wrote: post #219
nradov wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure projects are generally better than exams. But cheating on projects and papers is also rampant. Students just pay someone else to do the work.

Here's my solution to this: 1) Version control all assignments. I force them to make periodic commits throughout the week. If they want to copy a project wholesale, they have to do so in a way that takes a lot of time and effort. 2) Comparing bytecode. If they change the names of variables, comments, spacing, etc. these superficial differences will be lost in compilation. 3) Oral explanations. Now that everyone has g…

It's great that you run your courses that way and I'm sure your students benefit from the experience. But is it really scalable for lower division courses at public universities with high student to instructor ratios?

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

#306

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

Miraste wrote: post #266
samkater wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 expe…

It depends on the degree. If you're becoming a medical doctor you'll have to do a ton of memorization, but in other fields doctorates are the least memorization-intensive part of your education, because the focus is on generation and synthesis, on the assumption that you've already learned the rote knowledge. You don't need to memorize anything to write a dissertation but that doesn't make it easy (and you'll end up…

> medical doctor you'll have to do a ton of memorisation

Which is a load of dingos kidneys.

Gate keeping.

All the good doctors I've ever been to have a wall of reference material and use it, even if only to show the patient, but it's there and accessible.

And besides, it's not like practising medical doctors don't make heaps of mistakes.

The number one cause of complications in a medical setting is medical intervention, so it could be argued doctors should be using more reference material and not relying on their over worked brains.

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

#307

Post by kiba »

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.

Understanding always aid memories and memories are important to mastering anything.

Brute force memorization, however, are subject to decays and constant forgetting. It is astonishingly difficult to memorize a bunch of meaningless numbers unless you taken the time to do a mnemonic for it.

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

#308

Post by pessimizer »

bena wrote: post #238
yowlingcat wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure whether I can take this statement at its word. If that's the response when questioned about working at a company whose entire purpose is purportedly ethical, I would strongly reconsider your position. There are many corporate cultures where this kind of apathy and whatabout-ism would be considered a red flag. That would certainly be the case for any process I've run.

Let me put it this way, asking why you left an employer is fine. Expecting a certain answer for a subjective situation and rejecting an applicant because they didn't give you exactly that answer is not exactly a healthy behavior. I'm here for a job, not to play weird mind games.

Then why ask? All job interviews are weird mind games. My assumption when I'm asked why I left my last employer is that they're looking to second-guess my other answers based on what I say, or checking to see if I'm a disagreeable person who is willing to badmouth somebody generous enough to employ me. This is just taking the latter in the opposite direction.

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

#309

Post by flashgordon »

samkater wrote: post #248
soperj wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 expe…

Just as a counter example. I have 2 "advanced" degrees - in engineering and in management (btw I did NOT do them because I was smart - but rather because I was curious and had a lot of time on my hand. I definitely struggled in both of them - though really really enjoyed them both). I am not what you call a model test-taker. I got barely passing marks in all my exams and yet my "assignments" I was consistently a high scorer in (sadly assignments at the time only accounted for atmost 20% of your grade with 80% being what you can cram-and-dump in an exam).

I still cannot "remember" how to perform a discrete-wavelet-transform from memory (my honor's thesis) but i found myself digging into it a couple of months ago (just fiddling on pet projects). An hour on googling got me on the track. Point is there is so much even those with advanced degrees have to know and having to retain it all in memory all the time is both infeasible and wasteful. Yet expecting kids/young adults to do this is truly hypocritical and disingenuous.

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