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Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

baneproctoring.com

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Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#301

Post by denton-scratch »

908B64B197 wrote: post #291
denton-scratch wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another anecdote (Britain): I was a part-time visiting lecturer in computing, paid by the lesson. Cheating was rife; I often got duplicate submission of coding exercises. Scoring was mainly by coursework, not exams. I asked my colleagues what to do about it. They said: 1. You can ignore it. 2. You can report it; you will be accused of racism (the majority of the class were people with brown skin). You will be require…

> 2. You can report it; you will be accused of racism (the majority of the class were people with brown skin). You will be required to sit on an exam board for several days during the holiday season, unpaid. That's just sad. > 3. You can explain to them that collaboration is encouraged, but submitting work you didn't do as if it were your own is cheating, and not permitted. That gives you a great excuse to fail dupli…

If I'd failed or marked-down the duplicates, there would very likely have been an appeal based on accusations of racism, leading to me having to attend an exam board on my own time. That's what I was told by my (much more experienced) colleagues.

Basically, I was advised that it's fine to explain the rules, but to actually attempt to enforce them would cause chaos - for me.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#302

Post by zelphirkalt »

908B64B197 wrote: post #290
zelphirkalt wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly I don't think I can fault students who cheated during the pandemic, it was just so abnormal that most people did whatever they had to to cope. Cheating is never OK. Look what that lead to. A few bad apples ruined it for the other students. People have to learn, that their behavior in such a setting does not only affect themselves. In this case it very negatively impacted everyone studying with them.

> People have to learn, that their behavior in such a setting does not only affect themselves. In this case it very negatively impacted everyone studying with them. Except, for many competitive positions, that's a zero-sum game.

Unfortunately you are right and it probably means, that for many competitive positions the process of evaluation is not a good one.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#303

Post by pastech »

jl6 wrote: post #66

I was recently sponsored by my employer to do a professional certification which involved an online e-proctored exam. I was asked to install the e-proctoring software on my personal computer, because corporate security policy does not allow unvetted 3rd party software onto company devices. I told my employer that's my policy too, and that I would need to be supplied with a separate laptop if they wanted me to take th…

The (almost) only problem that's left is the requirement of having the webcam on.

Regardless of the client-side software that you can't trust, there are also third-party servers that will store all the recordings with personal information for a potentially long time, which is unacceptable and isn't fixable by temporary hardware (as we don't have a temporary face).

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#304

Post by cutemonster »

allgreed wrote: post #235
tppiotrowski wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone in academia know if tests are designed on a curve? You can give a test that everyone gets 100% on (assuming they show up) and you can give a test that everyone fails. Is part of creating a test thinking about how many students in your class are capable of scoring A’s, etc or is it just a side effect

Not strictly curve grading, but when I was studying electronics one of the professors had a 9-step algorithm for processing raw scores into grades. That involved normalizing the lab scores between different reviewers (so that harshness of a particular reviewer would be compensated for). He also assigned `cos(percentage_from_other_test as radians)` instead of resits if you missed one of the tests for valid reason but…

> only professor I heard of that was attacked

How did that end, if it's not too weird to ask

> normalizing the lab scores between different reviewers

Sounds like a good idea to me :-)

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#305

Post by toomanybeersies »

majjgepolja wrote: post #296
cowpig wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an experience like this in Numerical Methods in university years ago. The exams were incredibly difficult for bad reasons: you had to calculate many iterations of an algorithm by hand. You also had to memorize a bunch of algorithms (rather than understanding how they worked or how to modify them to solve different problems). The professor also had a "can't do anything about it" attitude, and so the entire class…

open book exams with serious thinking questions is the answer. I had such a numerical methods exam, I had a python script ready for it. No regrets on automating something that should be automated. I understood how the method works and wrote code for it.

> I understood how the method works and wrote code for it

We were allowed (and encouraged) to write cheatsheets for most of our exams at university. However, they had to be a single sheet and handwritten.

The reasoning was that in the process of creating a cheatsheet, students would reinforce their learning. The handwriting requirement was to encourage us to write them ourselves, instead of just printing one off, and the size requirement was so that we had to think about how to distill a semester of learning instead of just trying to copy the entire textbook by hand.

I really liked the system, and I feel like it did help more than just allowing open book exams. I remember of the few exams that were open book (some even allowed us to use the internet, but with a ban on communicating with others), I usually got a worse grade, as I ended up putting less effort into studying.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#306

Post by toomanybeersies »

unishark wrote: post #158
ttonelli wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe making questions that you have to think about instead of just looking up the answer would help?

You need to give a range of questions from challenging like that to easy regurgitation to discern their level of understanding and be able to assign them an appropriate grade.

Isn't that how good tests should be written anyway?

It's like having unit tests and integration tests in software testing.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#308

Post by alanfranz »

0xffff2 wrote: post #263
alanfranz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was that a curveball? Nobody had told you beforehand?

It's certainly possible. Thankfully I graduated before Turn-it-in was fully mainstream and before online tests were even a thing AFAIK. Nonetheless, I had one professor decide midway through the semester that our final paper would need to be submitted to Turn-it-in. I had to go to office hours, point out that this requirement was not in the syllabus, and that if it was I would not have taken the course, and finally t…

Turn-it-in checks your assignment text against other submitted assignments, and highlights copypasted parts. Then the teacher chooses what to do. What’s your problem with it?

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#309

Post by alanfranz »

reayn wrote: post #146
alanfranz wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Explain why. 2. Shitty instructors are not the software’s fault.

1. Re-stating what half the comments on this thread are already saying would be a waste of my time. 2. This has nothing to do with instructors (in my experience instructors have little to no say or participation in the usage of these systems), badly written algorithms will frequently kick students out of tests for non-adverse behavior or failure in facial recognition (once again oft-mentioned in this thread).

1. I can’t read your mind. I assume you’re unwilling or unable to discuss the issue further.

2. Some issues, as I said, are specific to certain implementations and don’t invalidate eproctoring as a whole.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#310

Post by alanfranz »

mannerheim wrote: post #222
alanfranz wrote: post #56

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.

Are there any actual accounts of security incidents related to such software?
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