391–400 of 538 posts
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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?
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I get what you are getting at, but I'd rephrase it as "cheaters should remain a minority". When we phrase it like that, a number of other solutions might pop up to discourage cheaters from enrolling in the first place (eg. lots of custom projects through which students learn anyway, potentially invalidating the need for a final exam too). And suddenly, privacy invasion gets off the table quickly (as soon as you are n…
Well, people aren't born cheaters or not, they choose to cheat as a result of circumstances [1]. Opportunity is one factor. Another is perceived unfairness about what they're asked to do. Our institution becomes better as our students do, when they don't feel the need to cheat. Avoiding opportunities to cheat and unfairness incentives is key to doing that. Invigilation software, the same test for online students as l…
> Unfortunately custom projects and the like won't work for teaching fundamental maths skills.
I am not sure I agree. One of the projects I did for my projective geometry class was to do an inverse of a projected drawing (in AutoCAD) and save a 3D .obj file. In differential equations course, I was given a project to prove a theorem that is generally missing from the school books (or usually given as an exercise). You can also let people devise proofs in a closed system of axioms and a few theorems.
It is a hard and different type of work, but I am certain you can both teach and get to know students with theoretical math projects. If they get someone else to do it for them, yet they are able to present it in front of the class (online) convincingly, they have likely understood the concepts, which is what teaching is all about.
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If you can't see them, doesn't that open up the possibility of students taking the exam together?
I give regular online exams without any protoring software, pure honor system. I have three students who live together who consistently turn in identical work. What I don't understand is why the keep doing it, when I keep giving them 0s for copying.
Crazy stuff.
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If you can't see them, doesn't that open up the possibility of students taking the exam together?
I give regular online exams without any protoring software, pure honor system. I have three students who live together who consistently turn in identical work. What I don't understand is why the keep doing it, when I keep giving them 0s for copying.
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When your institution's reputation is at risk, you want to prevent it. Honest students don't get a lesser grade; that's not the problem. If the cheaters want to cheat their way through life, that's their problem. My problem is to make sure the rest of my students end up with a well-respected degree. I.e. the problem is being solved for the honest students, the ones I want to spend my time on.
In many courses, the grades are curved, so cheaters might really make the grades of honest students worse. While I am against these surveillance software, making sure that tests are fair is very hard, especially since everything is online now thanks to COVID.
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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…
This is why PhD's typically have comprehensive exams. It varies (a lot!) by university and even department, but panel led oral exams are pretty common. At some places they are even open to the public (no pressure). These are distinct from a thesis defence, which happens at the end of your degree; they are likely to happen about a year in and are meant to ensure you have a solid background. Overall I think an oral exa…
America is leaking again.
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If you can't see them, doesn't that open up the possibility of students taking the exam together?
I give regular online exams without any protoring software, pure honor system. I have three students who live together who consistently turn in identical work. What I don't understand is why the keep doing it, when I keep giving them 0s for copying.
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Unless those ethical concerns directly impact your own team, then that's deeply unprofessional and unethical on your part, and you should reconsider your priorities. Who appointed you moral judge of others? You discriminating against candidates based on their moral views unrelated to their work is no different from discriminating based on religion or political party affiliation. It is legitimately within your purview…
It's unethical to hire people who align with your (and your company's) values?
This is precisely why hiring for "cultural fit", very often also called "company culture" or "company values", often leads to racial or other discrimination. Because different groups hold different values. E.g. white guys from expensive colleges hiring people who "align with their values" can result in deeply discriminatory behavior -- racially, culturally, socioeconomically, etc. -- even if that's not the intention.
They should have just ignored this guy and gone on with life. Now the they got the EFF to deal with and it serves them right. There is another HN thread on this and a lot of people in it are more upset about the line of work Proctorio is in and how they do it than the fact they sued this minor irritating student. My opinion is there is simply no easy pain free way to do fraud auditing and that's that. I just recently…
Why do the mods/dang do this? Is it just to avoid multiple stories on the same topic on the home page? There’s got to be a better solution than this. At least providing some sort of log of changes would be helpful.
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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 exp…
Professors are also given quite a lot of flexibility in their grading. My mother had a fun story about a professor she had in college - a professor of a really hard math class who wanted to save on exam time. He announced "exam will be hard. Anyone willing to settle for a D, bring your report cards forward, I will mark them D and you can leave. No exam.". Some people came forward, got their Ds marked, and left. Once the door closed, he said "Anyone willing to accept a C, please come forward". Some did. After the door closed there, he announced to the remaining smiling students expecting easy As/Bs: "I'll see you all for the exam tomorrow 8 am".
No way this could happen in USA.