EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd • Hacker News Board

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

#501

Post by cassalian » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 11:23 AM UTC

mkl wrote: post #92

cassalian wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see it as a currently-necessary annoyance, as the least bad option... shutting down education until the pandemic's over is unfeasible. Is it necessary though? Have you considered there are ways other than testing for a student to demonstrate their knowledge on a subject? Projects, presentations, and writing all come to mind as effective ways to measure knowledge on a subject and do not require treating all studen…

Yes, but my subject is maths :-). 1st and 2nd year engineering maths don't really have projects, presentations, or writing as options, as we mostly care about whether they know particular fundamental mathematical techniques and skills. All those options also have the problem of knowing who did the work. From talking to remote students, I don't think they feel like they're being treated like cheaters. Instead, they se…

My sister is still in school and the anti-cheating software gives her a lot of anxiety - not that she's a cheater or anything, but because it is well known that this software flags non-cheaters as cheaters. For example, she is not allowed to look around or talk to herself while working on a problem, both of which help her to demonstrate her knowledge effectively. If the goal is for testing to demonstrate a student's knowledge, then employing techniques that hinder a student's ability to do so in the hopes of catching cheaters is counter productive to the original goal. After all, you want to know if she can apply fundamental techniques and skills - not whether she can apply these fundamental techniques and skills while behaving under a very strict set of rules.

Even in early level mathematics, there are plenty of opportunities to introduce word problems that can only be solved by applying the relevant techniques. As long as the teachers are defining these word problems themselves (rather than pulling them from an online resource), they stand as a pretty good guard against cheating since they require students to first recognize the technique that needs to be applied, and then to extract the relevant variables from the word problem to apply that technique.

Furthermore, in early level mathematics, you can still have students present solutions to problems and explain why the solution works. For instance, say you were interested in whether or not a student has grasped the basics of derivatives - simply get on a call with that student, give them a random function to solve the derivative for, and then have them do so in front of you.

These are all things I've quickly thought of that would have at least be partially effective in measuring knowledge. I imagine any person with a career dedicated to instructing students could come up with many more options that could be even more effective.

> Instead, they seem happy we're making their study possible, and accepting of what they're asked to do. They know it's important that they can demonstrate unequivocally that they have particular skills.

Students are happy to be able to study and know that it's important to demonstrate their skills - but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't be happier if they could demonstrate their skills without the invasive testing software. I argue this is setting up a false choice: "you can either learn nothing at all, or do so under this cheating software". But the reality of the situation is that they can still learn and demonstrate their skills without the cheating software.

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

#502

Post by biofox » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 11:27 AM UTC

quercusa wrote: post #346

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It was eye-opening for me to see how much culture affects the perception and even the understanding of the concept of cheating. People from some non-Western cultures, honestly AFAICT, cannot understand why they should not 'help out' a cousin or older student or a military superior.

Only anecdotal, but I personally know of one case in China where the bulk of a doctorate was done by a student's friend. Can't speak to how widespread this is, but the problem is real.

Having taught at several institutes in the Anglosphere, a disproportionate amount of cheating I've witnessed has come from those who speak English as a second language. Difficulties with English and the need to 'save face' probably push otherwise honest students into doing this. Which also says something about admission tests. It's something of an open secret that administrators turn a blind eye to suspicious admission results, as enrolment and tuition money are a strong incentive.

It's not an easy problem to solve, but I suspect proper admission filtering would eliminate the bulk of cheating, and the remainder could probably be dealt with by empowering professors.

If the professors or TAs are paying attention, they already know who the cheats are. It's not hard to spot when weak students suddenly start acing tests and mastering skills they didn't understand the week prior. There needs to be more leeway, institutional support, and incentives for academics to challenge suspicious students, e.g. via oral examinations.

Trying to solve this using software is just an attempt to avoid tackling the real problems.

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

#503

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 11:40 AM UTC

Impassionata wrote: post #472

ska wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> decided to do an oral examination, This really is the best case, but as you note it was 8 students so quite manageable. It requires a little skill on the part of the examiner, but you can quickly find out how much material the student knows with much higher accuracy than other exam formats, in my opinion. One of the skills needed is to be able to make it conversational-feeling and reduce the anxiety of students. Yo…

This privileges confident speakers. (The same way written tests privilege confident readers, and standardized written tests privilege those who have the time and resources to study the standard.)

It doesn't if the examiner understands the material. You can't bullshit someone who knows much more about a topic than you do - bullshitting with confidence will only make you sound like a fool.

If the examiner isn't much more knowledgeable about a topic than their students, then something else has gone wrong.

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

#504

Post by biofox » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 11:40 AM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #247

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There are usually policies to give guidance and mentorship on 'academic conduct' for minor and first-time offenders; but if the cheating was so extensive, then that's a serious dereliction on the examiner's part.

I can understand why it happens though. For the professor to take it further, they'd have to escalate it within the school, involving a whole load of bureaucracy, meetings, production of evidence, and likely a formal hearing with the student, etc. Unfortunately, there's often no incentive or institutional support for professors to do any of this.

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

#505

Post by hackerrrnews » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 12:03 PM UTC

aaron695 wrote: post #492

hackerrrnews wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favourite Hacker News game to play is to count all the hoops people will go through to deny the fact that maybe, just maybe, race can be a factor in people's experiences.

I'm aiming for a shadow ban so I'll be frank..... https://pimeyes.com/ can find the shitty twitter photo of their computer rejection screen from "ExamSoft" across the global fucking web. I put in the photo from twitter and it popped out. And that's the fucking stupid 'photo' of the fucking stupid 'rejection screen' on a program that's not even Proctorio. Sooooo Pimeyes is Polish, maybe it's the programmers from the U…

1. I don't understand what you're saying.

2. I'm not from the USA.

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

#506

Post by paulgb » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 12:11 PM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #476

paulgb wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, especially considering that filing a proper false DMCA takedown requires perjuring yourself: > A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly in-fringed. In these situations, lawyers are renting out their credibility to bully people who can’t afford t…

I think that being charged with perjury is a penalty too high for lawyers as a group to accept could be a consequence of simply filing a DNCA notice on behalf of a corporation. So I doubt it'll happen. If there were a special penalty, more of a slap on the wrist, but enough to inconvenience lawyers who sign off on these bogus claims, then I think that it would be, counterintuitively, more effective.

I agree, I am not saying the lawyers should be charged for perjury necessarily, just that they know the seriousness of what they're doing when they do this.

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

#507

Post by toyg » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 12:29 PM UTC

dariosalvi78 wrote: post #319

checkyoursudo wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When I was an engineering student at the university of Naples, all my courses were examined both with a written exam and an oral one. No exception, no matter how many students. It was hard for us and the teachers but, boy, you had to really study that stuff! Since then I've become an academic myself and have been teaching in several countries. I have never found the same level of rigor in any place I've been.

Italian universities get many things wrong, but in terms of quality of graduates I reckon they used to be really good. The downside was having a high number of drop-outs (of which I am one). They've gone through umpteen "reforms" in the last few decades so I don't know how they do these days.

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

#508

Post by michaelt » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 12:39 PM UTC

da_chicken wrote: post #423

lutorm wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orals have a lot of advantages, but they also make it very easy for unconscious bias to come into play, in that all the criteria for grading are soft.

There already is unconscious bias. You can see the student's name, their penmanship, their writing style, you likely know who they are, etc. An oral exam just changes things by changing the bias to accent, inflection, annunciation, skin tone, dress, etc.

When I was in school, 95% of grading was blind and nothing outside of exams was handwritten.

And while it was possible to de-anonymise, the academics were all in support of blind grading so why would they?

The only exceptions were projects where everyone was assigned a different topic, and graded presentations.

Of course, this is simpler in STEM subjects - it's not like you can guess someone's race or gender from their switching power supply design. Subjects that prize in-class participation and lengthy essays would probably be harder to blind-grade effectively.

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

#509

Post by indymike » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 12:48 PM UTC

atdrummond wrote: post #37

helloguillecl wrote: post #32

I have a question for anyone who has seen similar situations. (I'm 35+ years old and have never work at a corporation except for some small gigs when I was 18, so I'm really ignorant of how these companies and internal decision making work) Why in the world would a company sue a critic, under weak legal arguments, thus buying themselves this kind of terrible negative publicity? Who will trust/like/or want to be assoc…

This actually seems pretty effective to me. I now know that if I criticize Proctorio, I am likely on the hook for six figures in legal fees. That alone would be enough to scare off many people who would otherwise feel inclined to critique the product/company. In fact, winning the case may not even be that important to the firm.

>I now know that if I criticize Proctorio, I am likely on the hook for six figures in legal fees.

This fact alone should shine a very bright spotlight on Proctorio and by proxy, the educational institutions that force students to install it on their computers.

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

#510

Post by quercusa » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

biofox wrote: post #502

quercusa wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was eye-opening for me to see how much culture affects the perception and even the understanding of the concept of cheating. People from some non-Western cultures, honestly AFAICT, cannot understand why they should not 'help out' a cousin or older student or a military superior.

Only anecdotal, but I personally know of one case in China where the bulk of a doctorate was done by a student's friend. Can't speak to how widespread this is, but the problem is real. Having taught at several institutes in the Anglosphere, a disproportionate amount of cheating I've witnessed has come from those who speak English as a second language. Difficulties with English and the need to 'save face' probably pus…

> It's something of an open secret that administrators turn a blind eye to suspicious admission results, as enrolment and tuition money are a strong incentive.

Money talks. TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores tend to be treated as gospel, even when it's clear from emails that the student has nowhere near the level of proficiency indicated by the test results.