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Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

baneproctoring.com

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Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#71

Post by consp »

MattGaiser wrote: post #51
Negitivefrags wrote: post #6

I can see why universities want to use a system like this. A friend of mine is a University lecturer for physics and one of his students gave him an invite to the discord channel where half his students are in there sharing all the answers during the final exam. He basically told me there is nothing he can do about it. He talked to the head of department and they basically said if you have proof of specific people ch…

Even for people who have cheated in a very obvious way, nothing is done. A friend of mine copied an assignment right down to the name and student number as he didn't even bother to read the whole block of code so also copied the comments with the submission information. He got 100%, but was told not to do it again.

Completely anecdotal and not in the US:

My experience as a TA are quite different, though this in in Europe. Especially with the algorithmic courses there was quite a lot of copying since there were multiple TA's and they thought we didn't compare notes. Several of them got reported (you get a mark, two marks is suspension, three is out) and I know of at least one case who got caught again at a different course and was suspended.

For a programming course for first year engineering students we didn't care they copied each others code but just asked students to explain specific parts of the programs they handed in. Those who copied failed mostly instantly and got one retry, and most at least tried to understand what it was about after that. Though copy/pasting and not even changing the student's ID numbers was an instant fail.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#72

Post by denton-scratch »

christophilus wrote: post #48
Negitivefrags wrote: post #6

I can see why universities want to use a system like this. A friend of mine is a University lecturer for physics and one of his students gave him an invite to the discord channel where half his students are in there sharing all the answers during the final exam. He basically told me there is nothing he can do about it. He talked to the head of department and they basically said if you have proof of specific people ch…

Spitballing here, but maybe exams need to be reconsidered. What if instead, the professor has a 1:1 conversation with each student, Socrates-style? You’d know pretty quickly whether or not the student was familiar with the material, and if not, where they were weak and needed more focus. Maybe systematizing everything about education is the wrong approach.

It's certain that this Socratic professor has preferences and biases, like everyone else in the world, some of which he will be unaware of. How is he to avoid these biases affecting the conclusion he draws?

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#73

Post by sokoloff »

noodlesUK wrote: post #58
bitL wrote: post #36

Algo for teachers affected by cheating: 1) make questions brutal and unique (compared to previous year or current groups) if possible 2) make everything open-book 3) set a tough time limit 4) curve the results to a desired grade distribution (that is often imposed from above anyway) 5) use software that can the catch most obvious frauds (i.e. 360 degree room scanning, ban use of phones/second computers etc.) 6) if th…

I’m not sure about curving the grades. It creates a level of adversarial competition between students that I don’t think is healthy in an academic environment. Sometimes it can be necessary, but it’s not fair to punish people for having better peers than last year.

In most cases, at least for medium and large courses (over 30) the curve is calibrating the exam contents more than the peer group.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#74

Post by jordanpg »

captainmuon wrote: post #68
maweki wrote: post #2

We employed the method of mixing the order of questions, not giving question titles, and having a pool of subtly different questions (a negation or a different constant slipped in) in order to vastly increase the amount of necessary communication to collaborate. We had the students turn on their webcams just to discourage them sitting in the same room, which basically would negate our former efforts. Neither did we f…

Especially at universities I don't see the reason for invasive e-proctoring. When I was studying (physics, early 2000s in Germany), we didn't even have a honor system, we had the assumption that everybody is there to learn something. If you cheat, you harm yourself. Progress was assessed by weekly excercise sheets where you were encouraged to work together with others, and to learn how to use the library to find solu…

The real story here is that cheating is rampant, everyone knows it, and that the universities (as opposed to individual professors) are not prepared to do what is necessary to stop it.

I'm speaking, of course, of measures like expulsion. Too much of a hit to the bottom line, too much messy litigation, and too much bad PR.

All of this is another way of making your point, which is that the core mission of universities has drifted away from idealized learning to big business and sports.

I suspect the entire thing needs to be nuked from orbit before it can be rebuilt and I'm happy to see COVID accelerating the process.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#75

Post by swiley »

captainmuon wrote: post #68
maweki wrote: post #2

We employed the method of mixing the order of questions, not giving question titles, and having a pool of subtly different questions (a negation or a different constant slipped in) in order to vastly increase the amount of necessary communication to collaborate. We had the students turn on their webcams just to discourage them sitting in the same room, which basically would negate our former efforts. Neither did we f…

Especially at universities I don't see the reason for invasive e-proctoring. When I was studying (physics, early 2000s in Germany), we didn't even have a honor system, we had the assumption that everybody is there to learn something. If you cheat, you harm yourself. Progress was assessed by weekly excercise sheets where you were encouraged to work together with others, and to learn how to use the library to find solu…

My calculus 3 professor would pass out tests 10-15 minutes early on test days. He'd dump them right on top of your study materials and expect you to push them out of the way if wanted extra time to study.

Applying a panopticon to children to prevent cheating is questionable since it normalizes authorities using electronics to bully people. Applying it to adults at a university is arguably a human rights violation and a failure to write good course materials.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#76

Post by noodlesUK »

dspillett wrote: post #22
deadfish wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Massive failure to not have "What is Eproctoring" as the first section of the page.

I assume the target audience would all know the term, and others could work it with a little deduction or Googling. Though it is a bit US centric I think. Here in the UK what I think is referred to as a proctor would instead be called an invigilator. Though again, unless the target audience is international, that probably does not matter.

I would add as an aside that the invigilated exam halls you likely remember from your British education don’t really exist in most US universities. Final exams are generally administered by the lecturers themselves rather than independent invigilators, and there’s (generally) less emphasis on having a standardised process from one course to another.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#77

Post by YakBizzarro »

christophilus wrote: post #48
Negitivefrags wrote: post #6

I can see why universities want to use a system like this. A friend of mine is a University lecturer for physics and one of his students gave him an invite to the discord channel where half his students are in there sharing all the answers during the final exam. He basically told me there is nothing he can do about it. He talked to the head of department and they basically said if you have proof of specific people ch…

Spitballing here, but maybe exams need to be reconsidered. What if instead, the professor has a 1:1 conversation with each student, Socrates-style? You’d know pretty quickly whether or not the student was familiar with the material, and if not, where they were weak and needed more focus. Maybe systematizing everything about education is the wrong approach.

at my university (Italy), exams were typically composed by one or more written session and a final oral exam. In the written one we were asked to solve exercises, no multiple-choices questions. They would last between 30m and 2 hours, depending on the size of the exam. In the oral one, we would also go over the solved exercises and discuss about mistakes and choices. Sometimes, mostly for laboratories, the written one was replaced by an assignment to be done at home, typically in form of a report of the activities.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#78

Post by noodlesUK »

denton-scratch wrote: post #72
christophilus wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spitballing here, but maybe exams need to be reconsidered. What if instead, the professor has a 1:1 conversation with each student, Socrates-style? You’d know pretty quickly whether or not the student was familiar with the material, and if not, where they were weak and needed more focus. Maybe systematizing everything about education is the wrong approach.

It's certain that this Socratic professor has preferences and biases, like everyone else in the world, some of which he will be unaware of. How is he to avoid these biases affecting the conclusion he draws?

One way of doing this is to make the viva entirely pass-fail, with a fairly low bar for passing. More of a sanity check to see that a student is generally familiar with the material as taught, and is capable of explaining their answers to questions they’ve previously solved (or variants)

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#79

Post by denton-scratch »

consp wrote: post #71
MattGaiser wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even for people who have cheated in a very obvious way, nothing is done. A friend of mine copied an assignment right down to the name and student number as he didn't even bother to read the whole block of code so also copied the comments with the submission information. He got 100%, but was told not to do it again.

Completely anecdotal and not in the US: My experience as a TA are quite different, though this in in Europe. Especially with the algorithmic courses there was quite a lot of copying since there were multiple TA's and they thought we didn't compare notes. Several of them got reported (you get a mark, two marks is suspension, three is out) and I know of at least one case who got caught again at a different course and w…

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 required to sit on an exam board for several days during the holiday season, unpaid.

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.

I took option 3.

Re: Protect student privacy: ban eproctoring

#80

Post by gambiting »

jordanpg wrote: post #74
captainmuon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially at universities I don't see the reason for invasive e-proctoring. When I was studying (physics, early 2000s in Germany), we didn't even have a honor system, we had the assumption that everybody is there to learn something. If you cheat, you harm yourself. Progress was assessed by weekly excercise sheets where you were encouraged to work together with others, and to learn how to use the library to find solu…

The real story here is that cheating is rampant, everyone knows it, and that the universities (as opposed to individual professors) are not prepared to do what is necessary to stop it. I'm speaking, of course, of measures like expulsion. Too much of a hit to the bottom line, too much messy litigation, and too much bad PR. All of this is another way of making your point, which is that the core mission of universities…

Again, I think the problem is elsewhere. Where I'm from(Poland) cheating is rampant and universities have absolutely no trouble kicking people out over it. Got caught cheating? Good bye, apply again next year. It doesn't lead to litigation or messy PR. Maybe it's because all universities are free to attend so no one can argue that they paid for something they aren't getting - all they are losing is their own time.
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