Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 171 posts

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#81

Post by wolframhempel »

wolframhempel wrote: post #77
tremon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the past where you could consult colleagues Perhaps tests are to make sure that you are a going to be colleague worth consulting then? Yes, pure memorization and recall of facts is less valuable now than before, but knowing how to apply the facts available to you is still a skill worth having, and similarly worth testing. Those skills can also be assessed using written tests, and the potential for cheating is just…

I want to test their ability to perform a task - rather than how well they memorized things. Which is not to say that memorization is not important, but it's just one piece of the Puzzle. So when it comes to language tests, rather than having the candidate fill in prepositions into blanks, let's have an actual conversation with them in which they apply their combined skills.

I actually adhere to this philosophy when hiring candidates as well. Rather than having them explain how to reverse binary trees on a whiteboard, I have them sit down and do a mini version of the actual task they will have to do in their job later. And, unsurprisingly, knowing how well they do the actual task is a much better indicator of how well they perform at doing the actual task later.

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#82

Post by connicpu »

gommm wrote: post #27
p1necone wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Design better tests. If you can "cheat" on a test by just googling things/looking at notes then the test isn't testing anything but rote memorization anyway.

Exactly, I strongly believe that any test at a secondary education level should be open book. We should be testing for reasoning and capacity to apply knowledge not rote-learning. It's also why I believe that in most cases multiple choice questions have no place in any well designed tests because it's extremely hard to create multiple choice questions that actually test the application of knowledge versus the regurgi…

In one of my Math/Computer classes in college, part of the class was that along the way you were supposed to be implementing the mathematical concepts in code along the way, so that you would have your code available to run on the test questions when it reached the day of the test! Whether you programmed on a TI-89 calculator or your laptop was up to the student, but the tests were open note and open device and it felt very freeing. The actual methods of input and exact algorithms were of course carefully picked so that there would be no easy off the shelf code solution, but once you understood it the problems could be trivially implemented in any programming language with a BigInt type

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#83

Post by lbriner »

janekm wrote: post #39
madsbuch wrote: post #16

We are definitely in the period where we are seeing the limits of scalability of current technology. Google et al. eliminated customer service, schools are educating on a massive scale, etc. We always have the option of oral onsite exams as has been custom for many years, and accept that education does not scale excessively. We can also keep developing surveillance tech and other AI solutions to the problem and handl…

Or we could accept that in this day and age, expecting kids to recite factoids broadcast to them by a "teacher" doesn't make any kind of sense any more, with google in everyone's pocket. And testing in the typical style that fails when a student can use a textbook or google makes just as little sense.

This is a common rebuttal but despite the fact that everyone does have google in their pockets, clearly a lot of people never use it to learn and only use it for entertainment so testing what they know off by heart does still matter imho.

When we locked down in the UK, millions of people were furloughed for 6 months+. How many of those people retrained, studied etc.? Not as many as we might hope because education is firstly about motivation and secondly about information.

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#84

Post by wikfwikf »

blitzar wrote: post #47
titoCA321 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, lots of testing at Pearson VUE. Many State Licensing certificates and IT certification testing is conducted at Pearson Vue. Military and government agencies also do applicant testing at Pearson VUE. Candidates seeking to apply to Secret Service show up for Pearson VUE testing center, along with military recruits and folks needing to update Cisco certificates and college students that need to take a test here or…

> Pearson VUE I was so happy when the pandemic hit and the second part of a qualification I was doing could be remotely proctered - everyone from professionals to crack addicts were taking tests of some sort at the same time at the test centre. My concentration broke when the crack addict picked up the monitor and smashed it on the ground and stormed out, im not sure it they were doing a Cisco qualification or a driv…

How did you know the person was addicted to crack?

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#85

Post by lbriner »

There is often a lot of criticism of "learning by rote" and often the blanket rebuttal is "we all have access to Google" etc. however there is a very big difference between someone who knows something and someone who has to look it up, which is why I will never accept a job candidate who will "learn what they need to learn".

How long would an experienced dev honestly take to learn a mid-level amount about e.g. Kubernetes or Go or Rust? at least months and months of common usage, not something that is comparable with someone who already knows stuff and can get cracking on day one and already avoid lots of the footguns that exist in our industry that you normally only learn the hard way.

Let's stop pretending that the internet is a replacement for education, in most cases it is far too unstructured, which is why people still take courses and why education and school still exists.

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#86

Post by barry-cotter »

pksebben wrote: post #46
josh_fyi wrote: post #15

This will mean more tests in proctored test centers like Pearson VUE. Many students and professionals taking tests cheat casually and without embarrassment: It is seen as simply an efficient way to maximize grades.

one sort of wonders what the value in standardized testing is, in a world with such easy access to information.

Ranking and sorting, much like school. Testing on a standardized body of knowledge allows for sorting on intelligence and conscientiousness and subject matter knowledge.

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#87

Post by swores »

PeterStuer wrote: post #31
titoCA321 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on now, some of the college instructors weren't even teaching the offline classes. 200 students in a lecture hall and some random TA grading and assigning the tests. Do you honesty believe the TA knows each and ever student and that someone else didn't show up on exam day?!

At every university that l took exams photo id was required to sit the exam.

I'd guess that people who are willing and able to afford hiring someone to cheat for them in an exam, can probably also order a fake ID with their name and the photo of their exam-taker.

Though maybe an extra step of storing a copy of the ID with the exam entry and having a professor who knows them verify that it matches the real student would catch most of that...

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#88

Post by ookdatnog »

wolframhempel wrote: post #72

This has been eluded to by a few other comments already, but I think it's worth stressing: Maybe the problem is that our definition of "cheating" doesn't make sense anymore. Our methods of teaching come from a worldview in which the information stored in your head is your only resource. That wasn't true in the past where you could consult colleagues, look things up in books or call experts - and it's certainly not tr…

Even if all tests would be open-book, there's still a need to make sure that the person who is being tested is actually the one taking the test.

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#89

Post by barry-cotter »

squarefoot wrote: post #32
mschuster91 wrote: post #3

The problem at the core is not spyware and "room checks", they are just a symptom - the question rather is how exams are designed and why schools and universities go to such drastic lengths to prevent cheating. Most tests are essentially nothing more than tests for the ability of rote memorization - they don't (really) check if the students actually understood the material and are able to apply it to new situations (…

> Most tests are essentially nothing more than tests for the ability of rote memorization This a hundred times. If I had to hire someone for a job, I would rather hire someone who knows how to search online the answer to a problem than the one who repeats the book word for word without knowing what he/she is talking about. Exams are crap like that because better exams would require the use of one professor asking non…

> If I had to hire someone for a job, I would rather hire someone who knows how to search online the answer to a problem than the one who repeats the book word for word without knowing what he/she is talking about.

Do you have hiring authority or have you ever had it?

Re: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

#90

Post by urschrei »

lbriner wrote: post #85

There is often a lot of criticism of "learning by rote" and often the blanket rebuttal is "we all have access to Google" etc. however there is a very big difference between someone who knows something and someone who has to look it up, which is why I will never accept a job candidate who will "learn what they need to learn". How long would an experienced dev honestly take to learn a mid-level amount about e.g. Kubern…

> an experienced dev honestly take to learn a mid-level amount about e.g. Kubernetes or Go or Rust? at least months and months of common usage, not something that is comparable with someone who already knows stuff and can get cracking on day one

I'm not sure how this is relevant? You seem to be trying to make a point about hiring people with specific skills vs candidates with proven ability in the field, broadly speaking, before committing an apparent non-sequitur in which someone (it's not clear who) is "pretending that the internet is a replacement for education". Do you often interview candidates who learned K8s (or Rust!) as part of their education? I assume (given your apparent strong feelings on the issue) that you have some familiarity with CS curricula, but perhaps not.

As a related issue, you're certainly sending a strong signal to the candidates you're hoping to attract, judging by your profile. Whether it's a positive one is left as an exercise for the reader.

Post reply on HN