'Ban All Watches From Exams To Stop Cheating' (bbc.com) 136
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: All watches should be banned from exam halls to discourage cheating, says an inquiry into the extent of malpractice in exams taken by pupils across the UK. Smart watches, connected to the internet, are already banned from use by students taking public exams. But the review, commissioned by exam boards, says it is becoming difficult to distinguish between hi-tech and traditional watches. Review chairman Sir John Dunford called for a "blanket ban" on watches. The Independent Commission on Examination Malpractice, set up by exam boards to investigate the prevalence of cheating in public exams in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, says that overall there is a "very low level of malpractice." "It can look as if it's a time-telling watch and actually, you press a button and it becomes an email-type watch," said Sir John, a former head teachers' union leader. "If you don't ban them all I think you're giving a very difficult job to invigilators who are looking round an exam room. So I think the obvious thing to do here is to ban watches."
The final solution. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sorry, no, that won't work - I built a Microvision display into my #2 pencil.
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Students have been known to write cheat notes on their skin! Ban skin from exams!
Stop complaining. They'll get it back afterwards.
Where do I sign up? (Score:2)
...uh, I just want to help
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Or just scrap exams. They are a stupid way of measuring performance anyway.
How about the opposite? (Score:2)
Let's ban exams from education.
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That's true, testing your capacity to cram knowledge for a 24h period of time is a very poor indicator of capacity to succeed in real life jobs. Most knowledge you'll learn on the job in the first 3 months, the rest is your capacity to reference or problem solve.
If they made exams about your ability to Google, problem solve and reference properly, a lot fewer people would graduate and we'd have much higher skill levels for recently graduated employees.
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If they made exams about your ability to Google, problem solve and reference properly, a lot fewer people would graduate and we'd have much higher skill levels for recently graduated employees.
Good universities have a lot of open book, take-home exams, for just this reason.
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take-home exams
Who actually did the work?
Good universities
The sort where there is a lot of competition for entrance. And the wealthy people that can make big donations to slip their kids in can also afford 'tutors' to make sure they pass those exams.
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And yet, these are the universities with the best reputations for engineering programs, because their students are reliably good.
Turns out most people who want to succeed in life want to actually learn in school, and very smart people can cheat no matter what you do, so no point in optimizing around them.
Re: How about the opposite? (Score:3)
It took me 44 hours, 78 pages including Matlab and Mathematica code and printed results, and various writings and drawings. Small class, excellent professor who had made good m
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My university back in the day banned unlimited-time exams precisely because of the "44 hours" phenomenon. Getting 3 of those during finals week was a bit much.
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What is?
A person who was told to learn something for a year?
Did not.
Cannot recall much.
Did not remember to get to the exam in time?
vs the person who took the time to learn and can show their ability to learn and recall?
Real life jobs will require learning too.
Want to pay a full wage to a person for a few years and see if they can learn?
They might have some skills. They might show up to work some days?
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Exams don't accurately reflect the education level of students. Especially modern standardized exams. Project based education is far more effective in educating a general populace that varies in its learning abilities. Exams only focus on one type of learning ability...memorization. But memorization isn't a critical tool in the modern world. So students who don't excel in that ability tend to be left behind. So my question is, why would you want an education system that is biased? It doesn't seem lik
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Cite please.
Axiomatically incorrect.
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I don't have access to most of the scholarly papers. But a simple google search pulls up some journalistic writings on the subject matter
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
I also don't think you understand what an axiom is.
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You're not really getting it. What makes you believe that people who don't do well on exams don't learn anything? That's complete and utter garbage. Absolutely no employer cares about your exam scores or your overall grades beyond that first job. Even then, most employers are just fine being told you have a degree. NO ONE in the work place values the ability to do well on exams. They value critical thinking and problem solving, traits most exams never touch. It's like being cool in high school. No o
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Seriously, you need to learn how to format your posts.
Who would accept such a "degree" if the person had no skills after years of attendance?
Again, why are you assuming that if a student doesn't have to take exams that they will be doing nothing during their schooling? What a wrong headed assumption. See there are these people called teachers. A teachers job is to impart knowledge to the students. The validity of a degree comes from the validity of the teacher and the institution as a whole. There's also this thing called accreditation which is a governing institution that verifies the
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Why are you so focused on sorting? I keep telling you that employers don't care about test scores and school grades. As a hiring manager myself when I am looking at junior candidates I look at actual work produced by them, be it a portfolio, some code, or some other project they worked on. If an applicant comes to my desk with nothing but their exam scores that's an immediate pass. Exams scores are useless in deciding who will make a good employee.
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That would cover the critical thinking and problem solving aspects of learning.
It's dumb (Score:3, Interesting)
A smart watch isn't going to help you pass any kind of legitimate timed test that would require proctoring.
Now hear me out.
If you can replace the guts of your Ti-84 with a smartphone connected to a concealed camera in a pair of eyeglasses and an earpiece.
AND you have a very knowledgeable friend willing to be an accomplice you MIGHT be able to get a better score.
I'm taking orders for the kits. $1000
* smartphone not included.
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A smart watch isn't going to help you pass any kind of legitimate timed test that would require proctoring.
Smart watches have cameras, and can receive messages.
That is enough to pass most tests.
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Exactly!
Which is why you should hack your ti-84.
"Maybe he's simple"
Or, maybe they need to rethink.... (Score:2)
The concept of a take-home exam comes to mind as just one way to solve the problem.
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The fact that someone can always reach for a calculator doesn't negate the value of having memorized basic multiplication tables.
And phones and smart watches should definitely be banned from elementary school classrooms.
There are plenty of exams where the test is, explicitly, "Do you remember this off the top of your head?" and many of those exams have long-term value.
Only if you're talking about early schooling, not university. The junior engineer thinks he knows everything. The mid-career engineer realizes he knows nothing. The senior engineer remembers nothing, but knows where the answers are written down. Heck, I'm at the point where I just remember the fact that certain problems have been solved, because that's all that's important to keep in my head, the rest is trivia.
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You don't learn what works by memorizing, is the point. You learn what works by actually using it to solve real problems for many years. Remembering what the solution actually was isn't important, just remembering that there was a good solution is enough, because that's enough to remember what to google for later. And once you're very experienced, knowing that anyone has solved a problem thoroughly is enough, because you can recognize what good solutions to any problem in your discipline look like.
Heck,
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I'm suggesting that you design your tests right, if they don't remember the facts, then they won't be able to do well on the test because the time spent looking the facts up will take away from time they could be spent answering.
I'm suggesting that an exam should *NOT* be simple fact regurgitation, but should instead be testing a student's ability to *use* those facts in some productive way.
And if there is no real use to for a fact, then it probably isn't worth teaching.
For the remainder of the cases
Re: Or, maybe they need to rethink.... (Score:2)
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I am suggesting that if they can't *use* the knowledge, then happening to be able to remember it at the time the exam is being written doesn't test anything useful. Maybe students crammed the night before or in the hours leading up to the exam, and are simply prepared to regurgitate the expected facts that they will quickly forget, because they are not applying those facts in any productive way.
Tests, therefore, should be designed to reflect this.
Writing tests where the students must simply regurgita
Ban multiple choice (Score:4, Insightful)
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I guess it depends on the task.
Some situations require critical thinking and problem solving, others require instant recall.
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However, even that would not solve the "problem" described in this article. If one is using their watch to communicate with an accomplice outside, it's not the test taker that knows how to do the research, it's the accomplice.
As well, being able to find an answer online is not the same as being able to derive it. For example, it's reasonable to ask something like "What is 1001 base -3 in decimal (base 10)?" in an introductory course where number bases are covered even though the odd case of a negative base
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Some of the hardest tests I've taken have been T/F.
A multiple-choice test can be made arbitrarily difficult. Here's an off-the-cuff (reductio ad absurdum) example that would be valid prior to Wile's work:
Q. No three positive integers a, b, and c satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than 2.
A. Circle one: T or F?
Should take you about 20 years to get an answer if you're a superstar mathematician.
In other words, the format of the test is not necessarily an indicator of its diffi
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1*3 + 2*3 = 3*3
So, why is this hard? Let's see: n > 2. Check, since n = 3.
And three positive integers, a = 1, b = 2, c = 3.
1 * 3 is 3.
2 * 6 is 6.
3 * 3 is 9.
3 + 6 = 9.
9 = 9.
So, false. The first example past your condition and the problem is solved. I don't think that's gonna take 20 years.
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Also, I get that you MEANT to write Fermat's last theorem, but... you didnt.
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That's easy. The answer is true [wikipedia.org]. Prior to the Wiles proof, you couldn't fairly ask the question because the examiner wouldn't have known the answer either.
Here's another one:
Every even number greater than 2 is the sum of two prime numbers: true or false? (time limit: 277 years)
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Some of the hardest questions I ever did where multiple choice. There used to be (at least for my exam boards back in the 1980's in the UK) the last ten questions in the paper (50 questions was the standard number in the multiple choice papers at both O and A level).
The questions where of the form of two statements 1, and 2, with answers A to E. using this format. A statements 1 and 2 are both true and 2 explains 1. B statements 1 and 2 are both true but 2 does not explain 1. C statement 1 is true but 2 is
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Our teacher did that once. He simply said he cut and pasted questions from previous exams without checking what the answers were. It's entirely likely and poss
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many thumbs up! I don't know if there is a middle ground with some multiple choice but the test shouldn't be about spouting facts. Many of my exams allowed books or sheets of formulas. Alas in these situations the easier path is "we're not the problem" "ban Ban BAN!"
This goes back a ways (Score:3)
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I like to joke that my TI-89 is better at calculus than me (it's not, but it's impressive for what it was). Still use it daily. Used to have games, books, a file manager, music, an IRC client--the works--on it (not all at the same time necessarily).
Quizzes (Score:2)
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You do know...that Trump is a member of that club, yes?
Already banned at my university (Score:3)
Next are they going to ban... (Score:3)
...glasses since they could be Google's?
Seriously, just a thought.
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This year. Next year? A modified version could be made much more discrete.
Simple fix.. (Score:2, Interesting)
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Had this argument before (Score:2, Informative)
My university usually bans all "electronic devices" for exams. Of course they won't let you have your phone, tablet, etc. But watches seemed to be ignored by all teachers. Probably because most students don't wear any kind of watch.
Until one day, a teacher wants me to surrender my watch, citing the "no electronic devices rules". I refuse, noting that my watch is not electronic, by mechanic. Even further, it's a skeletonized watch with a see-through case back, so you can literally see through the watch and a
I have a better idea (Score:2)
Create tests that test understanding instead of rote learning and the problem will cure itself pretty quickly.
Invigilator? What a great word! Thanks Sir John! (Score:3)
"Invigilator. InvigilAATOOOORR! My pencil has entered a state of unusability after failing to resist sheer stresses. I shall require a replacement, Invigliator, please relinquish one."
Toi (Score:2)
Better of to ban all toilets.
Re:Lazy (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, please. This is not some horrible imposition on students. Smartphones away, watches away, focus on the exam. Look at the clock on the wall if you need to see the time. According to TFA, some exam centers already disallow watches, and that they're just considering making it a system-wide rule. And yes, they're aware they actually would need to make sure there's a clock on the wall.
It's actually fairly similar to the lengths chess tournament officials are having to go through to make sure participants aren't using a computer for assistance [slashdot.org]. At some point, due to miniaturization and possibly even implants in the reasonably near future, this may actually become impossible to realistically prevent.
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some already have IR and I seem to remember seeing one touting its Bluetooth connectivity so...
Re:Lazy (Score:5, Insightful)
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There are no reasons whatsoever to use a calculator on an exam.
Speed?
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Turns out, there are other subjects than physics and math.
In engineering, it would be more reasonable to require calculators than prohibit them.
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Graphing calculators were banned in all exams I took during the 1990s, we either had to have a specific model of calculator (which the school recommended throughout the school year, and you could buy pretty much anywhere) or we could use a calculator supplied specifically for the exam. This rule was known at the start of the school year, so no one could walk into the exam and profess they couldn't use the required calculator.
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It's not unlike locks. If somebody is determined enough to break into something, they will find a way.
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When I went through college the first time for my EE degree I had one of the first programmable calculators. A casio model something. I wrote programs to do all the formulas for me. So yeah, they should ban all calculators except maybe a 4 function basic calculators.
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I had one of the first calculators that could invert a complex matrix (c1988). AC circuits was a breeze. I finished the final in about 20 minutes after triple checking everything.
Re:Lazy (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no problem with people using calculators for this kind of thing. As long as you know that you were supposed to invert the complex matrix, then that's all that matters. No real electrical engineer is going to sit there inverting complex matrices by hand. Maybe in a math class it might be important to understand how it's done the first time, but once you get on to higher levels of math, and classes where you are applying it as part of the bigger picture, then there's no harm in using a computer to do the math for you.
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I'd argue that if you personally wrote the program yourself, and knew when to apply the right program to the right problem you likely understood the problem better than most people.
No doubt in my mind on that. I would also say that I understood the nature of the problems better because of it.
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"Expensive graphing calculators" are commonly reset to factory defaults before the test. This is why you have to hand them in before the exam. The reason why Ti-8x models are typically the main/only models approved for certain tests is because they're both limited in very specific ways and easily reset to factory defaults wiping out any "cheating software" on them.
This was standard practice all the way back in 1990s.
And if you get caught doing what you're suggesting with "attempt to fraudulently pass an rPi
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All electronics were banned in exams at my university when I got my EE degree in the 2000's. I suppose you technically could have brought an abacus. And you could bring as many books and cheat sheets as you wanted. There was also a correlation between the amount of books on the table and the probability of that student failing the exam.
Of course that meant that all the calculations had to be kept at a level that was possible to be done on paper at that level of education. Which wa
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"At some point, due to miniaturization and possibly even implants in the reasonably near future, this may actually become impossible to realistically prevent."
Indeed. This is precisely why contests that stage outcomes based on retrievable, existing information will become obsolete... technological advances will demand tests of intellect that depend upon serendipitous intellect and intuitive leaps of imagination.
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What if they do all that and you have a smarter human on the line to help you with the answers?
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Clearly, you're going to the bonus round.
However, if you believe in the fabled smarter human, you're neither a true Scotsman, nor a Slashdot poster.
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So from that informational reveal, we can infer the $10K per diem hookers come free of disease, and through extrapolation, their own supply of cocaine?
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their own supply of cocaine
For those rates, they damn well better.
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Re:Lazy (Score:4, Insightful)
Just ban smartwatches
When you have dozens of students showing at the exam room in a 5 minute time window, the proctor does not have time to look at every watch and determine if it is "smart" or not.
The proctor also does not have time to remember who passed the "smart watch" test, and is allowed to look at a device during the exam, and the other students who may be looking at devices they smuggled in in their pocket or shoe.
Just ban the dang watches. The students can either leave them at home, or put them away in their closed and zippered backpacks.
If they need to know the time, they can look at the clock on the wall in the front of the room.
No, not impossible. (Score:3)
one up technology with technology (Score:2)
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My high school banned watches from exams in the 80's because of the calculator watch this isn't even new.
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Why is it even cheating, in the modern age?
Portable computing devices are entirely ubiquitous these days. Problems (at the university level) that can be solved so easily with a smart watch UI can be solved that easily whenever they may come up. Why test that sort of thing at all? If you can look up an answer on a smart watch under time pressure, when in later life are you not going to be able to look it up again? WTF are you testing? It's certainly nothing to do with problem solving or critical thinkin
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Good point. Smartphones are already an extension of our brains and will only become more so in the future. Looking stuff up Wikipedia should be encouraged.
OTOH we need to prevent students from being able to get smarter people to help them pass exams. The exam is supposed to test them, not somebody else.
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Looking stuff up Wikipedia should be encouraged. OTOH we need to prevent students from being able to get smarter people to help them pass exams.
Isn't that basically what Wikipedia is?
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No. Wikipedia is a pile of information. Assuming the test is not purely about vomiting information in a pure form back up, it takes a human to comprehend the question and use the information to assemble the correct answer.
The test isn't whether or not you have a photographic memory, but whether you understand the material well enough to apply it to whatever problem you're confronted with. If having access to wikipedia is "cheating" the test was bad to begin with.
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I concur.
I've posted here before that our educational traditions are to ask questions that are easy to grade, not those which are good questions. Being able to memorize facts and spit them out is not knowledge. Unfortunately that's like 95% of the tests we still give. So yeah, if you make a shitty test, cheating is easy.
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While I agree with you when it comes down to using these things simply as an information storage unit, you're discounting the fact that these devices usually have communication mechanisms. You are absolutely right that in real life, when faced with a problem, you nowadays whip out your smart phone and do some research. What these watches allow, however, is having the people incapable of doing the research paying for others outside of the class room to do their work for them. That's not gonna fly in real lif
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If you can look up an answer on a smart watch ...
The problem is not "looking up the answer".
The problem is communicating with someone outside the classroom.
You snap a photo of the exam sheet, transmit it to your "coach", and get the answers back a few minutes later.
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If the "test aid" designer can only craft a tool that can be on-sight distinguished by the proctor or the person signing in the test takers, that is downright pathetic.
The motivated find a way. Motivated pirates, for instance, aren't dependent on one-button soft/hardware stuff. Plenty of unmotivated are wholly dependent on it. Including kids (and their parents) using off-the-shelf canned stuff.
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A very quick google search came up with this youtube review [youtube.com] of the product.
tl;dw
It looks physical because it has physical handles. There's no screen.
It has some built in 'smart functions' like a step tracker and can be paired with your smart phone via Bluetooth. With a smart phone app you can access the data from the internal watch sensors and assign
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If men learn this [writing], it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.
and it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.
-Plato