Students Have To Jump Through Absurd Hoops To Use Exam Monitoring Software (vice.com) 221
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Last month, as students at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Ontario, Canada, began studying for their midterm exams, many of them had to memorize not just the content on their tests, but a complex set of instructions for how to take them. The school has a student body of nearly 18,500 undergraduates, and is one of many universities that have increasingly turned to exam proctoring software to catch supposed cheaters. It has a contract with Respondus, one of the many exam proctoring companies offering software designed to monitor students while they take tests by tracking head and eye movements, mouse clicks, and more. This type of surveillance has become the new norm for tens of thousands of students around the world, who -- forced to study remotely as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, often while paying full tuition -- are subjected to programs that a growing body of critics say are discriminatory and highly invasive.
Like its competitors in the exam surveillance industry, Respondus uses a combination of facial detection, eye tracking, and algorithms that measure "anomalies" in metrics like head movement, mouse clicks, and scrolling rates to flag students exhibiting behavior that differs from the class norm. These programs also often require students to do 360-degree webcam scans of the rooms in which they're testing to ensure they don't have any illicit learning material in sight.
Some of the requirements for Wilfrid Laurier students went even further. In exam instructions distributed to students, one WLU professor wrote that anyone who wished to use foam noise-cancelling ear plugs must "in plain view of your webcam place the ear plugs on your desk and use a hard object to hit each ear plug before putting it in your ear -- if they are indeed just foam ear plugs they will not be harmed." Other instructors required students to buy hand mirrors and hold them up to their webcams prior to beginning a test to ensure they hadn't written anything on the webcam. Another professor told students, "DO NOT allow others in your home to use the internet while you are completing your test," presumably because proctoring software can be a nightmare for students without reliable high-speed internet access. That same exam guide also said that students should not sit in front of pictures or posters that contain animal faces because the software might flag them as suspicious for having another person in the room -- not a reassuring requirement, given that one of the chief criticisms of exam proctoring software is that they often fail to recognize students with darker skin tones. One of the main reasons why this is such an issue is because most universities have chosen not to set standards for how instructors should use proctoring software.
"As a result, campuses that use the programs are increasingly seeing students voice their anger not just with the programs themselves, but with how individual professors use them," reports Motherboard. Students also aren't accepting the excuse universities and proctoring software companies often make: that professors decide how to use the tools, so they're the ones responsible for the harms they cause.
Like its competitors in the exam surveillance industry, Respondus uses a combination of facial detection, eye tracking, and algorithms that measure "anomalies" in metrics like head movement, mouse clicks, and scrolling rates to flag students exhibiting behavior that differs from the class norm. These programs also often require students to do 360-degree webcam scans of the rooms in which they're testing to ensure they don't have any illicit learning material in sight.
Some of the requirements for Wilfrid Laurier students went even further. In exam instructions distributed to students, one WLU professor wrote that anyone who wished to use foam noise-cancelling ear plugs must "in plain view of your webcam place the ear plugs on your desk and use a hard object to hit each ear plug before putting it in your ear -- if they are indeed just foam ear plugs they will not be harmed." Other instructors required students to buy hand mirrors and hold them up to their webcams prior to beginning a test to ensure they hadn't written anything on the webcam. Another professor told students, "DO NOT allow others in your home to use the internet while you are completing your test," presumably because proctoring software can be a nightmare for students without reliable high-speed internet access. That same exam guide also said that students should not sit in front of pictures or posters that contain animal faces because the software might flag them as suspicious for having another person in the room -- not a reassuring requirement, given that one of the chief criticisms of exam proctoring software is that they often fail to recognize students with darker skin tones. One of the main reasons why this is such an issue is because most universities have chosen not to set standards for how instructors should use proctoring software.
"As a result, campuses that use the programs are increasingly seeing students voice their anger not just with the programs themselves, but with how individual professors use them," reports Motherboard. Students also aren't accepting the excuse universities and proctoring software companies often make: that professors decide how to use the tools, so they're the ones responsible for the harms they cause.
What about non-laptops? (Score:5, Interesting)
Are they preventing students with PC towers and no webcam from completing the tests?
Re:What about non-laptops? (Score:4, Informative)
"They also have an app for iPhone an Android" is a common response.
I've been working on a (fully online) masters program at a B&M university, and have an upcoming exit exam which I'll be throwing a blank HDD into a machine to take it, just because I do not trust the SW and will not install it to a live machine. Btw, Windows & Mac only for Respondus LockDown Browser [respondus.com] (as one example), and this grumble from me, a person who has a long dislike of Linux.
Re:What about non-laptops? (Score:5, Informative)
The Respondus Lockdown browser is unusable.
When launched it wants you to terminate most other software on your computer.
Once launched your computer is full screen single app.
You can't paste, you can't access anything else.
You better have memorized not only the URL you need to go to, but your username and password.
Did I mention that it only runs with admin rights?
When you google around you find plenty of IT types trying to figure out how to use this PoS without destroying their computer security policies.
Make a separate Windows user account for exams (Score:3)
Instead of closing other windows you have open, I believe you can "switch user" in Windows. I believe Respondus wants all other windows closed in that user session. It doesn't seem to affect other users logged into the machine.
So you can just create a local Windows user called "exams" and leave all your programs running on your main desktop.
Sandbox machine (Score:2)
Could you not just run that think in Sandbox? Then you could do whatever you want on the main PC?
Re: Sandbox machine (Score:3)
If its the same proctoring company my wife had to use recently to get her last certification to train her department in the Epic EMR software at the hospital, the camera is live the entire time and they make you show them the testing environment. Whatever it was she had to install, the group policies on their work laptops prevent it from working. She had to use her personal laptop to take the exam.
The LiveCD (or jump drive) idea probably would be the simplest solution , had MS not decided to lobby for Secur
Re:Sandbox machine (Score:4, Interesting)
Could you not just run that think in Sandbox? Then you could do whatever you want on the main PC?
A friend of mine does this in a virtual machine (or so he says) which he actually uses as his primary desktop anyway.
But, I got to warn you, many of these online test systems have alternate ways to monitor your online activity. Honor Lock uses "honey pots" that rank high on online searches and they watch for your IP to show up. It's their patented idea they try to use to differentiate themselves from all the lock the browser and the screen to one window and give us access to your web cam venders.
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Don't you think the companies who are building this software have thought of that? If you are booting from a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD or VHDX) on Windows, you may have a problem, why? Because a device was detected with the word 'virtual' in it: https://support.respondus.com/... [respondus.com]
That's true. However, you can use a VM anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
What you said is true. Also, my school makes a copy of qemu which lets you run a VM in such a way that software within the VM can't possibly tell that it is a VM. Every CPU instruction has been checked to make sure it works the same in the VM as it does on bare metal; the clock is manipulated so the VM doesn't know that any CPU ticks have been spent elsewhere, etc. So it's absolutely doable, just not point and click easy.
The reason my school made those modifications to the hypervisor is because we use VMs to analyze malware. So do the security companies, both for automated detection and manual inspection of new malware, so some malware is designed to detect if it's in a VM and not do anything if it's in a VM. In order to properly detect and study malware that attempts to detect a VM, modifications were made to the hypervisor to make it completely undetectable.
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Can I get this version of QEMU? I'd prefer not to boot into Windows to take my exams (right now, I've kept a Win10 partition).
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Link or it doesn't exist.
There's nothing about it on the TEEX web page.
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You remember I worked for TEEX 4 years and three jobs ago. Cool. :)
It looks like there are actually a couple of similar options available now, but I was thinking of Ether. You can find the paper with the formal treatment there as well. (One of the authors of the paper is one of my profs).
http://ether.gtisc.gatech.edu/ [gatech.edu]
Even Cuxkoo now includes some settings to make the VM more transparent now. See "VM detection countermeasures" about halfway down the page:
https://infosecspeakeasy.org/t... [infosecspeakeasy.org]
Others have publish
Re: What about non-laptops? (Score:2)
I can almost guarantee you that malware authors are a lot more clever than the authors of proctoring software when it comes to VM detection, so you could probably use one of the many tools available for malware analysis to hide any hints of being in a virtual machine.
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They need not be clever. They need not be malware authors. They need merely publish for the cracking tools to become widely available.
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Examplify won't work in a VM either. Hell, it won't work in Win10 when you've enabled Hyper-V.
Re:What about non-laptops? (Score:4, Interesting)
And given that Windows Subsystem for Linux version 2 (WSL2) enables Hyper-V at installation time, good luck taking a programming exam on the same PC on which you learned programming.
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I won a bar bet with the Respondus sales rep when he claimed the Lockdown Browser was "perfect security".
Not sure what has changed in the past 5 years but at the time the only "security" behind it was checking the user-agent of the browser string.
Spoof that in whatever browser you like and take the darn test.
Our nursing faculty have been concerned with exam security since they started using our online platform 15 years ago. They wanted things like the javascript that prevents copy/paste, etc. I keep expla
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Webcam: $12. College: $12,000 (Score:2)
If you don't have a laptop, a $12 webcam becomes part of your college expenses.
An old or garage-sale computer is also handy for exams, though not at all required, or make another user account and switch users. That's just because Respondus wants all of the other programs on the same user session closed, and I like to leave things running on my main computer.
Other than that I don't really have any complaints about Respondus and I haven't heard many complaints from classmates. I do prefer the Honorlock Chrom
Buy a cheap webcam (Score:2)
Are they preventing students with PC towers and no webcam from completing the tests?
Yes but you can buy a webcam for a PC "tower" for a few dollars so it's an easy fix.
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Are they preventing students with PC towers and no webcam from completing the tests?
At my University, yes. But you can go check out a webcam or test onsite if you really need too.
We use "Honor Lock" which is really quite insidious if you ask me. They require a 360 degree sweep of the room, force you to use only a single display which they totally consume with their monitoring AND they monitor your public IP using "honey pots" where they watch for your IP to popup should you try and cheat by googling using a second device somehow. It's a royal pain.
But really, all this is window dressin
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proctology software
Ouch! [mainehealth.org]
And all the pronouns (Score:3, Insightful)
This is Wilfred Laurier University, where TA's are threatened in secret tribunals for merely presenting both sides of a debate about pronouns.
https://nationalpost.com/news/... [nationalpost.com]
Lindsay was threatened with firing, and expulsion, for daring to present a speech by a renouned Harvard as one side of the gender pronoun debate, when no student ever filed a complaint. The "diversity counselor" completely invented the complaint they "handled"..
Re:And all the pronouns (Score:5, Informative)
You're over-rated, I saw the transcript of the TAs review it was a total farce lead by idiots. I feel bad for the TA, they didn't listen to what she said, they didn't comprehend what she said and they used extremely twisted fallacious arguments to castigate her.
They didn't even tell her what the complaint was and they refused to say how many people complained and they didn't say whether it was a teacher or a student. They mis-interpreted the law and they mis-interpreted the TAs actions they then added up these misinterpretations to imply she broke the law. Her review was a complete act of fantasy by the reviewers that bore little resemblance to what actually happened. When she corrected them, they ignored her and continued with their false version of events that they made up.
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And yet, not many years ago there was no such rule and no such pronouns. Who exactly declared this black and white rule you militantly argue?
Why does this only apply to gendered pronouns? My pronoun is "God Almighty". Is refusing to use my pronoun no less offensive than calling me "fag**t" or "nigg*r"?
It's not "an issue of whether it's ok for professors to verbally abuse students", it's an issue of whether it's ok for students to corrupt the language for the personal political interests. Proper English
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Not many years ago people were sold as property. Things evolve. Deal with it. Do you need a proper gender safe space? If someone wants to be called him/her/they why should you care? Do you need a therapy dog to deal with these new confusing times?
Re:And all the pronouns (Score:4)
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I guess the law does too then. Various kinds of speech can be considered harassment, incitement to suicide, mental abuse, true threats etc.
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Sorry (not sorry) no. Offense requires intent. If I (or you, or anyone) sees someone and calls that person "her" because they look female, and that person takes offense, that's their own problem unless the person was actually trying to insult them. The same goes for "him", and every other pronoun you idiots invent. Get out of your fucking safe space.
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> There is accepting and using someone's pronouns or there is an attack on that person.
Oh? What about Joseph Gobrick, who claims to be an 8 year old girl as their reason for collecting child pornography?
https://www.wzzm13.com/article... [wzzm13.com]
Is it assault even to refer to their gender identity as a basis for evaluating their punishment? Or do they get to choose to be an 8 year old child without question, and thus immune from prosecution as an adult?
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Maybe we should start making laws based on the most ridiculous excuse anyone could come up with, I'm sure that would end well.
And if you hadn't clocked it this guy's excuse is pretty stupid, I mean most 8 year old girls have little interest in pornography and don't collect it.
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It's still a crime even if you're 8 years old so...
system just isn't ready for this (Score:5, Interesting)
I teach for a living. My colleagues are starting to build data for this semester and compare it to identical classes taught in previous semester. The numbers are absolutely clear. Remote learning is NOT as good as in-person classes. Student performance is numerically lower this semester. Much more than noise in the signal. Our internet might be fine for remote professional work undertaken by mature adults, but teaching 20 year olds is an entirely different manner. As a group, they simply do better when required to come in person and we have the numbers to prove it.
I don't use Respondus. I let my students log on to our system, download the exam (unique exam every time), take it at their desk open-book style, and upload at the end of the hour. At the start of the exam I threaten the entire class: if I catch anyone cheating, I'll do awful, horrible, unspeakable things to their grade point average. And I mean it. If they want to take the chance, welp... that's on them.
And I have followed through on the threat.
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We have decided to do aural exams for this one. Takes quite a bit of our time, but they are better for everybody anyways.
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Re:system just isn't ready for this (Score:5, Funny)
Unprotected aural sex is how you get hearing aids.
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Don't share airpods
Re:system just isn't ready for this (Score:5, Informative)
We're seeing the same thing in our classes, most of which are hybrid format with some attending live, and others remotely. The problem isn't with the very best students, or the very worst. It is that large group of students in the middle of the grade distribution.
It has become very clear to everyone just how essential the person-to-person aspect of on-campus learning really is. Many of the students in the middle of the pack gain much of their knowledge by studying with others, and being able to spontaneously drop by the professor's office to ask questions. That is completely absent now with Zoom classes and Zoom office hours. Even the on-campus students who attend in person aren't getting as much out of their courses, because they still can't study together due to social distancing rules. As for the students who opted to stay at home this semester, most of them are hopelessly behind their classmates.
It's now looking as if campus life will be back to normal by Fall 2021, but many of the students who attended school during AY2020-21 may never fully overcome the damage to their educations.
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Re: system just isn't ready for this (Score:2)
Bingo. Blackboard is one of the tools that can do a good job for homework in physics because it has an understanding of variables and can give more interaction through the process of problem solving. I know professors who were killing it at online learning 10 years ago but they had been working on structuring classes for it since they were PhD students. Most teachers neither have the time or the skill set to so swiftly adapt. More so, software needs to adapt toobut teachers not embracing software in learn
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And beyond just the circumstances of the introduction, how much is because everyone is stressed out over the pandemic, loss of income, uncertainties about the future, lack of social life in general etc.?
I don't dispute the drop in education quality, but it's hardly a stand-alone situation to evaluate.
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At the college level, that "academic freedom" usually means that instructors are the final arbiter of grades... and students really care about their grades. As long as you make it clear on day one that cheating leads to zero, F , etc., then too bad for the student.
individual professors may get over ridden if an (Score:2)
individual professors may get over ridden if an student files an protest.
Yep, it's a nightmare (Score:5, Interesting)
My son has to use this craptastic monitoring software when he takes his tests (I think it's the same company), and any little blip in the internet can trigger it.
It can also trigger from changes in lighting, coughing, sneezing, people yelling in other rooms, TV/radio from other rooms, etc etc. cars honking outside, looking away from the webcam, etc etc. The proctor gets a stream of 'violation' alerts and may fail you for *nothing*.
On the other hand, every once in a while the stars align and it works like it's supposed to. It's like Russian Roulette.
I agree it's hard to stop a determined cheater, but this software is pure garbage. There must be a simpler, more effective way to do this.
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It makes me wonder how this company hasn't been sledgehammered into oblivion through disability laws.
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How does it 'fail' you?
Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. False accusations of cheating, invasion of privacy, anti-disability discrimnation.
I mean, 'looking away from the webcam' would include anybody that turns their head to rest it in a hand to think about the answer to a question.
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One would assume it records the time around the "failing" violations for review by a human later.
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There must be a simpler, more effective way to do this.
There is. You go to a well ventilated, large room with a person sitting at the front monitoring it, and everyone sits far enough apart to be safe, and wears masks.
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Wait, what?! I can understand a dumb computer stupidly deciding "this guy is cheating" but if there is a human who blindly accepts that determination, that human is fucking up. Surely the students would have a pretty strong case for "no, I didn't fail, you failed," full tuition refund, maybe additional claims for having wasted their semester, etc.
It's all just fun and games, until someone starts to actually believe the scammers.
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If it's *that* sensitive, the correct course of action would be to collaborate with other students to ensure that everyone taking tests with this crap has so many false positives for innocuous reasons that it takes the professors a week to sort through them all after each exam. Their only other options would be to fail everyone every time, or just ignore the whole thing.
For the first time in decades (Score:4, Interesting)
I have stopped studying. I did school and university when I was young(er) of course, and then I kept studying as a working adult in continued education, because well... I like learning things, and it's useful to stay relevant in society and not go crusty as you age.
I learned two languages, and I hold a degree in gunsmithing, and another in arc welding (MIG/MAG and TIG) all thanks to continued education.
I had started a 3rd language 2 years ago, but this year I quit. My local U had closed last spring due to COVID. They were due to reopen classes with physical presence this fall, but the virus decided otherwise.
You know what? I'm just not attending classes online. It's lonely, it's awful, and - in the case of languages - it's just really hard to understand anything the teacher says. The live exercises the teacher proposes uses Android apps that require you to sign up to some services and give many personal details to who-knows-what company (no way). What's more, the proctoring software require Windows, and I use Linux.
And... I have to pay tuition for the privilege. Well... Sorry, but I'm just not interested. And that makes me really sad: first year in my life I'll be going home after work without having learned something new at any point during the week :(
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Re: For the first time in decades (Score:4, Insightful)
Community college. The most undervalued part of the American education system.
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If that wasn't just for the pun I'd suggest looking at trade schools rather than colleges.
Disability/medical privacy lawsuits incoming? (Score:3)
Eye movements, head tracking, etc... these are things that are affected by disabilities & medical conditions (and medicines). All it will take is few lawsuits for falsely flagging disabilities or medical stuff as cheating and schools will be forced to reassess what anti-cheating methods they use.
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I personally would be affected by this as I am incontinent due to an intersex condition that left me with a malfunctioning urethra. My parents made it clear to my teachers (and I have made it clear to my bosses) that "I need to use the restroom" is a full sentence. I'm far beyond the age of exams and tests but the education people seem to jerk off to the idea of lording over kids with disabilities.
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LenKagetsu opined:
I'm far beyond the age of exams and tests but the education people seem to jerk off to the idea of lording over kids with disabilities.
It's not just "the education people."
Petty people exist in almost every walk of life. When those folks - and they come in all races, creeds, ethnicities, political, sexual, and social orientations, and classes - acquire some small measure of authority, they will, without fail, abuse it in order to feed their shriveled, undernourished egos. It's part of human nature, just like the Dunning-Kreuger effect, or sociopathology, or autism. Just as is the case with those conditions, not everyone h
Crazy idea - change the tests (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not change the tests so they test the understanding of the subject instead of the ability to memorize it.
Does it really matter if a student use internet, use the course material, watch tv, or do whatever during the test, as long as they know the subject?
It might not be applicable for everything, but for a lot of things it doesn't really matter if you can remember the books word for word if you don't know how to apply that knowledge
I recall from my time in school some of my classmates aced the exams, but when it came to using the knowledge outside of school they were lost, while others that almost failed the courses had no problems at all.
I've also seen instances with developers fresh from university just putting in everything they learned in the code and practically making the applications unusable because they didn't understand why or when to use certain things.
Re:Crazy idea - change the tests (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems that part of the concern is that they can be in communication with a third party during the exam, and that third party might have the answers. With all the gig economy services like Mechanical Turk, Fiver, etc. you probably don't even need to personally know someone with the knowledge.
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That is true. Some measurements to make sure that the knowledge comes from the right place is probably necessary, but as extensive as in the article is ridiculous.
A part of me would want to believe that the students wouldn't cheat because if the tests are done correctly they would realise it is for their own good. But at the same time I know from experience that if we had put in the same effort and ingenuity to cheat into studying we wouldn't have had to cheat ;) Of course, all those tests were just checki
Cheat sites (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not change the tests so they test the understanding of the subject instead of the ability to memorize it. Does it really matter if a student use internet...
Yes, it does because there are things called cheat sites on the internet like Chegg where students can go and pay people to answer whatever problem you have set for them and the turnaround time is fast enough that they can get those solutions within 15-20 minutes of posting them. Now for high-level courses, this is not really an issue - good luck trying to find someone of Chegg who can correctly calculate a Feynman diagram amplitude for you - but for low level, intro courses you can easily pass a course with cheat sites, although even then it is amazing how much the idiots posting solutions get wrong.
So even though the vast majority of students will do exams honestly regardless of the proctoring you cannot allow unfettered and unmonitored internet use during exams in low-level courses if you want to ensure that people passing the exam do know the subject. This is not just a hypothetical situation, we learned this from the sad experience earlier in the pandemic of lots of students doing exactly this when remote proctoring was not used.
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It's important we stop that too. In the real world you have no peers, internet, research materials, notes, or other means of knowledge. It's just what you memorized. That is why standardized testing is so important, so we can be sure you will be successful in the real world.
Ask any programmer, the use of google is banned.
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At our school, instructors teaching the intro level biology courses have double or triple the normal load since multiple instructors quit over the summer. So they have to teach extra classes, they need easily (read: automatically) graded exams/assessments, and they still have all of their other normal work. I despise the exam proctoring software, but I understand the need for it.
Thankfully my classes are lower enrollment (even in a good year) and I can write new test
Universities are in a bind (Score:5, Interesting)
University of California professor here (let's keep campus anonymous). Student cheating on tests is rampant, especially by students from China and India. I understand that the proctoring solutions universities are using are onerous, but what do you really want them to do instead? If you just let the students cheat, then you are hurting all of the students who didn't cheat, which is not fair to them.
For some classes, like engineering or math, you can give the students a timed open-book/open-note exam, but for other classes like biology or chemistry, that's a much less viable option. Moreover, the open-book/open-note approach does not prevent one good student from reading out the answers to all of his/her friends over the phone or videoconferencing software as he/she goes along. Students also will get together in one place and one good student will read the answers aloud to the others in the room (this happened in one of my classes; I was able to catch the cheating in that case because the good student made a few idiosyncratic errors that got replicated by the other students).
If you're not a cheating student, then yes, the countermeasures are very annoying. I sympathize with you. But the alternative is to let a substantial fraction of the class cheat. Which would you rather have?
Re:Universities are in a bind (Score:4, Insightful)
At the same time, a student wrongly accused of cheating might be materially better off with classmates cheating and him getting the grade he gets...
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I fully agree that cheating and grade inflation are harmful. But at the same time, detection of cheating needs to detect ACTUAL cheating and not falsely accuse honest students or create conditions so onerous that honest students can't even take the test. Or for that matter, create sufficient risk of false accusation that the honest student feels their best option is to withdraw passing.
Beyond that, as others have pointed out, some disabilities (even mild ones) could easily set the software off. For example,
Re:Universities are in a bind (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yes, my University did orals as part of the required comprehensive exit exams. They were VERY effective... 25 minutes is a long time to bullshit a professor with shallow knowledge.
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Meaningfully formulating the response to a question and showing an understanding is something you can't easily crib off of a friend - which is the reason things like thesis defense have a presentation and answering questions part.
All it requires is a camera and microphone just as well
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So get them into a classroom and give them a monitored exam.
You can do that. It's safe. It doesn't require anybody to come within 10 feet of another person if you organise it well.
Given the tuition they're paying I think the University of California can afford it too. You're just choosing not to. I have no sympathy.
People often say teachers are the real heroes... (Score:2)
Students I'm certain to never hire, sadly. (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's not their fault.
Dear "educators": What if I told you that an actual test of their understanding can *not* be cheated by having all the results and answers!
Our physics teacher used to write the answers on the blackboard. And grade actual understanding. He was also the best teacher I ever had. Guess why!
The entire system is designed to turn kids into basically walking USB drives. 100% memorization, 0% actual understanding due to simply a lack of time to actually ponder the ideas. Bulimic education.
Nobody wants a memorization monkey. They are simply unable to think outside of the box of pre-programmed patterns, that by definition are almost trivial to automate to replace them. Unless they got very lucky and their creativity and problem solving skill somehow survived.
And now, on top of that, they must subject themselves to *literally* a 1984 world...
What a waste of human minds ...
Re:Students I'm certain to never hire, sadly. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Sinophobic is a big word, but I can see why you had to learn it.
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This would be more interesting if it were explained how this physics teacher graded "actual understanding". As it stands, nothing is said at all. Is there a physics class anywhere that doesn't require students to solve problems?
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Education is commercial, students expect a certain return on their investment so aren't interested in actually getting good at something, they want to learn the exam. Or at least that's the main objective.
Exams aren't really fair anyway. Some people are better are memorization, some people are better under time pressure, some people were just having a bad day at that specific time. Different people have different ways of working and they can all be effective, but require more fair ways of measuring that eff
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Yes (Score:3)
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Much the same could be said for open book/notes testing. But, there are also many subjects (or portions of them) that require an understanding the subject deep enough that you're not going to have time to simply look it up. If I want to be a pilot, I should already know the basic procedure to get out of a spin and not have to call it up. If I want to be an MD, I need to have memorized anatomy, and not google it during surgery.
Or...trust the students? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am also a full-time and long-term college professor. I'd like to propose a solution: trust the students. I know this is radical :-)
The point is: using these half-baked anti-cheating applications punishes the good students, the honest students. The ones who want to cheat? They are likely to find a way past the software, precisely because it is half-baked. We, as instructors, need to use other means to evaluate students - ways that do not punish the honest students.
Some of these techniques require the instructors to put in extra effort: project work. Write new exams every semester. Write questions that don't have answers online. For online tests, use tools like Moodle: it can present questions in a different order to each student, it can randomize the answers. That won't even be noticeable to the honest students, but will confuse the dishonest ones.
Finally, may I dream of societal change? The problem of cheating is driven by having students in college who don't belong there. They don't want to study, or they are incapable of learning the material. Either way: why are they there? Why is there such societal pressure to go to college? And the flip side: even those of us teaching for state schools are under continuous pressure: "don't fail too many students, we need their tuition". That's asinine. I view it as part of my job to filter out students who are in the wrong place: it's better for them, and it's better for the students who remain.
Re:Or...trust the students? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps, but my real point was: using evaluation methods that do not punish the honest students.
Cheaters are like criminals: They are mostly stupid. Example: give them a project to do. Part of the evaluation is an oral exam. The honest students have it easy - the oral exam lasts no more than a minute or two, because it's obvious they know what they did. Turns out that cheaters can't answer even the simplest questions about the project. If they were smart enough to cram the answers, then they would have been smart enough to do the project themselves.
So you nail the cheaters and reward the honest students. This would even work online - with no crappy proctoring software.
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As it happens, I fail an average of around 1/3 of every class. Nonetheless, my classes are rather well-liked - by the good students.
meh standard proctored exams (Score:2)
I am a professor (Score:5, Insightful)
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Nobody said anything about public speaking. They just said zoom, which can be used for two-person conversations.
If you can't communicate your ideas to at least one other person, your ideas are worthless.
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Very kind of you to consider me non-racist because I test my students on whether or not they understand what they have written. Your urge to keep people in check who feel problematic to you is the scary thing here.
I don't judge my students on whether or not I agree with what they wrote (which is subjective); I judge whether they can explain what they wrote. That is not much more subjective than a proof, or judging clean code.
I have lived and taught on three continents, and so I know a thing or two about ho
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The OPs scheme was pretty thinly described, but let's say you get a grade for the paper and then you get a grade for oral defense of it, and the combined scores produce the final grade.
In the real world, writing a great paper and then having phobias or self-esteem problems has the same effect in dragging down your real life "score". Being smart in some solo activity but being unable to promote your ideas/work in a more social setting is going to also be something less than successful.
Honestly, schools shou
stupid exams (Score:2)
this thing only has only one cause, those exams are based on regurgitating learned stuff, that you only need a manual to know, instead of prioritizing demonstrating the student understands a problem and showing what steps are taken to solve said problem.
you end up with stupid exams.
a proper exam should be doable with all documents available, but the student would have to show they understand the problem, and explain how they'd solve it.
but I guess that requires humans to grade the exams...
Future of remote work (Score:2)
Better Off Ted IRL (Score:2)
"...one of the chief criticisms of exam proctoring software is that they often fail to recognize students with darker skin tones."
Better Off Ted called it
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
Even PearsonVue does this for cert exams (Score:2)
I've taken 4 cert exams from home since the pandemic and they are super up tight about it.
One made me move the only thing on my desk, a cup full of pens. The other made me take off my analog mechanical watch. No drinking allowed. 360 room photos, web cam on the entire time.
And these are all fairly lame and obscure vendor certs, not like academic degrees.
Walk out (Score:2)
Much of this is probably illegal (Score:3)
Some stuff this exam software does is probably illegal and much of the rest of it is cargo culting at its finest. That includes a lot of non-software measures, too. Some of it is up there with flagging common three or four word sequences in English as plaigiarism because a paper happens to use English normally and is compared through some automated "AI" means against some sample that also uses English normally.
It would be marginally less bad if this "exam" software was competently implemented. But it's not. And a lot of it is malware and/or spyware ridden garbage. I mean, that's the point of it, right? It's literally spyware (which probably makes it illegal in many jurisdictions if it was ever properly investigated).
My sister was taking some sort of remote course a few years ago and the exam software that was *mandated* by the course tripped *Microsoft's* malware detector. And their answer? Turn off your antivirus and security software. It was also impossible to uninstall afterward. Even after "fixing" the A/V "issue", it made her computer completely unstable and, thus, unusable for writing the exam in the first place.