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I see online synchronous 1-2 hour exams as a mistaken result of the "let's emulate in-person teaching in a remote setting" mindset. You don't succeed in remote

I see online synchronous 1-2 hour exams as a mistaken result of the "let's emulate in-person teaching in a remote setting" mindset. You don't succeed in remote teaching and learning by trying to make it as close as possible to the in-person setup. You have to treat it as an entirely different problem. Consider the synchronous exam. It is a perfect method of grading in-person. It is hard to cheat and all people take the same test in the same place. It is as fair as it can get. In an online setting however, people can face all sort of troubles in a few hour window in their home. Your internet might stop working, neighbor might be making too much noise etc. Everyone takes the exam in a different setting and it is as unequal as it can get. It is also practically impossible to prevent cheating.

mshumi 6y ago
Crazy idea in this space. Eye-tracking will eventually be standard on consumer VR headsets that can be had for $300. As someone following the industry closely, I believe that the Oculus Quest 4 or a device like it will certainly have eye-tracking support. Obviously if one were to take their test in a VR environment with their eye-movements tracked it would be almost impossible to cheat. Eyes also provide a good biometric identifier. Mirrors, screens, exploits, etc can be foiled using software locks, HMDs cameras and imu data. Of course I'm not advocating a testing system like this, but it would put a hard stop to cheating on synchronous exams, enforce some level of standardization, and should be accessible to every student in the 1st world. Understandable privacy and ethics issues with something like this. It is probably better to address why people cheat in the first place and make education less reliant on exams. (continuous low-impact variable feedback vs discrete high-impact fixed feedback)
- limitedmage 6y ago
  Good luck wearing a VR headset for a full 2 hour exam. I get headaches if I wear one for more than 10 minutes, and the weight is uncomfortable and messes with my hair. More surveillance technology is not the solution.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- munk-a 6y ago
  My wife, who has issues with motion sickness, would absolutely love this approach - she'd be effectively barred from taking exams due to getting headaches and throwing up whenever she attempted it. Anyways, I'd prefer an approach that led to less invasive face tracking - even if it suffered from a lower detection rate.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> You don't succeed in remote teaching and learning by trying to make it as close as possible to the in-person setup. You have to treat it as an entirely different problem. I agree at a high level, but practically speaking it's not realistic to expect colleges to completely reinvent their entire teaching systems for a temporary, 1-2 year remote learning period. Now that we've been dealing with COVID for almost an entire year, it's easy to forget that at one point we thought this would all be over in a matter of weeks or months. The situation was also evolving in real time. Colleges were looking for the most efficient stop-gap solutions, not for ways to completely overhaul their learning experience. > It is also practically impossible to prevent cheating. It's a mistake to assume that because we can't eliminate all cheating, we shouldn't bother reducing any cheating. The advantage of synchronous test taking is that everyone is exposed to the problem set at the same time. The obvious cheat with asynchronous test taking would be for one person to volunteer to take the test early and then send the questions to their peers, all of whom take the test at the last possible minute. This happens whenever in-person classes offer two time slots for taking a test. The later time slot is always far more packed than the first and comes back with significantly higher scores. Adding the internet and screenshots/camera phones to the equation amplifies this because students can share the exact test, not just what they recall from memory. > In an online setting however, people can face all sort of troubles in a few hour window in their home. Your internet might stop working, neighbor might be making too much noise etc. Educators aren't oblivious to this fact. Working with students who have interruptions is just part of the job. Having someone lose internet isn't much different from having someone get a flat tire on the way to the test. It happens, we deal with it, and it's fine. I also think you're not giving students enough credit. They're not dumb. If noise is a problem, they're going to use headphones. If internet is flakey, they're going to find a better location to take a test. It's such a weird double standard to see HN champion work from home as unequivocally superior to working in an office, yet whenever the topic of learning from home comes up we get a laundry list of what-about possibilities that might make the experience worse.
- syshum 6y ago
  Absent COVID, institution should have been (and many have been) embracing remote learning anyway. This should have been an option all along, with out the need for a pandemic to force their hand. >>The advantage of synchronous test taking is that everyone is exposed to the problem set at the same time. The obvious cheat with asynchronous test taking would be for one person to volunteer to take the test early and then send the questions to their peers, This problem has been largely solved for a long time, because as you noted it is generally impossible to give a test to EVERYONE at the same time. Thus properly written tests will draw a random selection of questions from a larger pool, the ratio between Pool:Questions the better the security. (i.e a 25 question exam using a 50 question pool is not as secure as a 25 question exam using a 200 question pool) This method is also used for standardized tests given at the same time, as it cuts out the problem of shoulder surfing or other in-person cheating methods.
proverbialbunny 6y ago
When I was in college in 2005 I had classes that could be taken online. When tested we were given a deadline, usually 24 hours after the test had been handed out. We could start whenever we wanted, take breaks, work throughout the day, as long as we had it in before the deadline. It seemed to work fine.
- ericd 6y ago
  Yeah, take home tests were awesome. The problems on the ones I remember were ridiculously hard (specifically thinking about an algorithms take home that we were given a week for), but that spurred us to do some of our best thinking and learning.
- bzb6 6y ago
  It worked even finer for those who paid someone else to do the test for them.
  - pizzaknife 6y ago
    How does one fib proficiency in a role as an individual contributor? I mean after school is through? I have been a software engineer for 14years. I am self taught with only a 2yr degree i completed my 4th year into this career. Can a line in resume(a degree mention) remedy a failed technical screening process? Personal experience : I have declined several MD CS holders this year alone for positions because their demonstrated abilities were not up to par(and these were not particularly difficult questions).
    - ralphc 6y ago
      With remote, anything is possible. Someone basically outsourced his job to China, paid someone a cheaper rate to do his work for him.
      - otagekki 6y ago
        Yeah, incredible story... Could have lasted, but too bad he was a bit careless in handing out his company's personal credentials to the Chinese team as well.
brewdad 6y ago
We lost power (and internet) 45 seconds before my son's Physics final last spring during remote learning. He had to quickly scramble to take his testing materials outside and used his cell phone to access the exam. It worked out for him but easily could have been a disaster. We live at the edge of the school boundary and it was a localized outage due to a car hitting a pole, so he was the only student in his class that was affected. Good luck convincing the teacher if you don't have alternate access to the test.
- silly-silly 6y ago
  Are modern teachers really that robotic that they dont understand that 'things happen' outside of their limited domain of expectations ?
  - withinboredom 6y ago
    If you’re a straight-A student, it’s probably not an issue. Like cutting up, or seen as an “average” student, your excuses are just that, and they aren’t excused.
  - munk-a 6y ago
    I think this is a pretty big miss on where the issues with these sorts of systems are - I'm sure some teachers are phoning it in but the student in the article (Molina) was immediately awarded an F and then had to go through a two month appeal process to get that undone. Once he was talking to a person things moved pretty quickly but the backlog of cases results in a lot of unnecessary stress on students.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    Teachers? Most developers I know have exactly the same blind spot. "What do you mean there's no internet connection?"
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wasdfff 6y ago
My uni had me TA this semester which included proctoring exams over zoom. They gave me zero info what I’m supposed to do or even look for while sitting there in the zoom room. I think I was just there to add some semblance of authority. Total waste of time. Its stupid easy to cheat in this remote world: write your cheat sheet out on a piece of paper and put it just out of sight of the webcam. No technology can beat that.

mshumi 6y ago

Crazy idea in this space. Eye-tracking will eventually be standard on consumer VR headsets that can be had for $300. As someone following the industry closely, I believe that the Oculus Quest 4 or a device like it will certainly have eye-tracking support. Obviously if one were to take their test in a VR environment with their eye-movements tracked it would be almost impossible to cheat. Eyes also provide a good biometric identifier. Mirrors, screens, exploits, etc can be foiled using software locks, HMDs cameras and imu data. Of course I'm not advocating a testing system like this, but it would put a hard stop to cheating on synchronous exams, enforce some level of standardization, and should be accessible to every student in the 1st world. Understandable privacy and ethics issues with something like this. It is probably better to address why people cheat in the first place and make education less reliant on exams. (continuous low-impact variable feedback vs discrete high-impact fixed feedback)

limitedmage 6y ago
Good luck wearing a VR headset for a full 2 hour exam. I get headaches if I wear one for more than 10 minutes, and the weight is uncomfortable and messes with my hair. More surveillance technology is not the solution.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
munk-a 6y ago
My wife, who has issues with motion sickness, would absolutely love this approach - she'd be effectively barred from taking exams due to getting headaches and throwing up whenever she attempted it. Anyways, I'd prefer an approach that led to less invasive face tracking - even if it suffered from a lower detection rate.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> You don't succeed in remote teaching and learning by trying to make it as close as possible to the in-person setup. You have to treat it as an entirely different problem. I agree at a high level, but practically speaking it's not realistic to expect colleges to completely reinvent their entire teaching systems for a temporary, 1-2 year remote learning period. Now that we've been dealing with COVID for almost an entire year, it's easy to forget that at one point we thought this would all be over in a matter of weeks or months. The situation was also evolving in real time. Colleges were looking for the most efficient stop-gap solutions, not for ways to completely overhaul their learning experience. > It is also practically impossible to prevent cheating. It's a mistake to assume that because we can't eliminate all cheating, we shouldn't bother reducing any cheating. The advantage of synchronous test taking is that everyone is exposed to the problem set at the same time. The obvious cheat with asynchronous test taking would be for one person to volunteer to take the test early and then send the questions to their peers, all of whom take the test at the last possible minute. This happens whenever in-person classes offer two time slots for taking a test. The later time slot is always far more packed than the first and comes back with significantly higher scores. Adding the internet and screenshots/camera phones to the equation amplifies this because students can share the exact test, not just what they recall from memory. > In an online setting however, people can face all sort of troubles in a few hour window in their home. Your internet might stop working, neighbor might be making too much noise etc. Educators aren't oblivious to this fact. Working with students who have interruptions is just part of the job. Having someone lose internet isn't much different from having someone get a flat tire on the way to the test. It happens, we deal with it, and it's fine. I also think you're not giving students enough credit. They're not dumb. If noise is a problem, they're going to use headphones. If internet is flakey, they're going to find a better location to take a test. It's such a weird double standard to see HN champion work from home as unequivocally superior to working in an office, yet whenever the topic of learning from home comes up we get a laundry list of what-about possibilities that might make the experience worse.

syshum 6y ago
Absent COVID, institution should have been (and many have been) embracing remote learning anyway. This should have been an option all along, with out the need for a pandemic to force their hand. >>The advantage of synchronous test taking is that everyone is exposed to the problem set at the same time. The obvious cheat with asynchronous test taking would be for one person to volunteer to take the test early and then send the questions to their peers, This problem has been largely solved for a long time, because as you noted it is generally impossible to give a test to EVERYONE at the same time. Thus properly written tests will draw a random selection of questions from a larger pool, the ratio between Pool:Questions the better the security. (i.e a 25 question exam using a 50 question pool is not as secure as a 25 question exam using a 200 question pool) This method is also used for standardized tests given at the same time, as it cuts out the problem of shoulder surfing or other in-person cheating methods.

proverbialbunny 6y ago

When I was in college in 2005 I had classes that could be taken online. When tested we were given a deadline, usually 24 hours after the test had been handed out. We could start whenever we wanted, take breaks, work throughout the day, as long as we had it in before the deadline. It seemed to work fine.

ericd 6y ago
Yeah, take home tests were awesome. The problems on the ones I remember were ridiculously hard (specifically thinking about an algorithms take home that we were given a week for), but that spurred us to do some of our best thinking and learning.
bzb6 6y ago
It worked even finer for those who paid someone else to do the test for them.
- pizzaknife 6y ago
  How does one fib proficiency in a role as an individual contributor? I mean after school is through? I have been a software engineer for 14years. I am self taught with only a 2yr degree i completed my 4th year into this career. Can a line in resume(a degree mention) remedy a failed technical screening process? Personal experience : I have declined several MD CS holders this year alone for positions because their demonstrated abilities were not up to par(and these were not particularly difficult questions).
  - ralphc 6y ago
    With remote, anything is possible. Someone basically outsourced his job to China, paid someone a cheaper rate to do his work for him.
    - otagekki 6y ago
      Yeah, incredible story... Could have lasted, but too bad he was a bit careless in handing out his company's personal credentials to the Chinese team as well.

brewdad 6y ago

We lost power (and internet) 45 seconds before my son's Physics final last spring during remote learning. He had to quickly scramble to take his testing materials outside and used his cell phone to access the exam. It worked out for him but easily could have been a disaster. We live at the edge of the school boundary and it was a localized outage due to a car hitting a pole, so he was the only student in his class that was affected. Good luck convincing the teacher if you don't have alternate access to the test.

silly-silly 6y ago
Are modern teachers really that robotic that they dont understand that 'things happen' outside of their limited domain of expectations ?
- withinboredom 6y ago
  If you’re a straight-A student, it’s probably not an issue. Like cutting up, or seen as an “average” student, your excuses are just that, and they aren’t excused.
- munk-a 6y ago
  I think this is a pretty big miss on where the issues with these sorts of systems are - I'm sure some teachers are phoning it in but the student in the article (Molina) was immediately awarded an F and then had to go through a two month appeal process to get that undone. Once he was talking to a person things moved pretty quickly but the backlog of cases results in a lot of unnecessary stress on students.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  Teachers? Most developers I know have exactly the same blind spot. "What do you mean there's no internet connection?"

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

wasdfff 6y ago

My uni had me TA this semester which included proctoring exams over zoom. They gave me zero info what I’m supposed to do or even look for while sitting there in the zoom room. I think I was just there to add some semblance of authority. Total waste of time. Its stupid easy to cheat in this remote world: write your cheat sheet out on a piece of paper and put it just out of sight of the webcam. No technology can beat that.