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Students Are Easily Cheating 'State-of-the-Art' Test Proctoring Tech

22 points by kiyanwang 6y ago

lebuffon 6y ago
Interesting that there are few comments here. :)
polishdude20 6y ago
I'm honestly not surprised. With the difficulty of learning online for many students, the resebtfullness resulting from still having to pay the same tuition for what are effectively online courses and added to that, the complete invasion of privacy and lack of trust these proctoring apps signal is enough to make any student cheat. Treat all students like the lowest common denominator and you'll get backlash. It's like a mini protest each individual can partake in.
- Bodell 6y ago
  While none of this would push me so far as to personally cheat, I do completely agree with your comment. Due to lose of work and virtually any prospects, caused by covid, I have returned to school for the first time in 10 years. Since doing so I have felt emphatically everything you have mentioned. Although I do not attend a top school ( it’s a local tech school) and they do not have “top-proctoring” software, the same points still hold. 1: my classes are mostly just me reading my book and filling out online material with next to no feedback on anything. The computer grades most of my work. Some of my professors have refused to answer questions and respond to emails. I even proved my English teacher wasn’t reading my assignment by asking questions personally to him parenthetically which have gone unnoticed. I accidentally turned in the same summary assignment twice and received wildly different grades ( one a 100% the other 75%). Math has been okay but the free materials online are far better and most fellow classmates I talk to are learning everything on Kahn and ignoring the online class material. 2: We do use a proctor software. And I have been threatened more times than I can count about zeros and cheating, as if every single one of us is out to cheat. This holds particularly true, and rather ironically, for my ethics class. Where even our pre-test prep materials have to be done on camera, with full “environmental checks” etc. To top it off the system also keeps us from seeing what we got right or wrong on any test, pre/prep or not. Which to me defeats the purpose of the whole exercise, and really the foundation of learning. Agin I do not condone cheating but I do agree that backing everyone into a corner like this offers them less options and they will fight back to some degree. Mostly, what I am seeing though is a 25% drop out rate (at half way through the semester). I’m not sure if this is normal but to me it feels high considering most of those happened after the date in which you could be refunded.
frankbreetz 6y ago
I just got an online master's degree and while I never cheated on test, it would have been easy to. The only way around this is to only have tests that are open book, open Internet, and ask students questions that they won't find with a simple Google search(i.e. Questions that require a deeper understanding of the material). I realize this may be more difficult for the teachers, but they could still re-use test year to year. It would be less difficult to prevent students from uploading the tests
threevox 6y ago
Never used Proctorio myself, but my syllogism is simple: if you force me to use spyware, I'll go out of my way to sabotage its usefulness
Goosee 6y ago
Here is my school's method of administering online exams: 1. Use cell phone logged into Zoom that faces the cross section of my desk and myself a. Paper must be visible at all times & professor must be able to read text written on it b. Head can not move outside of Zoom's camera frame during the whole testing period c. You can not look around, only down at your paper 2. The professor will email everyone in that Zoom an exam made for that section of the class (so people in an earlier exam can't send it to others). You have 3 minutes to print it & move your computer out of the workspace. I have gotten 'harder' versions of exams before, compared to the other section taking the same course. 3. At end of testing period, everyone must show the pages they are about to scan & submit. You have 3 minutes to scan all pages & upload online to class portal. I don't necessarily have a problem with this methodology to prevent cheating. I do well on these exams. My problem is that I have friends at other universities whose professors don't Procter their exams. Their university puts in minimal effort to expose cheating (in engineering courses). When applying to future jobs, I will showcase two worst-case possible outcomes: 1. "Hiring managers will discount everyone's grades from the covid era because of rampant cheating." This is unfair to me because my university made my testing experience miserable to prevent cheating. Hiring managers won't know which universities/departments took attempts to prevent cheating 2. "My resume will be tossed because I got a 3.5 gpa while others got a 4.0" The hiring managers won't know the testing procedures each individual went through. So they will just choose a higher gpa (less-risky candidate, in general). I'm doing alright in this online environment. Just trying to explain to others how it can be quite unfair.
asdff 6y ago
Its so easy to cheat on these tests and there is no way to prevent it short of something hyper invasive out of 1984 that straddles the border of uncomfortable and cruel. Just stick your notes/phone out of the frame of the webcam and there is zero chance to be caught in practice. Another commenter stated they had to stare at their page the entire time, but thats unenforcible. There are only so many proctors and too many students to monitor at once, and plenty of people look up or stare into the distance to think. Plus you are allowed to do things like drink water during university tests, so you can look away for that, too.

22 points by kiyanwang 6y ago

Interesting that there are few comments here. :)

I'm honestly not surprised. With the difficulty of learning online for many students, the resebtfullness resulting from still having to pay the same tuition for what are effectively online courses and added to that, the complete invasion of privacy and lack of trust these proctoring apps signal is enough to make any student cheat. Treat all students like the lowest common denominator and you'll get backlash. It's like a mini protest each individual can partake in.

Bodell 6y ago
While none of this would push me so far as to personally cheat, I do completely agree with your comment. Due to lose of work and virtually any prospects, caused by covid, I have returned to school for the first time in 10 years. Since doing so I have felt emphatically everything you have mentioned. Although I do not attend a top school ( it’s a local tech school) and they do not have “top-proctoring” software, the same points still hold. 1: my classes are mostly just me reading my book and filling out online material with next to no feedback on anything. The computer grades most of my work. Some of my professors have refused to answer questions and respond to emails. I even proved my English teacher wasn’t reading my assignment by asking questions personally to him parenthetically which have gone unnoticed. I accidentally turned in the same summary assignment twice and received wildly different grades ( one a 100% the other 75%). Math has been okay but the free materials online are far better and most fellow classmates I talk to are learning everything on Kahn and ignoring the online class material. 2: We do use a proctor software. And I have been threatened more times than I can count about zeros and cheating, as if every single one of us is out to cheat. This holds particularly true, and rather ironically, for my ethics class. Where even our pre-test prep materials have to be done on camera, with full “environmental checks” etc. To top it off the system also keeps us from seeing what we got right or wrong on any test, pre/prep or not. Which to me defeats the purpose of the whole exercise, and really the foundation of learning. Agin I do not condone cheating but I do agree that backing everyone into a corner like this offers them less options and they will fight back to some degree. Mostly, what I am seeing though is a 25% drop out rate (at half way through the semester). I’m not sure if this is normal but to me it feels high considering most of those happened after the date in which you could be refunded.

frankbreetz 6y ago

I just got an online master's degree and while I never cheated on test, it would have been easy to. The only way around this is to only have tests that are open book, open Internet, and ask students questions that they won't find with a simple Google search(i.e. Questions that require a deeper understanding of the material). I realize this may be more difficult for the teachers, but they could still re-use test year to year. It would be less difficult to prevent students from uploading the tests

threevox 6y ago

Never used Proctorio myself, but my syllogism is simple: if you force me to use spyware, I'll go out of my way to sabotage its usefulness

Goosee 6y ago

Here is my school's method of administering online exams: 1. Use cell phone logged into Zoom that faces the cross section of my desk and myself a. Paper must be visible at all times & professor must be able to read text written on it b. Head can not move outside of Zoom's camera frame during the whole testing period c. You can not look around, only down at your paper 2. The professor will email everyone in that Zoom an exam made for that section of the class (so people in an earlier exam can't send it to others). You have 3 minutes to print it & move your computer out of the workspace. I have gotten 'harder' versions of exams before, compared to the other section taking the same course. 3. At end of testing period, everyone must show the pages they are about to scan & submit. You have 3 minutes to scan all pages & upload online to class portal. I don't necessarily have a problem with this methodology to prevent cheating. I do well on these exams. My problem is that I have friends at other universities whose professors don't Procter their exams. Their university puts in minimal effort to expose cheating (in engineering courses). When applying to future jobs, I will showcase two worst-case possible outcomes: 1. "Hiring managers will discount everyone's grades from the covid era because of rampant cheating." This is unfair to me because my university made my testing experience miserable to prevent cheating. Hiring managers won't know which universities/departments took attempts to prevent cheating 2. "My resume will be tossed because I got a 3.5 gpa while others got a 4.0" The hiring managers won't know the testing procedures each individual went through. So they will just choose a higher gpa (less-risky candidate, in general). I'm doing alright in this online environment. Just trying to explain to others how it can be quite unfair.

asdff 6y ago

Its so easy to cheat on these tests and there is no way to prevent it short of something hyper invasive out of 1984 that straddles the border of uncomfortable and cruel. Just stick your notes/phone out of the frame of the webcam and there is zero chance to be caught in practice. Another commenter stated they had to stare at their page the entire time, but thats unenforcible. There are only so many proctors and too many students to monitor at once, and plenty of people look up or stare into the distance to think. Plus you are allowed to do things like drink water during university tests, so you can look away for that, too.