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Prof here. I don't use proctoring software, nor does anyone at my college. But there is an issue. If I have someone who did the homework, learned the materia

Prof here. I don't use proctoring software, nor does anyone at my college. But there is an issue. If I have someone who did the homework, learned the material, and can demonstrate it on the exams, and they find out that someone else in class got the same grade by cheating, aren't they justified in being angry? And am I not justified in being distressed to find that I am certifying someone as knowledgable (say,as part of an undergraduate program to become a person who designs bridges), when they are not? My point is that there are for-real issues. That is, sober analysis needs to balance a lot of things, including people's genuine right to privacy and the effectiveness of the software, but also including the missions of the institutions and the wider needs of society. > institutions have looked for a technological fix where there isn’t one. Yes, the killer slam is that the proctoring software doesn't work. But what if it did? Finger wagging warning: I'm approaching retirement. But you, that is, lots of folks now reading HN, will need to, over the course of their careers, work these issues through. There isn't a simple fix, IMHO. I hope people will try to give it serious attention.

arpa 5y ago
Hm. If exam is not measuring competence adequately, the exams validity is lacking, ergo, exam should be redesigned for better validity. Open-book exams with good validity exist, as do tests allowing scientific calculators and formula sheets. Admittedly, that is harder, but... what is "cheating" in the age of information anyway?
- bo1024 5y ago
  Cheating is posting the question to Chegg and then copying the answer someone posts into your exam. For example.
  - kradroy 5y ago
    To be tongue-in-cheek - that person will make a great dev, because I copy answers from stackoverflow all the time and get paid 6 figures to do it.
- amalcon 5y ago
  The old technique of letting your neighbor copy your answers is both more effective (they don't need to be your neighbor) and harder to monitor (just use your phone to post answers somewhere). The other old technique of sending your older sibling to take the test for you is also difficult to monitor digitally.
ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
What I feel we need in STEM is procedural exams. We've done it in my university with random question orders and random question selection from a large pool but it's still not enough. It slows down cheating but students can still coordinate on facebook quite effectively. I think the next step is fully unique exams per student with question parameters and solutions generated on the fly.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  At some point, don't you think it makes sense to just have oral exams?
ColeyG 5y ago
Why isn't academia fixing these problems? Why us? Why are profs so lazy that they can't fix their issues? You guys are so entitled to your control that when it comes to benefitting society it goes to "nah, let the students handle the stress, we don't care if we rape them privacy wise". Sincerely Pathetic
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  It's the money. In the past the instructor would have given each student an oral exam, but with introductory classes with more than 200 students that approach doesn't scale.
einpoklum 5y ago
> aren't they justified in being angry? 1. It's not a binary thing - indifferent or beside themselves with rage. 2. Not enough to expect the authorities to engage in draconic measures to prevent this from happening. > And am I not justified in being distressed to find that I am certifying someone as knowledgable (say,as part of an undergraduate program to become a person who designs bridges), when they are not? "distressed"? Not really justified IMHO. Grading is statistical and partially arbitrary anyway, don't sweat it so much. Due disclosure: My academic experience is a Ph.D. program, teaching assistantship, and junior academic staff union rep.
Cd00d 5y ago
I went to a college with an honor code, and proctoring exams was forbidden. Most exams were taken where the student was most comfortable (I usually opted for wherever I'd studied, be it an empty classroom or my dorm room). Most exams were simply open book. I really think it was a great system. But, it's not perfect. I believe the military academies are all on similar honor systems, and I remember a few times of mass-cheating scandals, which have pretty heavy penalties, including expulsion in those environments.
- notsureaboutpg 5y ago
  Maybe the best system is honor code + encourage students to tell the Prof / administration if another student is cheating. Cheating all on your own is difficult if you also have to hide it from your peers.
  - Cd00d 5y ago
    Agreed. Our honor code required that you report any infractions, otherwise you were also in violation. No idea if that was effective or not, but in my experience the code was taken somewhat seriously.
- adt2bt 5y ago
  > Most exams were simply open book. As I've been out of school for a few years now, I've realized that the memorized material from school fades unless you use it regularly. It boggles my mind that we still effectively test students on memorization ability rather than research and synthesis abilities, even in 'hard' sciences. Sure, there are some processes, procedures and standards which we expect professionals to just 'know', but that should not be the vast majority of knowledge tested. Plus, in the 'real world', I'll happily hire an engineer who doesn't know how to solve an interview problem, but can adequately describe how they'd go about learning how to solve it. I'd trust that person not to just go with their gut or what they think they know, but to rather do some research. Granted, mass cheating, copying answers, etc is still wrong. People should still have to 'do the work' so to speak.
- wolverine876 5y ago
JasonFruit 5y ago
I know you're making this argument in good faith, but whenever someone talks about balancing one person's rights against the needs of society, it is an excuse to treat someone in a way they know is wrong, on some level, but they don't want to accept. Rights are a moral issue, and it sounds a lot better to say, "We need to balance individual rights against the needs of society," than to say, "I know we can't morally treat people this way, but we are going to anyway because they are in the way of our big goals."
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  That's not as absolute as you make it seem. At some point we decided it's correct to send murderers into a prison, and I doubt you think this is wrong. Yet, this is balancing individual rights against the needs of society. How much rights for how much need always matter. The real argument here is that a school's principal is not a legislative body, and his authority to make those choices is completely illicit.
  - ameister14 5y ago
    >The real argument here is that a school's principal is not a legislative body, and his authority to make those choices is completely illicit. It isn't entirely if you're talking about minors. There's a duty that the State has in a paternalistic sense to care for children, and children have a more limited set of rights than adults. Where it gets interesting is this is intruding into private spaces where the parents are the ones with those rights, not the school. For adults in college, it's more like a corporate environment and they can decide themselves what tradeoffs they want. It's possible there is some overreach or discriminatory factor there.
- MispelledToyota 5y ago
  Rights are only a concept that exists within societies, so it seems like societies will either define rights broadly and then discuss tradeoffs, or they would need to define rights very narrowly so a tradeoff isn't conceivable. But then few things would be bona fide rights. If you define a right as inviolable, then privacy isn't a right by that definition unless you have some extreme individualist/anarchist worldview.
slumdev 5y ago
You're absolutely right that cheating is endemic. At the same time, all proctoring software I've ever encountered was garbage. I believe the solution is to require candidates to take exams at a Prometric or Pearson VUE physical location. It's absolutely worth the expense.
jtbayly 5y ago
Pretending like computers can do the job of a person is not that much sillier than pretending a poorly paid proctor who doesn't care can do the job of a professor is not that that much sillier than pretending a class grade is sufficient to certify somebody's knowledge is not that much sillier than pretending a written test can do the job of a one-on-one evaluation. But each step is more "efficient" than the previous one. It's just that each one is also less effective.
ithinkso 5y ago
This argument pops out in many societal issues, not only cheating on exams. Most people don't cheat and act in good faith but we make them suffer anyway because we will be damned if even one person cheats their way through the system, not on my watch! Make sure it's bad for everyone just because if someone exploits the system it will be bad for everyone. In the end there is a healthy balance and those who cheat the system will either fail later from the lack of skill/knowledge or, if they don't, it means it was sort of unnecessary anyway
thethethethe 5y ago
> If I have someone who did the homework, learned the material, and can demonstrate it on the exams, and they find out that someone else in class got the same grade by cheating, aren't they justified in being angry? Why should they be angry? The whole point of college should be to learn, to build knowledge, not just to get good grades. If someone wants to pay money to cheat and not learn the curriculum, that is their choice
openfuture 5y ago
Certification and evaluation is already receiving a lot of attention, the cryptocurrency world is full of nonsense but the core idea of doing decentralized verifiable computation is necessary for having a p2p society. However we still don't know how to solve the tragedy of the commons in a decentralized way. The most promising angle for studying that is machine learning (they want to train models distributed over many machines so they need to do probability preserving compositions, this works for markets). There is also a lot of work that needs to be done on user interfaces, secure hardware, operating systems and internet browsers. Without a stable foundation we cannot be trusting this infrastructure with our governance. Yet we absolutely need such infrastructure to meet the challenges ahead. Really the finger-wagging should be directed at all the publicly funded institutions that used Zoom in the pandemic and maybe directed funding towards tracking research when they could have collaborated globally on improving jitsi to fit the needs of all the different education institutions in the world.
thomastjeffery 5y ago
> If I have someone who did the homework, learned the material, and can demonstrate it on the exams, and they find out that someone else in class got the same grade by cheating, aren't they justified in being angry? They are justified in feeling whatever emotion they feel. That doesn't mean you have to react to their emotion. If you had a student that felt they had a good understanding of the subject, but failed your test; they might assert that your test - not their knowledge - is flawed. Naturally they would have the right to be angry. So would you change your test? I doubt it. > And am I not justified in being distressed to find that I am certifying someone as knowledgable (say,as part of an undergraduate program to become a person who designs bridges), when they are not? So because someone passed a single test, they are going to go start building structurally flawed bridges? If that is the case, then there are much more serious issues than cheating. What's more likely is that a successful cheater might pass your class and fail their career. You might be embarrassed or upset about it, but it wouldn't be that big of a deal. The problem here is that an obsession over "accreditation" is being held as more important than education. The mission of a university has shifted from learning to credit, at the expense of everyone involved.
sgregnt 5y ago
My opinion is that exams are counter productive. Why do we need the exams? If a person is not knowledgeable it's not the university problem it's the employer problem, it's on the employer to find out that the person does not have the ability to add value to the business. The purpose of univeristy should be to give access to knowladge not to make sure an adult person actually studies it. The university can only attest that the student had access to such and such courses thought by such and such people...

arpa 5y ago

Hm. If exam is not measuring competence adequately, the exams validity is lacking, ergo, exam should be redesigned for better validity. Open-book exams with good validity exist, as do tests allowing scientific calculators and formula sheets. Admittedly, that is harder, but... what is "cheating" in the age of information anyway?

bo1024 5y ago
Cheating is posting the question to Chegg and then copying the answer someone posts into your exam. For example.
- kradroy 5y ago
  To be tongue-in-cheek - that person will make a great dev, because I copy answers from stackoverflow all the time and get paid 6 figures to do it.
amalcon 5y ago
The old technique of letting your neighbor copy your answers is both more effective (they don't need to be your neighbor) and harder to monitor (just use your phone to post answers somewhere). The other old technique of sending your older sibling to take the test for you is also difficult to monitor digitally.

ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago

What I feel we need in STEM is procedural exams. We've done it in my university with random question orders and random question selection from a large pool but it's still not enough. It slows down cheating but students can still coordinate on facebook quite effectively. I think the next step is fully unique exams per student with question parameters and solutions generated on the fly.

jtbayly 5y ago
At some point, don't you think it makes sense to just have oral exams?

ColeyG 5y ago

Why isn't academia fixing these problems? Why us? Why are profs so lazy that they can't fix their issues? You guys are so entitled to your control that when it comes to benefitting society it goes to "nah, let the students handle the stress, we don't care if we rape them privacy wise". Sincerely Pathetic

HarryHirsch 5y ago
It's the money. In the past the instructor would have given each student an oral exam, but with introductory classes with more than 200 students that approach doesn't scale.

einpoklum 5y ago

> aren't they justified in being angry? 1. It's not a binary thing - indifferent or beside themselves with rage. 2. Not enough to expect the authorities to engage in draconic measures to prevent this from happening. > And am I not justified in being distressed to find that I am certifying someone as knowledgable (say,as part of an undergraduate program to become a person who designs bridges), when they are not? "distressed"? Not really justified IMHO. Grading is statistical and partially arbitrary anyway, don't sweat it so much. Due disclosure: My academic experience is a Ph.D. program, teaching assistantship, and junior academic staff union rep.

Cd00d 5y ago

I went to a college with an honor code, and proctoring exams was forbidden. Most exams were taken where the student was most comfortable (I usually opted for wherever I'd studied, be it an empty classroom or my dorm room). Most exams were simply open book. I really think it was a great system. But, it's not perfect. I believe the military academies are all on similar honor systems, and I remember a few times of mass-cheating scandals, which have pretty heavy penalties, including expulsion in those environments.

notsureaboutpg 5y ago
Maybe the best system is honor code + encourage students to tell the Prof / administration if another student is cheating. Cheating all on your own is difficult if you also have to hide it from your peers.
- Cd00d 5y ago
  Agreed. Our honor code required that you report any infractions, otherwise you were also in violation. No idea if that was effective or not, but in my experience the code was taken somewhat seriously.
adt2bt 5y ago
> Most exams were simply open book. As I've been out of school for a few years now, I've realized that the memorized material from school fades unless you use it regularly. It boggles my mind that we still effectively test students on memorization ability rather than research and synthesis abilities, even in 'hard' sciences. Sure, there are some processes, procedures and standards which we expect professionals to just 'know', but that should not be the vast majority of knowledge tested. Plus, in the 'real world', I'll happily hire an engineer who doesn't know how to solve an interview problem, but can adequately describe how they'd go about learning how to solve it. I'd trust that person not to just go with their gut or what they think they know, but to rather do some research. Granted, mass cheating, copying answers, etc is still wrong. People should still have to 'do the work' so to speak.
wolverine876 5y ago

JasonFruit 5y ago

I know you're making this argument in good faith, but whenever someone talks about balancing one person's rights against the needs of society, it is an excuse to treat someone in a way they know is wrong, on some level, but they don't want to accept. Rights are a moral issue, and it sounds a lot better to say, "We need to balance individual rights against the needs of society," than to say, "I know we can't morally treat people this way, but we are going to anyway because they are in the way of our big goals."

marcosdumay 5y ago
That's not as absolute as you make it seem. At some point we decided it's correct to send murderers into a prison, and I doubt you think this is wrong. Yet, this is balancing individual rights against the needs of society. How much rights for how much need always matter. The real argument here is that a school's principal is not a legislative body, and his authority to make those choices is completely illicit.
- ameister14 5y ago
  >The real argument here is that a school's principal is not a legislative body, and his authority to make those choices is completely illicit. It isn't entirely if you're talking about minors. There's a duty that the State has in a paternalistic sense to care for children, and children have a more limited set of rights than adults. Where it gets interesting is this is intruding into private spaces where the parents are the ones with those rights, not the school. For adults in college, it's more like a corporate environment and they can decide themselves what tradeoffs they want. It's possible there is some overreach or discriminatory factor there.
MispelledToyota 5y ago
Rights are only a concept that exists within societies, so it seems like societies will either define rights broadly and then discuss tradeoffs, or they would need to define rights very narrowly so a tradeoff isn't conceivable. But then few things would be bona fide rights. If you define a right as inviolable, then privacy isn't a right by that definition unless you have some extreme individualist/anarchist worldview.

slumdev 5y ago

You're absolutely right that cheating is endemic. At the same time, all proctoring software I've ever encountered was garbage. I believe the solution is to require candidates to take exams at a Prometric or Pearson VUE physical location. It's absolutely worth the expense.

jtbayly 5y ago

Pretending like computers can do the job of a person is not that much sillier than pretending a poorly paid proctor who doesn't care can do the job of a professor is not that that much sillier than pretending a class grade is sufficient to certify somebody's knowledge is not that much sillier than pretending a written test can do the job of a one-on-one evaluation. But each step is more "efficient" than the previous one. It's just that each one is also less effective.

ithinkso 5y ago

This argument pops out in many societal issues, not only cheating on exams. Most people don't cheat and act in good faith but we make them suffer anyway because we will be damned if even one person cheats their way through the system, not on my watch! Make sure it's bad for everyone just because if someone exploits the system it will be bad for everyone. In the end there is a healthy balance and those who cheat the system will either fail later from the lack of skill/knowledge or, if they don't, it means it was sort of unnecessary anyway

thethethethe 5y ago

> If I have someone who did the homework, learned the material, and can demonstrate it on the exams, and they find out that someone else in class got the same grade by cheating, aren't they justified in being angry? Why should they be angry? The whole point of college should be to learn, to build knowledge, not just to get good grades. If someone wants to pay money to cheat and not learn the curriculum, that is their choice

openfuture 5y ago

Certification and evaluation is already receiving a lot of attention, the cryptocurrency world is full of nonsense but the core idea of doing decentralized verifiable computation is necessary for having a p2p society. However we still don't know how to solve the tragedy of the commons in a decentralized way. The most promising angle for studying that is machine learning (they want to train models distributed over many machines so they need to do probability preserving compositions, this works for markets). There is also a lot of work that needs to be done on user interfaces, secure hardware, operating systems and internet browsers. Without a stable foundation we cannot be trusting this infrastructure with our governance. Yet we absolutely need such infrastructure to meet the challenges ahead. Really the finger-wagging should be directed at all the publicly funded institutions that used Zoom in the pandemic and maybe directed funding towards tracking research when they could have collaborated globally on improving jitsi to fit the needs of all the different education institutions in the world.

thomastjeffery 5y ago

> If I have someone who did the homework, learned the material, and can demonstrate it on the exams, and they find out that someone else in class got the same grade by cheating, aren't they justified in being angry? They are justified in feeling whatever emotion they feel. That doesn't mean you have to react to their emotion. If you had a student that felt they had a good understanding of the subject, but failed your test; they might assert that your test - not their knowledge - is flawed. Naturally they would have the right to be angry. So would you change your test? I doubt it. > And am I not justified in being distressed to find that I am certifying someone as knowledgable (say,as part of an undergraduate program to become a person who designs bridges), when they are not? So because someone passed a single test, they are going to go start building structurally flawed bridges? If that is the case, then there are much more serious issues than cheating. What's more likely is that a successful cheater might pass your class and fail their career. You might be embarrassed or upset about it, but it wouldn't be that big of a deal. The problem here is that an obsession over "accreditation" is being held as more important than education. The mission of a university has shifted from learning to credit, at the expense of everyone involved.

sgregnt 5y ago

My opinion is that exams are counter productive. Why do we need the exams? If a person is not knowledgeable it's not the university problem it's the employer problem, it's on the employer to find out that the person does not have the ability to add value to the business. The purpose of univeristy should be to give access to knowladge not to make sure an adult person actually studies it. The university can only attest that the student had access to such and such courses thought by such and such people...