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I can see why universities want to use a system like this. A friend of mine is a University lecturer for physics and one of his students gave him an invite to

I can see why universities want to use a system like this. A friend of mine is a University lecturer for physics and one of his students gave him an invite to the discord channel where half his students are in there sharing all the answers during the final exam. He basically told me there is nothing he can do about it. He talked to the head of department and they basically said if you have proof of specific people cheating then they can escalate it for those people but short of that, nothing can be done. Not that I’m saying these systems are great either. But I really don’t know how exams in the current form can be conducted remotely without endemic cheating.

mytailorisrich 5y ago
I think the only alternative to eproctoring is standard in-person exams in a room at the school/university. We can debate how far eprotoring solutions should reasonably go but really if someone is allowed to take an exam remotely alone there has to be a form a surveillance. This can include providing an approved, locked laptop with monitoring sofware instead of letting students use their own devices with eproctoring software but that obviously comes with an additional cost.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  We allow students to take exams alone, unsupervised, all the time and we have been doing it just fine for hundreds of years. Have you ever written a paper as a final for a class? Or done a problem set? Or a project? Or even a take home test? No surveillance needed if you structure the format of the final to suit the “testing” environment. If the answers to your final are easily Googled then you’ve written a shitty final.
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    A final paper is different and the concept itself obviously does not lend itself to surveillance, which used to be less important because it is/was less easy to cheat. There are growing problems with this as well because of all the online "help" students may get access to these days. Allowing students to take exams alone, at home, unsupervised is just a recipe for disaster without surveillance. It's not just Google but any sort of help in the room or remote, which can go all the way to someone else taking the exam. That really simply is the reality. I don't think this is contentious and I am surprised by the debate. On the other hand, it is of course possible to discuss how far surveillance should go and how perhaps to avoid too much intrusion (as mentioned in my previous comment). That said, with the expensive connectivity people have these days, in addition to all they can think of if the exam takes place at home this is really an arm race situation. So, again, the alternative is good old in-person, on-site exams, where students are also under surveillance, by the way, but that feels less intrusive because students aren't in their own private space at home.
  - krull10 5y ago
    Then you’re lucky to have students with a lot of integrity at your college/university. Even with a great unique exam where nothing can be looked up online, this doesn’t prevent students from copying each other, posting problems on sites like Chegg and paying for help, or working together…
christophilus 5y ago
Spitballing here, but maybe exams need to be reconsidered. What if instead, the professor has a 1:1 conversation with each student, Socrates-style? You’d know pretty quickly whether or not the student was familiar with the material, and if not, where they were weak and needed more focus. Maybe systematizing everything about education is the wrong approach.
- amitport 5y ago
  Of course, this, in the rare cases it is applicable. In my current course we have 400 students with 3 Prof. ... So it is not really applicable. Another thing to note is that undergrades' first job usually depends on having good grades. Some people will get lower grades and those will complain to the point of suing the university into having a more seemingly fair and unbiased process. (Note actually fair, but I'm pretty sure whoever will get a low grade on the Socrates style conversation will be pissed and demand something else. This kind of mentoring only makes sense in the PhD level really, where grades matter less)
  - christophilus 5y ago
    I thought of this when posting. Honestly, universities are the educational equivalent of industrial farming. We need a rethink. When I was in university (some time ago!), it was always the large courses that were easiest to game. They were also generally the subjects I was least interested in. My small comp sci courses were amazing in contrast. Easily worth the cost of admission. I think the education system would be much improved if we had fewer, but significantly smaller courses. So, you pay the same price, but instead of 100 courses of massive size, you get 25 courses of small size.
    - mkl 5y ago
      Fewer courses that are also smaller? Wouldn't that mean the number of students has to go way down? Paying the same price seems unlikely.
      - 5y ago
MattGaiser 5y ago
Even for people who have cheated in a very obvious way, nothing is done. A friend of mine copied an assignment right down to the name and student number as he didn't even bother to read the whole block of code so also copied the comments with the submission information. He got 100%, but was told not to do it again.
- legutierr 5y ago
  This is in the United States?
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Canada. Heard plenty of similar stories though for the USA as well.
- consp 5y ago
  Completely anecdotal and not in the US: My experience as a TA are quite different, though this in in Europe. Especially with the algorithmic courses there was quite a lot of copying since there were multiple TA's and they thought we didn't compare notes. Several of them got reported (you get a mark, two marks is suspension, three is out) and I know of at least one case who got caught again at a different course and was suspended. For a programming course for first year engineering students we didn't care they copied each others code but just asked students to explain specific parts of the programs they handed in. Those who copied failed mostly instantly and got one retry, and most at least tried to understand what it was about after that. Though copy/pasting and not even changing the student's ID numbers was an instant fail.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    Another anecdote (Britain): I was a part-time visiting lecturer in computing, paid by the lesson. Cheating was rife; I often got duplicate submission of coding exercises. Scoring was mainly by coursework, not exams. I asked my colleagues what to do about it. They said: 1. You can ignore it. 2. You can report it; you will be accused of racism (the majority of the class were people with brown skin). You will be required to sit on an exam board for several days during the holiday season, unpaid. 3. You can explain to them that collaboration is encouraged, but submitting work you didn't do as if it were your own is cheating, and not permitted. I took option 3.
swiley 5y ago
Discord accounts are tied to real identities and the company is pretty aggressive about removing duplicate accounts. It should be possible to ID most of the people in that chat and report them to the administration.
- TheFreim 5y ago
  > Discord accounts are tied to real identities Since when? My discord account doesn't have my name or phone linked at all, just email.
  - swiley 5y ago
    You got grandfathered in then, congrats.
    - TheFreim 5y ago
      I created an alternative account the other day and it didn't ask for my identity (within the last two weeks)...
analog31 5y ago
Idea taken from real life: Flood the discord channel with misinformation, so people don't know what's real and what isn't. No, I don't really advocate doing that, but it's what first came to mind.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

I think the only alternative to eproctoring is standard in-person exams in a room at the school/university. We can debate how far eprotoring solutions should reasonably go but really if someone is allowed to take an exam remotely alone there has to be a form a surveillance. This can include providing an approved, locked laptop with monitoring sofware instead of letting students use their own devices with eproctoring software but that obviously comes with an additional cost.

elliekelly 5y ago
We allow students to take exams alone, unsupervised, all the time and we have been doing it just fine for hundreds of years. Have you ever written a paper as a final for a class? Or done a problem set? Or a project? Or even a take home test? No surveillance needed if you structure the format of the final to suit the “testing” environment. If the answers to your final are easily Googled then you’ve written a shitty final.
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  A final paper is different and the concept itself obviously does not lend itself to surveillance, which used to be less important because it is/was less easy to cheat. There are growing problems with this as well because of all the online "help" students may get access to these days. Allowing students to take exams alone, at home, unsupervised is just a recipe for disaster without surveillance. It's not just Google but any sort of help in the room or remote, which can go all the way to someone else taking the exam. That really simply is the reality. I don't think this is contentious and I am surprised by the debate. On the other hand, it is of course possible to discuss how far surveillance should go and how perhaps to avoid too much intrusion (as mentioned in my previous comment). That said, with the expensive connectivity people have these days, in addition to all they can think of if the exam takes place at home this is really an arm race situation. So, again, the alternative is good old in-person, on-site exams, where students are also under surveillance, by the way, but that feels less intrusive because students aren't in their own private space at home.
- krull10 5y ago
  Then you’re lucky to have students with a lot of integrity at your college/university. Even with a great unique exam where nothing can be looked up online, this doesn’t prevent students from copying each other, posting problems on sites like Chegg and paying for help, or working together…

christophilus 5y ago

Spitballing here, but maybe exams need to be reconsidered. What if instead, the professor has a 1:1 conversation with each student, Socrates-style? You’d know pretty quickly whether or not the student was familiar with the material, and if not, where they were weak and needed more focus. Maybe systematizing everything about education is the wrong approach.

amitport 5y ago
Of course, this, in the rare cases it is applicable. In my current course we have 400 students with 3 Prof. ... So it is not really applicable. Another thing to note is that undergrades' first job usually depends on having good grades. Some people will get lower grades and those will complain to the point of suing the university into having a more seemingly fair and unbiased process. (Note actually fair, but I'm pretty sure whoever will get a low grade on the Socrates style conversation will be pissed and demand something else. This kind of mentoring only makes sense in the PhD level really, where grades matter less)
- christophilus 5y ago
  I thought of this when posting. Honestly, universities are the educational equivalent of industrial farming. We need a rethink. When I was in university (some time ago!), it was always the large courses that were easiest to game. They were also generally the subjects I was least interested in. My small comp sci courses were amazing in contrast. Easily worth the cost of admission. I think the education system would be much improved if we had fewer, but significantly smaller courses. So, you pay the same price, but instead of 100 courses of massive size, you get 25 courses of small size.
  - mkl 5y ago
    Fewer courses that are also smaller? Wouldn't that mean the number of students has to go way down? Paying the same price seems unlikely.
    - 5y ago

MattGaiser 5y ago

Even for people who have cheated in a very obvious way, nothing is done. A friend of mine copied an assignment right down to the name and student number as he didn't even bother to read the whole block of code so also copied the comments with the submission information. He got 100%, but was told not to do it again.

legutierr 5y ago
This is in the United States?
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Canada. Heard plenty of similar stories though for the USA as well.
consp 5y ago
Completely anecdotal and not in the US: My experience as a TA are quite different, though this in in Europe. Especially with the algorithmic courses there was quite a lot of copying since there were multiple TA's and they thought we didn't compare notes. Several of them got reported (you get a mark, two marks is suspension, three is out) and I know of at least one case who got caught again at a different course and was suspended. For a programming course for first year engineering students we didn't care they copied each others code but just asked students to explain specific parts of the programs they handed in. Those who copied failed mostly instantly and got one retry, and most at least tried to understand what it was about after that. Though copy/pasting and not even changing the student's ID numbers was an instant fail.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  Another anecdote (Britain): I was a part-time visiting lecturer in computing, paid by the lesson. Cheating was rife; I often got duplicate submission of coding exercises. Scoring was mainly by coursework, not exams. I asked my colleagues what to do about it. They said: 1. You can ignore it. 2. You can report it; you will be accused of racism (the majority of the class were people with brown skin). You will be required to sit on an exam board for several days during the holiday season, unpaid. 3. You can explain to them that collaboration is encouraged, but submitting work you didn't do as if it were your own is cheating, and not permitted. I took option 3.

swiley 5y ago

Discord accounts are tied to real identities and the company is pretty aggressive about removing duplicate accounts. It should be possible to ID most of the people in that chat and report them to the administration.

TheFreim 5y ago
> Discord accounts are tied to real identities Since when? My discord account doesn't have my name or phone linked at all, just email.
- swiley 5y ago
  You got grandfathered in then, congrats.
  - TheFreim 5y ago
    I created an alternative account the other day and it didn't ask for my identity (within the last two weeks)...

analog31 5y ago

Idea taken from real life: Flood the discord channel with misinformation, so people don't know what's real and what isn't. No, I don't really advocate doing that, but it's what first came to mind.