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When I was TAing last year we had to proctor the students via zoom (trust me its not fun for anyone). Quite frankly I found different professors approached thin

When I was TAing last year we had to proctor the students via zoom (trust me its not fun for anyone). Quite frankly I found different professors approached things in different ways. All the exams were made open book, because its impossible to figure out if people are looking at their notes. One of the profs decided to make it impossible to cheat by basically making the exam so hard that even the A+ students would have a hard time solving it. This worked well in preventing cheating because for the A+ students to collaborate with others they would need spare time. On the other hand it left lot of students very demoralized. Some of the other profs came up with question randomization schemes. So the assesment tool would shuffle questions for different students. People were still on discord channels but to not much effect. Of course this required that the professors (or the TAs) were conversant with basic programming skills. For humanities oriented assessments however, I know most of the profs chose to do things via project work (it's a bit hard to cheat when writing essays. You can't possibly have the same argument as someone else so...) One thing I can't help but wonder is that I realized when we moved things online we missed out a lot on student interaction. Students were generally far more aggressive for their own grades, often at the cost of other students. Furthermore, I found students were far more ready to abuse the teaching staff than when we were physically there. Conversely, teaching staff was far more strict and stressed out than before. I can't help but wonder if the same courses were conducted face to face whether there would be more kindness all round.

noodlesUK 5y ago
> For humanities oriented assessments however, I know most of the profs chose to do things via project work (it's a bit hard to cheat when writing essays…) This is true of copying and collusion generally, but not of commissioning unique work from an essay mill, which is shockingly prevalent in humanities subjects for this very reason. I am aware of no effective defence against this other than in-person exams or oral vivas. I’m glad I’m not a humanities lecturer right now.
mkl 5y ago
I think making the exam really hard is more likely to backfire and push people to cheat. One of the main drivers of cheating is the perception of unfairness. The time limitation is not really an obstacle if you're organised, just divide and conquer doing a subset of the questions each.
- 10000truths 5y ago
  Almost every college and university course I took would curve grades to adjust for difficulty. I’ve even had professors tell me that top scorers in a test were only expected to get x% of questions correct.
  - shagie 5y ago
    I recall calc 2 exam that I had... It was a rather hard exam and I left with a bit of a "meh" feeling to how well I did on it. The professor handed back the exam the next lecture with the percent on it. I was looking at a 50% on my exam. This was a Tuesday Thursday class (rather than MWF) and so was an hour and a half long. I'm staring at my exam thinking "F, maybe a D, hope I got a C, I'd settle for a D, probably an F... hope I got a C" all through the lecture. Just before the bell rang, the professor wrote the curve on the chalkboard. * 100 - 75 : A * 50 - 75 : B I don't remember any of the rest... I was stuck on "I got a B!" As I left, my TA congratulated me for getting a B.

noodlesUK 5y ago

> For humanities oriented assessments however, I know most of the profs chose to do things via project work (it's a bit hard to cheat when writing essays…) This is true of copying and collusion generally, but not of commissioning unique work from an essay mill, which is shockingly prevalent in humanities subjects for this very reason. I am aware of no effective defence against this other than in-person exams or oral vivas. I’m glad I’m not a humanities lecturer right now.

mkl 5y ago

I think making the exam really hard is more likely to backfire and push people to cheat. One of the main drivers of cheating is the perception of unfairness. The time limitation is not really an obstacle if you're organised, just divide and conquer doing a subset of the questions each.

10000truths 5y ago
Almost every college and university course I took would curve grades to adjust for difficulty. I’ve even had professors tell me that top scorers in a test were only expected to get x% of questions correct.
- shagie 5y ago
  I recall calc 2 exam that I had... It was a rather hard exam and I left with a bit of a "meh" feeling to how well I did on it. The professor handed back the exam the next lecture with the percent on it. I was looking at a 50% on my exam. This was a Tuesday Thursday class (rather than MWF) and so was an hour and a half long. I'm staring at my exam thinking "F, maybe a D, hope I got a C, I'd settle for a D, probably an F... hope I got a C" all through the lecture. Just before the bell rang, the professor wrote the curve on the chalkboard. * 100 - 75 : A * 50 - 75 : B I don't remember any of the rest... I was stuck on "I got a B!" As I left, my TA congratulated me for getting a B.