4 ms·

Crib sheets are cool or what? Do you really suggest teachers should prefer paper exams over Google Forms exams because removing the ability to cheat by removing

Crib sheets are cool or what? Do you really suggest teachers should prefer paper exams over Google Forms exams because removing the ability to cheat by removing the view source function from the exam workstation is evil? Do you really think any kid won't know the "trick" after the first one finds it out? This will not make any kid smarter...

alpaca128 5y ago
Do you really think kids who can look up answers in the source can't come up with workarounds for this laughable block? It only takes one student with the right idea and this whole thing is worthless again. This is a serverside problem, attempts to hide it in the client are doomed from the start.
- chromanoid 5y ago
  Kiosk mode or similar restricting modes are normal browser features. I don't see a problem here. The reason to make this digital is to easily be able to grade it. Cheating will always be a problem. Easy and cheap prevention methods are key, because your average education system is cheap and badly organized.
  - grayhatter 5y ago
    > Cheating will always be a problem. Ahh, and see, there's the problem. You're operating under the assumption that cheating is a problem with the student and not the test. That's incorrect. We're talking about knowledge and correctness. If I present you with a problem, can you find a solution. Humans, correctly, will prefer the easiest solution. If your "test" has solutions that you don't want to accept (like cheating) that's a problem with your test, not with the solution. As an example; if I write a password function called `check_password()` and in it, it uses C `if (strcmp(test_password, known_password)) goto fail;` and someone sends in the string "\0" is the password test good, or bad? Sure someone is cheating, but is the test good, or is the test bad? > Easy and cheap prevention methods are key, because your average education system is cheap and badly organized. So the average education system is broken, the best solution we have, and the one we should implement is to break other things that are working as intended?
    - chromanoid 5y ago
      > You're operating under the assumption that cheating is a problem with the student and not the test. That's incorrect. We're talking about knowledge and correctness. If I present you with a problem, can you find a solution. Humans, correctly, will prefer the easiest solution. If your "test" has solutions that you don't want to accept (like cheating) that's a problem with your test, not with the solution. This is nonsense. Foremost the test is to help the teacher to understand the student. If the lazy student constantly cheats they will fly under the radar and crash hard eventually. Tests themselves are just a crutch. Modern education is about helping children learn in spite of sending them away with somehow comparable grades. > So the average education system is broken, the best solution we have, and the one we should implement is to break other things that are working as intended? It's not breaking things. It's a feature for a browser in a managed environment. When teachers would develop an electron app with the same functionality would you be happy?
      - grayhatter 5y ago
        > This is nonsense. Foremost the test is to help the teacher to understand the student. If the lazy student constantly cheats they will fly under the radar and crash hard eventually. I consider my very self lazy, and I used to cheat on tests all the time. I haven't crashed yet. > Tests themselves are just a crutch. Modern education is about helping children learn in spite of sending them away with somehow comparable grades. I agree actually. Tests should be just a way to learn about students. But schools, teachers and students, assign value to the grades they get on these tests. If grades didn't matter to anyone but the teacher so they could learn how well they're doing as a teach, students would have any interest in cheating. But we're arguing about if disabling view-source is a reasonable solution to prevent students from cheating for how test are used now. And It's not. > It's not breaking things. It's a feature for a browser in a managed environment. When teachers would develop an electron app with the same functionality would you be happy? No, I'll be happy when people stop making excuses for bad design, and other people stop breaking features in a feeble attempt to fix a bug in a different and mostly unrelated system.
      - alpaca128 5y ago
        > If the lazy student constantly cheats In other words the efficient student who used the path of least resistance. It is easy to call such people lazy, but in my experience that label is mainly used to avoid the responsibility of fixing the issue. People convincing me I'm lazy caused more damage than a whole school career based on cheating would have. Exams should mainly test understanding, not the ability to memorize things. Once you do that cheaters automatically become a smaller issue. Unless it's a memorization test(vocabulary etc.) there's no reason to withhold information imho, just like it doesn't make sense to have someone write software without access to Github or StackOverflow. > Modern education is about helping children learn In that case modern education is a total failure across the board. Maybe my non-neurotypical perspective is a bit biased, but it is difficult to think of just one instance where any part of the education system was actually helpful. Einstein's quote about judging fish based on their ability to climb trees never lost significance. Though I do have some understanding there; the education system in its current form does not attract competent teachers, and despite some awareness improvements rarely get funded beyond pilot tests.
  - alpaca128 5y ago
    > Easy and cheap prevention methods are key It doesn't get easier and cheaper than a sheet of paper. Going digital isn't good cheating prevention. It's the first step to repeating this "view page source" drama. Once you add computers to the equation you open up countless more possibilities. Setting a few rules in the browser is like closing a single hole of a colander.
    - chromanoid 5y ago
      Going digital is not about cheat prevention, but about saving time, saving resources and being accessible.
      - nanis 5y ago
        > being accessible. Not really. In a real paper & pencil exam you take in the same room with your teacher, the teacher is available to answer clarifying questions. More than once, a question one of my students asked led me to realize that a multiple choice question might have more than one good answer or an essay question can be phrased better etc. The real time feedback is a learning opportunity for the teacher and the student: The goal of a test in a high school or college classroom is not measurement. It is a continuation of learning. I do not see how anything remotely close to that is possible when tests/grading are offloaded to Google forms.
        chromanoid 5y ago
        So imagine this setting. You set up multiple learning stations / activity centres where students can independently learn on their own. These learning stations are analog and digital. They contain some tests that are mandatory and can be taken at any time by the students. To perform the tests the students go to one of maybe five workstations in secluded areas in the classroom that can be watched by the teacher. After each day the teacher can analyze the grading and can be reasonably sure nobody did cheat.
nanis 5y ago
Paper tests every day, all day.
- chromanoid 5y ago
  Just takes your teacher much longer to grade and eats precious preparation time.
  - grayhatter 5y ago
    What's worse, students cheating, or teacher spending time to prevent students from cheating?
    - chromanoid 5y ago
      It's not like this feature was implemented by teachers. It will always be a tradeoff.
      - grayhatter 5y ago
        But this trade off breaks something, to fix something else that's broken worse. That's a bad trade.
        chromanoid 5y ago
        This is a feature. Nobody has to activate it. It's not broken when the function you consider breaking is off by default.
  - nanis 5y ago
    I would be able to take all of this consternation over grading and preparation time more seriously if I had never taught in my life. Teachers' union members get small class sizes and assistants. Plus, it is not as if the material is soooo new and original every time. Grading paper tests is not hard. If it is multiple choice, grading is trivial. I am assuming these teacher's are not letting Google grade essay questions. If the past two years have shown anything, it is that there are a heck of a lot of teachers' union members will do anything to get out of the actual work of teaching. In the real world, the issue with this feature is that by making the idea that enterprise users gain security by prohibiting `view-source` commonplace and routine, Google and Microsoft are going to turn `view-source` into criminal activity soon. And teachers not wanting to do work is a convenient excuse. Writing a decent quiz application is a weekend project for any developer who does not need left-pad to pad a string. The key part is the content, the question bank. Almost all publishers have question banks to go with almost every textbook. Heck, some of us would actually read them and decide which ones made good practice questions and which ones did not.

alpaca128 5y ago

Do you really think kids who can look up answers in the source can't come up with workarounds for this laughable block? It only takes one student with the right idea and this whole thing is worthless again. This is a serverside problem, attempts to hide it in the client are doomed from the start.

chromanoid 5y ago
Kiosk mode or similar restricting modes are normal browser features. I don't see a problem here. The reason to make this digital is to easily be able to grade it. Cheating will always be a problem. Easy and cheap prevention methods are key, because your average education system is cheap and badly organized.
- grayhatter 5y ago
  > Cheating will always be a problem. Ahh, and see, there's the problem. You're operating under the assumption that cheating is a problem with the student and not the test. That's incorrect. We're talking about knowledge and correctness. If I present you with a problem, can you find a solution. Humans, correctly, will prefer the easiest solution. If your "test" has solutions that you don't want to accept (like cheating) that's a problem with your test, not with the solution. As an example; if I write a password function called `check_password()` and in it, it uses C `if (strcmp(test_password, known_password)) goto fail;` and someone sends in the string "\0" is the password test good, or bad? Sure someone is cheating, but is the test good, or is the test bad? > Easy and cheap prevention methods are key, because your average education system is cheap and badly organized. So the average education system is broken, the best solution we have, and the one we should implement is to break other things that are working as intended?
  - chromanoid 5y ago
    > You're operating under the assumption that cheating is a problem with the student and not the test. That's incorrect. We're talking about knowledge and correctness. If I present you with a problem, can you find a solution. Humans, correctly, will prefer the easiest solution. If your "test" has solutions that you don't want to accept (like cheating) that's a problem with your test, not with the solution. This is nonsense. Foremost the test is to help the teacher to understand the student. If the lazy student constantly cheats they will fly under the radar and crash hard eventually. Tests themselves are just a crutch. Modern education is about helping children learn in spite of sending them away with somehow comparable grades. > So the average education system is broken, the best solution we have, and the one we should implement is to break other things that are working as intended? It's not breaking things. It's a feature for a browser in a managed environment. When teachers would develop an electron app with the same functionality would you be happy?
    - grayhatter 5y ago
      > This is nonsense. Foremost the test is to help the teacher to understand the student. If the lazy student constantly cheats they will fly under the radar and crash hard eventually. I consider my very self lazy, and I used to cheat on tests all the time. I haven't crashed yet. > Tests themselves are just a crutch. Modern education is about helping children learn in spite of sending them away with somehow comparable grades. I agree actually. Tests should be just a way to learn about students. But schools, teachers and students, assign value to the grades they get on these tests. If grades didn't matter to anyone but the teacher so they could learn how well they're doing as a teach, students would have any interest in cheating. But we're arguing about if disabling view-source is a reasonable solution to prevent students from cheating for how test are used now. And It's not. > It's not breaking things. It's a feature for a browser in a managed environment. When teachers would develop an electron app with the same functionality would you be happy? No, I'll be happy when people stop making excuses for bad design, and other people stop breaking features in a feeble attempt to fix a bug in a different and mostly unrelated system.
    - alpaca128 5y ago
      > If the lazy student constantly cheats In other words the efficient student who used the path of least resistance. It is easy to call such people lazy, but in my experience that label is mainly used to avoid the responsibility of fixing the issue. People convincing me I'm lazy caused more damage than a whole school career based on cheating would have. Exams should mainly test understanding, not the ability to memorize things. Once you do that cheaters automatically become a smaller issue. Unless it's a memorization test(vocabulary etc.) there's no reason to withhold information imho, just like it doesn't make sense to have someone write software without access to Github or StackOverflow. > Modern education is about helping children learn In that case modern education is a total failure across the board. Maybe my non-neurotypical perspective is a bit biased, but it is difficult to think of just one instance where any part of the education system was actually helpful. Einstein's quote about judging fish based on their ability to climb trees never lost significance. Though I do have some understanding there; the education system in its current form does not attract competent teachers, and despite some awareness improvements rarely get funded beyond pilot tests.
- alpaca128 5y ago
  > Easy and cheap prevention methods are key It doesn't get easier and cheaper than a sheet of paper. Going digital isn't good cheating prevention. It's the first step to repeating this "view page source" drama. Once you add computers to the equation you open up countless more possibilities. Setting a few rules in the browser is like closing a single hole of a colander.
  - chromanoid 5y ago
    Going digital is not about cheat prevention, but about saving time, saving resources and being accessible.
    - nanis 5y ago
      > being accessible. Not really. In a real paper & pencil exam you take in the same room with your teacher, the teacher is available to answer clarifying questions. More than once, a question one of my students asked led me to realize that a multiple choice question might have more than one good answer or an essay question can be phrased better etc. The real time feedback is a learning opportunity for the teacher and the student: The goal of a test in a high school or college classroom is not measurement. It is a continuation of learning. I do not see how anything remotely close to that is possible when tests/grading are offloaded to Google forms.
      - chromanoid 5y ago
        So imagine this setting. You set up multiple learning stations / activity centres where students can independently learn on their own. These learning stations are analog and digital. They contain some tests that are mandatory and can be taken at any time by the students. To perform the tests the students go to one of maybe five workstations in secluded areas in the classroom that can be watched by the teacher. After each day the teacher can analyze the grading and can be reasonably sure nobody did cheat.

nanis 5y ago

Paper tests every day, all day.

chromanoid 5y ago
Just takes your teacher much longer to grade and eats precious preparation time.
- grayhatter 5y ago
  What's worse, students cheating, or teacher spending time to prevent students from cheating?
  - chromanoid 5y ago
    It's not like this feature was implemented by teachers. It will always be a tradeoff.
    - grayhatter 5y ago
      But this trade off breaks something, to fix something else that's broken worse. That's a bad trade.
      - chromanoid 5y ago
        This is a feature. Nobody has to activate it. It's not broken when the function you consider breaking is off by default.
- nanis 5y ago
  I would be able to take all of this consternation over grading and preparation time more seriously if I had never taught in my life. Teachers' union members get small class sizes and assistants. Plus, it is not as if the material is soooo new and original every time. Grading paper tests is not hard. If it is multiple choice, grading is trivial. I am assuming these teacher's are not letting Google grade essay questions. If the past two years have shown anything, it is that there are a heck of a lot of teachers' union members will do anything to get out of the actual work of teaching. In the real world, the issue with this feature is that by making the idea that enterprise users gain security by prohibiting `view-source` commonplace and routine, Google and Microsoft are going to turn `view-source` into criminal activity soon. And teachers not wanting to do work is a convenient excuse. Writing a decent quiz application is a weekend project for any developer who does not need left-pad to pad a string. The key part is the content, the question bank. Almost all publishers have question banks to go with almost every textbook. Heck, some of us would actually read them and decide which ones made good practice questions and which ones did not.