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(B) disincentivize cheating. This is tough to do but if someone is motivated not by a grade but by the experience or knowledge gain itself cheating is no longer

(B) disincentivize cheating. This is tough to do but if someone is motivated not by a grade but by the experience or knowledge gain itself cheating is no longer of interest. It’s easy to do—don’t issue any credentials. It’s just that the very lucrative businesses don’t want to do that because they know exactly what they are selling and it ain’t education.

tialaramex 4y ago
The honest students actually value being told if they understood correctly. I guess the most inveterate cheaters wouldn't care, but most students are at least somewhat hopeful they've actually learned, and the summative assessment process is feedback for those students. It so happens that looking after the mechanics of (computer based) university examination is part of my current role. We do have some mechanisms in place that are intended to make it harder to cheat, but ultimately some students will cheat and one of the interesting things is watching the reaction of a young colleague who went from those exams (a year ago) to his current job, at this same university. For example there are signs outside every exam room prominently warning students that the university owns video cameras and they are being watched while doing exams. It's true, but of course the main reason we're watching isn't to catch cheaters but to anticipate problems the room's invigilators are about to call us about. Are we watching to see if that girl is wearing a short skirt because she's written notes on her own thighs? Are we watching to see if the Fitbit on that guy's wrist has been modified to display relayed multiple choice answers? No, we're watching because the room has 85 green "OK for this exam: BIOL1024 Genetics" screens and one orange "Pre-check failed. DO NOT USE" screen and in a minute the retired administrator herding students into the room is going to remember that we said Orange = Bad during training and call us about it, by the time they do we want to know why it has an orange screen, whether that room is actually booked for 86 students so that they can't just leave the machine unused, and where else on campus we can put one extra student if we need to move them pronto. We aren't trying to actually fix it, because that's likely to take hours, and we have minutes or sometimes seconds. One of the most valuable uses of those cameras doesn't actually involve seeing anybody, cheater or not, student or not, at the end of the day if there's one PC which stubbornly claims to still be doing an exam, is it really? If the room is empty, maybe even dark, then the answer is that despite instructions to students and invigilators they left a machine logged in, running an exam, and just walked out of the room. On the other hand, if there's still people stood in the room looking at the PC, well, radios work both ways, lets find out why the hell they aren't finished.

tialaramex 4y ago

The honest students actually value being told if they understood correctly. I guess the most inveterate cheaters wouldn't care, but most students are at least somewhat hopeful they've actually learned, and the summative assessment process is feedback for those students. It so happens that looking after the mechanics of (computer based) university examination is part of my current role. We do have some mechanisms in place that are intended to make it harder to cheat, but ultimately some students will cheat and one of the interesting things is watching the reaction of a young colleague who went from those exams (a year ago) to his current job, at this same university. For example there are signs outside every exam room prominently warning students that the university owns video cameras and they are being watched while doing exams. It's true, but of course the main reason we're watching isn't to catch cheaters but to anticipate problems the room's invigilators are about to call us about. Are we watching to see if that girl is wearing a short skirt because she's written notes on her own thighs? Are we watching to see if the Fitbit on that guy's wrist has been modified to display relayed multiple choice answers? No, we're watching because the room has 85 green "OK for this exam: BIOL1024 Genetics" screens and one orange "Pre-check failed. DO NOT USE" screen and in a minute the retired administrator herding students into the room is going to remember that we said Orange = Bad during training and call us about it, by the time they do we want to know why it has an orange screen, whether that room is actually booked for 86 students so that they can't just leave the machine unused, and where else on campus we can put one extra student if we need to move them pronto. We aren't trying to actually fix it, because that's likely to take hours, and we have minutes or sometimes seconds. One of the most valuable uses of those cameras doesn't actually involve seeing anybody, cheater or not, student or not, at the end of the day if there's one PC which stubbornly claims to still be doing an exam, is it really? If the room is empty, maybe even dark, then the answer is that despite instructions to students and invigilators they left a machine logged in, running an exam, and just walked out of the room. On the other hand, if there's still people stood in the room looking at the PC, well, radios work both ways, lets find out why the hell they aren't finished.