11 ms·

The purpose of these kinds of tools isn't to prevent cheating. Just like most DRM schemes, the purpose of these tools is the same as any other external consulta

• JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  Guessing there is an assumption about deterrence, too.
  • asldfkjaskljdf 4y ago
  • liminalsunset 4y ago
    Despite this probably being effective for casual or opportunistic people, the problem is that the opposite of the responsibility hot-potato thing happens on the "client" side too. Companies dedicated to "getting around these tools" and their ads start popping up, and now you have these companies effectively (in students' minds anyway) taking over the responsibility of dealing with the tool. So it becomes an IT pros vs IT pros cat-and-mouse game, just like jailbreaking and every other game cheating service.
• asldfkjaskljdf 4y ago
  • Aperocky 4y ago
    The real purpose is almost always incompetence. Then grift. And only then comes malice.
    • markdown 4y ago
      Have you seen the Republican Parties policies over the past decade? It's pretty much "own the libs", which is malice any way you slice it.
• AussieWog93 4y ago
  >Just like most DRM schemes ... offload the responsibilities Funny you mention this. I remember a senior staffer at a large games publisher talking about this back in the late 00's. He said, quite candidly, that all of the execs at EA, Activision etc. all knew that technology like SecuROM was incredibly ineffective at reducing piracy. They all paid millions of dollars in licence fees to use it, though, so that they when an investor asked them what they were doing to protect their IP, they had a "good" answer.
  • toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Checkbox compliance is everywhere!
  • judge2020 4y ago
    I think investors weren't too slow to realize this was happening, though, and it's part of the reason why microtransaction-funded online games are loads more profitable and prioritized.
  • gjsman-1000 4y ago
    And in the movie world, look at Blu-ray. HDCP (for HDMI Cable Encryption), versions 1.4 (1080p) and 2.2 (4K). BD+ (a literal VM running on the player to correct intentionally erroneous data on the disc), AACS v1 and v2 (tons of keys, player keys, device keys, permanent revocation lists, even traitor-tracing), Cinavia (audio watermarking to detect whether AACS is present), and Drive Bus Authentication (no unauthorized players can talk to the drive). AACS was supposed to last years. HDCP, indefinitely. BD+, the creators thought it would last a decade at least. Cinavia? They thought it would never be removable. Drive Bus Encryption? Almost impossible they thought. All of these technologies were defeated about ~2 years after their introduction. Some had minor updates breaking things for a little bit, but were broken again shortly later. And some are only partially broken (not enough to make your own player), but in practice broken enough where you can rip the disc which is all most people want.
    • jamiek88 4y ago
      Yep and there’s always the analog loophole in the interim.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• ryan93 4y ago
  Recording students does work. The knowledge that a teacher can scrub through and see what you are doing can scared the daylights out of me. Also they required me to show whole room so i couldnt have notes. Cheating would not be worth it!
  • StopHammoTime 4y ago
    Yeah, but you were already scared of contravening the rules and wouldn’t have cheated anyway. It’s a false equivalency.
    • MichaelCollins 4y ago
      Different students have different tolerances for risk. Anti-cheating measures dissuade some but not others. Students with a lot of risk tolerance and a very high drive for success at all costs will likely find ways to cheat no matter what, but that doesn't mean simple anti-cheat measures don't work to reduce cheating.
      • mannykannot 4y ago
        I agree, but it is not just a matter of risk tolerance, as the emotions desperation and/or entitlement are factors.
      • jcranmer 4y ago
        In my experience as a TA, cheaters are more than willing to do so even with a proctor standing right next to them staring at them. If anything, I suspect that on net a noisily invasive anti-cheating system would actually increase cheating, as more students would be tempted to see if they could game the cheating system than would be dissuaded from cheating from hearing about a cheat-proof system.
        • MichaelCollins 4y ago
          Obviously the cheaters you would catch while standing over them are the cheaters who would cheat when you're standing over them. Selection bias. I can tell you with certainty that some cheaters are skittish. I am certain of that because I once wrote a bunch of trig identities on the side of my leg. I was very nervous about it, and only did it because I knew from previous tests in that course that I could get away with it. If the teacher had been walking around during that test, my pant leg would have stayed down.
• rr808 4y ago
  I feel it does more than that too. If there is no technical security measures taken it seems less of an offense to cheat, if you see real effort to stop you it makes it feel more wrong even if you can get around it.
  • ALittleLight 4y ago
    My intuition is the opposite. If someone said "No cheating, on your honor" then I would probably feel much more hesitant to cheat. On the other hand, if I see you're trying to prevent cheating then I feel almost obliged to defeat the measures you thought could contain me.
    • gicadin 4y ago
      This only works when no one cheats. When someone cheats easily and gets ahead with no consequence, i doubt "honor" is quite as powerful.
• nopenopenopeno 4y ago
  >For the most part, as expected, the world turns around just fine That is total projection. The consequences of such things cannot even be estimated in such a short span of time. In any case, there is no shortage of studies showing recent massive shifts in quality of education in certain major western societies. Even if you were making the fallacious presumption that what has been will be, you should then presume change over stability.
  • paulcole 4y ago
    > there is no shortage of studies showing recent massive shifts in quality of education in certain major western societies Can you share 1 study and name 1 major western society you’re referring to?
    • scythe 4y ago
      https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38 >For 13-year-olds, the average score was lower in 2020 than in 2012 (260 vs. 263), marking the first time reading scores for this age group declined between assessments. >Meanwhile, the average mathematics score for 13-year-olds was lower in 2020 than in 2012 (280 vs. 285), marking the first time mathematics scores for this age group declined between assessments. Not huge, but noticeable.
• maxerickson 4y ago
  Being all defeatist isn't really a great response when people go chickenshit. The students being treated like crap isn't just a rounding error here.
• yashap 4y ago
  Nailed it. Likewise, Enterprise customers don’t demand SOC-2 and similar certifications from their vendors because they actually think that will be effective in stopping data leaks, it’s just so they can say “reasonable measure were taken to select a secure vendor.” Any large organization, private or public, is full of checkboxes and CYA. Test proctor software is just another example.
• acchow 4y ago
  This is basically why management consulting exists too, right?
• f0e4c2f7 4y ago
  This is a really good point that I've never heard said exactly this way. I paticuarly like the framing of responsibility. In modern societies we have pretty fine grained tools for chopping up risk, selling it, trading it, via financial instruments or insurance. In fact when you use these tools sometimes the goal is to vanish the risk all together (which as a result sometimes creates counter-party risk). Likewise we have a whole cottage industry of chopping up and trading responsibility with very similar mappings to risk. In fact in many ways responsibility is treated more or less like risk itself. How many problems today though could you follow the thread back to people creating the responsibility equivalent of CDOs.
• WalterBright 4y ago
  > can offload the responsibilities related to any cheating Maybe we can reframe the issue. Why is it the administration's problem? When I went to college, I went there to learn engineering. I didn't really care about the degree. I was paying to have the prof teach me, not check me for cheating. Me, I'd make no effort to detect cheaters. If they want to pay $$$$$ to attend university, not bother doing any work, and cheat, I'll take their money. Make it like guitar lessons. People pay to learn how to play. There's just no percentage in cheating, because you can't play. The cheaters will see their jobs outsourced, and my salary will be higher. P.S. In college, lots of students were always doing engineering projects on their own and with their own money. For example, a couple of EEs designed and built a pirate radio station. I wanted to learn how to do that stuff. Cheating is just no fun. And if you don't learn anything, the other students will notice that, and will have nothing but contempt for you.
  • mijowi 4y ago
    You don’t actually need to know most of a college curriculum to perform well in most jobs. For a lot of jobs the degree is just to get hired, or even just to get an interview. I think that is the problem. For example, a doctor doesn’t need to know history very well to be a good doctor. Yet it’s probably part of the undergrad curriculum. So cheating on the test has no consequences if they don’t get caught. Additionally a lot of jobs are really taught via OJT, and whatever was learned from a degree is mostly unused.
    • WalterBright 4y ago
      Some good points. > whatever was learned from a degree is mostly unused. What a good engineering curriculum does is teach you how to think, which transcends specific skills. It reshapes your brain.
  • robotresearcher 4y ago
    I understand that point of view. However, the non-cheating, conscientious students are often very angry with professors and administrators that take this approach. Your best customers feel like their earned credentials are devalued. They are competing with the cheaters for their first job after graduation. Maybe their investment will pay off in the long run, but they are pissed off right now. Suppressing cheating is work on behalf of the good faith students. Miserable work it is.