EduTech Spyware Is Still Spyware: Proctorio Edition | Hacker News Reader

EduTech Spyware Is Still Spyware: Proctorio Edition

soatok.blog

26 pointssome_furry9 comments

I don't agree with the use of such invasive software, but there's some context to the discussions that I think is important.

> If you want to ensure the integrity of students’ education, try teaching them about consent and ethical computing.

Cheating in schools is _rampant_ (1), and it has little to do with teaching students ethics. It's just something that's going to happen. And kids cheat for all sorts of reasons. Some do it for better grades. Some do it for fun. Some are otherwise great performers, but do it because they're lazy.

Many of these students are enabled by their parents/guardians. Hell, some of these kids have their guardians explicitly help them cheat.

It's hard enough to control academic dishonesty in-person. But wide spread online learning has made the problem an order of magnitude worse. Teachers that want to address it are left with precious few options.

So it's no wonder to me that educators are turning to things like Proctorio, even if I don't agree with that decision. The article's points about privacy and disproportional harm to disadvantaged students is spot on. I just felt that it elided what a huge problem cheating itself is.

(1) Source: Several teacher friends.

To the extent that tests claim to be simulations of real-world performance, is the expectation that students (future employees) will be subject to similar surveillance? If not, how can remote testers learn from performance evaluations for remote workers?

How do you even try to tell kids to behave ethically and not cheat when the head of state is a grifter, liar, serial cheater?

Kids learn by observing not through indoctrination and the cognitive dissonance between the pledge of allegiance and the real world cant be integrated unless one turns to the gospel of Q

I appreciate your earnest feedback here.

Ultimately, I think you're (and, by extension, your teacher friends) are presupposing the frame.

Why do we try to educate students within a framework where cheating has any practical meaning?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/nyregion/mastery-based-le...

I've written about related topics in longer form: https://soatok.blog/2020/08/21/a-few-missing-lessons-from-am...

If teachers are so ready to call students cheating a problem that needs to be solved, why don't we look closely at what students' and parents' incentives are to cheat... and then remove those incentives?

After all, isn't the goal of the education system to... educate? Not score them based on their utility to their future corporate masters (which is, in and of itself, classist and often racist)?

(To be clear, I'm not blaming you or your teacher friends for the systemic problems of education. I realize that decision was made far above them in the government food chain. Instead, I'm proposing that there's a different problem to solve than students cheating.)

Maybe this isn't the right time to suggest fundamental changes (since we're all trying to cope with a pandemic every day and it's hella stressful), but I think we need to really think about how we're trying to educate our youth.

One problem is lack of imagination into alternative systems. An established mechanism is hard to challenge, even when bad.

Something to drive the point home: companies could have culturally developed in the same way as schools.

Managers and bosses could continuously maintain grades on report performance. And they would forbid developers from looking up information on Stack Overflow because that is cheating. But since some employees do it, they could have added that same spyware to ensure they don’t do it.

The reason why this would be culturally wrong, is the same reason that it is currently wrong in schools.

Heisenberg would not be impressed with the observers of these human experiments. How about lawyers?

From https://twitter.com/legendariee16/status/1304098649186742273 (original uses caps)

> YOU have to have well lit room. You cannot take test in the dark. SIT up. IF I only see your eyes then that is a violation of the testing protocol. YOU HAVE to video record. It clearly states in the syllabus, no video, you get 0.

> NO HEAD COVERING FOR BOTH MALES AND FEMALES. THIS MEANS NO WHAT I CALL SKULL CAPS AND REGULAR CAPS.

> A LOT OF HEAD AND EYE MOVEMENTS FOR A SHORT TIME PERIOD. A STUDENT FOR 6 MINUTES HAD 776 HEAD AND EYE MOVEMENTS. ANOTHER STUDENT HAD 624 EYE AND HEAD MOVEMENTS WITHIN 8 MINUTES.

> ... I TALKED TO McGRAW-HILL AND THEY SAID A LOT OF NEGATIVE BEHAVIOR WAS TAKING PLACE.

I'm an OMSCS student, and I hear rants about proctoring software all the times.

Although security is important, and I agree with that, it seems to me that the article misses the point.

Typically such software is installed on the student's workstation before taking an exam, and removed afterwards. I've never heard about such software leaving traces or spy components on a student's workstation. It's a momentary suspension of privacy in exchange for an improved reliability of the test the student is taking.

I don't think an online degree like the one I'm taking would be considered equally interesting - a "real" degree - without proctoring.

And, consider the alternatives: a testing center. For some certifications or exams, you need to physically go to a place where you take the test. Beyond the public health implications with the COVID-19 pandemis, it's far less convenient: testing centers usually employ old and shitty computers, they're noisy and sometimes uncomfortable (too hot, chairs are small, desks are small...).

What's better?

I think you are now talking about an even worse solution (untrusted desktop apps) than the one described in the article (sandboxed browser extension).

OMSCS doesn't use proctortrack anymore, for the records. It uses honorlock.

But that doesn't change my POV one iota. Proctortrack was an app which was used during exams, and uninstalled afterwards.

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