Student Surveillance Vendor Proctorio Files SLAPP Lawsuit to Silence a Critic
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Add in that faculty have lazily started to just use the flags as 'you cheated' without reviewing them meaningfully. I tried it once, one student, for no discernable reason, generated over 200 flags.
These software are useless, not because they don't have their place but because they people implementing them are trying to solve their own fear rather than a meaningful problem in a meaningful way. Tests are minimally useful as an educational assessment to begin with. Some, like licensing exams, sure fine I'll give you some grace there. But if you are going to use the tool...you need to make at least a minimal effort to use the tool well. If you don't you make the tool useless. That lack of give a damn by users is driving a lack of give a damn by vendors.
Imagine, students would be asked to appear in the nude to write the exams and undergo invasive checks to prove that they haven't got any miniature transmission devices hidden on their body. Would they just agree to this as well? Would the faculty that's tasked to check the students' orifices play along happily?
I wonder what a degree from an institution that treats students (and faculty forced to use this) with such a level of contempt, treats them as a priori cheaters and crooks instead of teaching them honor and responsibility, is actually worth? The name "honorlock" alone is beyond ridiculous for obvious reasons.
In my days (at one of the Ivies), admittedly a long time ago, I seem to remember that we had to complete a lot of coursework at home and most if not all our exams were open-book. I even remember a test or two where we could bring all our notes from class (not that it did you much good at all, the skills they asked for just weren't in the notes). Not one exam was proctored in that sense, I think, although I remember often longing for one as I imagined them to be much easier: Just regurgitate some knowledge onto the page and go home. No days and weeks refining your arguments and making a case for yourself.
Professors also always knew if someone hadn't done all the work by himself. I remember a girl breaking out in tears during a presentation because she couldn't explain the meaning of a rather boastful technical term she had used in context (and apparently just copied from somewhere).
I think, if I had been asked to install this kind of malware on my PC back then so that some incompetent perv could watch me answering stupid multiple choice questions, I would've laughed in their faces and just quit then and there (I did eventually quit anyway but that's because the offer was just too enticing). Maybe I would've set up an elaborate sound stage with green screen etc. and spliced it into the camera feed to fool the proctors first before turning on some holograms or dirty movies, I don't know (this stuff wasn't so advanced and readily available in those days).
The point is, these setups can always be fooled. Always. You should therefore create an environment where you don't need them. Where people are proud of the work they do themselves, where the skills taught and asked aren't "replayed" in a manner that needs such proctoring, and where people adhere to an honor code that doesn't require them to cheat. If you can't teach people that nowadays, then what are you good for?
How broken must the current educational system be that a) such software exists and is widely used and b) its vendors aren't simply laughed out of the room straight away and c) both students and faculty don't complain at least as loudly about that stuff as they complain about certain other things...
And the root problem is that some things cannot and should not be automated. There definitely is a need - but the software itself is racist, sexist, and more because it is badly trained with data whose origins are racist and sexist... But the key is that 'its software so it doesnt have a bias and therefore we trust it'.
And what do we get when we have this software subjected against us? We end up with black and darker skin people not being identified, we end up with software that discriminates against those who wear face coverings, and more... And when those maleficent softwares 'flag' people, the bias is that they have no bias and are to be completely trusted. And then the professors fall in line.
Whats the solution here? Well, it's ugly. Most universities are just paths to a degree for a better job - and those uni's know that. People demand a return on investment and will cheat so they don't lose their money. So cheating will happen. But the ProctorAI and ilk are setting themselves up for company-breaking lawsuits. And until we have enough people vaccinated, in-person is going to be pretty discouraged (for good reason!).
My theory: Since the early 1970's the number of college administrators has gone up radically. Here is one example but it seems to be the same everywhere[0]. All things being equal one can assume that more administrators = more policy, more policy = more bad policy. As organizations grow they often turn inward and focus on their own propagation more so than their original mandate. That tends to end up in a scenario that, the bad policy that inevitably results from policy creation is defended as arguing against it is seen as a attack on the organization itself. A organization like that is calcified, it's members stop asking questions as they have seen others that have been punished for that insolence and they simply tow the line in order to make it out the other end (graduation or retirement respectively).
[0]https://capitolweekly.net/tuition-uc-administrators-tripled-...
From the faculty perspective: lack of time to do anything else. Writing good test questions (questions that require synthesis of multiple topics and not just regurgitation) is hard, takes a lot of time, and may not even be possible in some introductory classes. Looking for cheaters after the fact is time consuming, too. I have to pay for a Chegg account out of my own pocket, and then keep it open whenever I do my grading, to look for solutions to my own questions.
That said, I steadfastly refuse to use Lockdown or Protorio or any of the other "solutions" my school offers; the downsides are simply too great. If I end up passing a few people who cheated their way to an A, that's a price I'm willing to pay.
I also make clear that students cheating hurts other students, not me. Their degree is worth less if we graduate cheaters, my job isn't gonna change.
Suppose you're a 3rd year student, and you're asked to do this. You've probably already spent at least ~20K and 2 years of your life on your degree so far (if not more). At that point, it's a hard sell to ask them to just quit at that point and throw away the time and money invested. Might as well just suck it up and deal with some spying for the next year.
Right! All my tests are open notes, open book, use real data, use measurements taken from oneself (its biomedical engineering statistics)...its not that you can't cheat its that cheating is harder than learning. I basically tell them as much and the students seem to appreciate it. I always have one or two numpties a year, and they get smacked, learn a lesson (or don't) and I move on with my life.
Cheating being an effective approach to a class is more of an indictment of the class than the student in my eyes.
procto- , proct-
Anus; (more frequently) rectum; Compare: recto-.
[G. prōktos]
Personally I think the root of the problem is how much value is placed on the outcome of exams. Apparently the deal is that companies, in addition to their own invasive and broken interview methodologies, want proof from extremely expensive external institutions that you can cram a lot of information and retain it for at least one day.
Maybe we should switch to the old Chinese system where you had to write a nice poem and then were automatically qualified to do pretty much anything.
Not only in school or at university these days. Certainly seems to pervade large swaths of society and public opinion, that approach.
I completely agree with you that any form of exam in which such a system would even theoretically add any value is broken, meaningless and should not be used in the first place.
Ironically, nowadays Chinese schools (don't know about unis) are also among those who employ extremely invasive methods against cheating. Competitiveness for coveted spots at some institutions is orders of magnitudes higher than in the west, the tests are all completely standardized and students have shown remarkable inventiveness in finding ways to cheat.
Don't say: "Undress to impress & show your proctos to your proctor."
Say rather:
The cloakroom pegs are empty now, /
And locked the classroom door, /
The hollow desks are lined with dust, /
The students here no more.
They sit at home, get perved upon /
by proctors via cam. /
I raise my glass and praise the fact /
At school I no more am.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proctor
> In the United States and some other countries, the word "proctor" is frequently used to describe someone who oversees an examination (i.e. a supervisor or invigilator) or dormitory.
And it's a difficult situation to be in because on the one hand you feel a moral imperative to say something but on the other you just want to pass the class. I have no idea how effective it was when students could just use their phone to look things up.
It doesn't have to be this way. I especially like UC Berkeley's guidelines for remote exams[0], some of which have been followed by other professors. e.g. if you limit submission time it's going to be near impossible to learn how to convert a state machine into a synchronous logical circuit and perform it within 15 minutes (plus other questions).
[0] https://teaching.berkeley.edu/best-practices-remote-examinat...
You speak in riddles.
We implemented similar recommendations at the start of Covid when our university got closed and they slow down the cheating process but it's not enough to stop students fully when they're coordinating over facebook. I'm hoping more strategies come out of the lockdown.
I have to use LockDown + Webcam for my physics exams, which are very heavy on solving equations on your own paper. It works mostly fine until it notices that I'm looking at the paper, then slaps a blue splash page over my screen saying "hey we can't see your face you filthy cheater, show us your face." Happened at least 10 times on one exam.
With webcam exams I feel almost obligated to find a private space to take it outside of my room because you're not 'supposed' to have anything in the background of your video and that would be an unfair imposition on my roommate since he has to deal with the same crap. Fortunately my residence hall has study rooms I can use.
Everyone hates LockDown. When I just had one laptop (a MacBook), there was a 50% chance it would lock up the entire laptop after launching the software, requiring a hard reset. I currently run it in a separate user account on a separate (Windows) machine. I have an iPad, and I'm honestly 100% ok running it on there but turns out some professors disable the iPad app for no reason and sometimes it just doesn't work.
I definitely appreciate the exam guidelines you posted and agree with them. Funny enough, that physics class I mentioned also does the "set time exams" where everyone starts at 4pm. You're entirely SOL if you can't procure a working laptop that will comply with LockDown if yours isn't working.
Fortunately not all instructors use LockDown here, some ask you to join a Zoom call while you're taking the exam (which I think is mostly fair) and some just post the exam as a regular Canvas quiz with varying security settings.
Personally, I think the only form of "cheating" that should be actively seeked out is that students work alone and are submitting their own exam (that is, I should not be paying someone else to take my exam). There are few situations in which you do not have access to the internet and exams should honestly be written in such a way that internet access shouldn't completely break them.
That's one of the reasons I'm not opposed to app stores and "closed garden" ecosystems.
Want to run as root? Denied. Want to install your special snowflake driver? Nope. Kill processes? Never. Get a list of other running processes not started by your app? Absolutely not.
Don't want to comply? Roll your own devices.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jul/01/ceo-o...
There's an inherent irony in this that presumably he didn't realise at the time he made those posts...
Actions speak louder than corporate mouthpiece words. Companies that care about privacy don't do this sort of thing, and don't build privacy infringing products.
Like "sure it does" does.
How many professors and/or Proctorio employees have masturbated to images of students captured by this software? Do students with large breasts or cleavage showing have their videos reviewed more frequently?
This whole system is creepy as fuck.
Are their third party contractors who have access to image data in jurisdictions where US courts can compel them to delete nude images that were sent to them by Proctorio?