Comment by necovek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by necovek | Hacker News Reader

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Which does not make tracking everyone a solution to the problem of cheating in exams.

Higher level education is largely voluntary, and it's up to the person taking it up to decide what they gain from it. If they are only in it for a diploma, they'd get there one way or another.

To me, focusing on finding "cheaters" makes education a competition. I never felt cheaters got anything over me in my studies, and I never felt like I've got a lesser grade because of them. Does that happen in cases where you've seen "exam-sitting-for-hire" in action?

Even if you normalize your grading scale based on the students taking the exam right then, if your claim that "most students are honest" is true (and I believe it is), that should not affect any non-cheater significantly (unless you've got a small, non-representative group, but then normalizing grades is unfair to begin with).

So my question is: who are we trying to solve the problem for? What is the expected outcome, knowing that there will always be people who "cheat" their way through life too?

While I despise software like this and how high-stakes and petty it can be, keep in mind that it's in the institution's interests to not only provide a quality education, but to defend the value of their brand.

You might have worked very hard for a diploma from University X, but if it was found that University X was handing out diplomas like candy to other students that were not as academically rigorous, it weakens the value of your diploma.

It's not even the value of their brand - it's the value of all students' diplomas

Universities don't give a shit about that. And they shouldn't. A lot of diplomas are worthless, but that doesn't make the education worthless.

Requiring distopian spyware doesn’t weaken your brand. It destroys it. For most of history, reputable universities built their brand just fine without any software at all.

Totally agree. I personally chose not to go to college (I'm graduating HS this year) because of things like Proctorio and Zoom becoming more common.

Honestly, it's fine to not choose higher education but IMHO use of surveillance methods should affect where you apply, not whether you apply.

It’s possible that some institutions are dictating blanket use of software, but where I am studying that’s not the case.

It’s basically up to the instructor on how to run the class.

Some require proctorio, some are on Zoom with lots of TAs to watch the screen, some issue an exam on your own time where the browser monitors what you do / visit, and others just offer take home projects.

No but it's very reasonable to wait a year before applying so that you don't pay out the nose for zoom classes (there are things like socialization and connections that make a super expensive college worth it)

Unless every other university also implements it, then it’s just par for the course

For most of history, in-person exams were possible.

Yes. This is a problem for universities to solve, with the money they get from constantly expanding tuitions. This is one of many places in which a problem is cheap to "solve" if you are ok being racist/ablist/generally not adapting the variations in your customer base.

Handing over the solution for the problem to a software company shouldn't be an accountability shield for the Universities. Impacted students should sue the universities, and then they should sue the software company.

The role of universities is to provide education not to police students. People put in place reasonable means to detect cheating (proctorio isn't) and then it's students responsibility to learn. They're adults and should value what they get. If they don't, they're missing an opportunity.

Ideally though, I've worked very hard to get certain knowledge. Diploma is a nice side-effect that's supposed to be a shorthand proof of it, but most companies in eg. software engineering would test candidates anyway, which is where knowledge helps, a degree, not so much.

When your institution's reputation is at risk, you want to prevent it. Honest students don't get a lesser grade; that's not the problem. If the cheaters want to cheat their way through life, that's their problem. My problem is to make sure the rest of my students end up with a well-respected degree. I.e. the problem is being solved for the honest students, the ones I want to spend my time on.

In many courses, the grades are curved, so cheaters might really make the grades of honest students worse.

While I am against these surveillance software, making sure that tests are fair is very hard, especially since everything is online now thanks to COVID.

Not in my experience. I don't think there are enough cheaters to shift the curve (the noise from year to year is much more significant), and despite what you'd expect, the people hired to do others' assessments aren't necessarily very good at it!

A top 10 MBA program my partner went through had several people cheating in the program. I'll give you some anecdotal notes. Some cheaters get discovered and "outed" (esp those the group didn't like) when they brag during parties, some never gave up enough evidence to make an accusation official, others would talk about hiring CPAs for accounting exams/projects. Many in the class were concerned on whether normal study groups counted as cheating, as defined by the honor code!

A sibling program at the university exposed a cheating ring of ~15-20 people, and I think many were surprised that the result was to simply zero their grades for that class instead of more severe action.

/e I mention incidents and sizes since these programs are not thousands of students but tens or hundreds.

What kind of an MBA program is it where students worry if normal study groups are ok?

It sounds like the definition of cheating was very broad there.

Depends on you, the professor, the college, and the rules as to how you might interpret "individual" homework assignments and study "groups", particularly if you're led to believe you'll get removed from the program for transgressing. This particular issue was fleshed out quickly (and sanely, imo) but it did contribute to why the group didn't like one particular individual. Not everyone in the program is there to network and build trust!

I switched to online exams this year, no zoom, no special software, no checks at all. Grades were as usual. A couple of students cheated and were detected, all the others were very honest to the point that I wouldn't be myself if I were in their place. It can work, but you need to expect people to look up things.

One of my colleagues had an online exam. The exam was uploaded to chegg within minutes, by multiple people. Unfortunately, the tests were personalized, so the people could be identified.

I think cheating is quite common in the undergrad years, but gets less later.

How did you get access to Chegg? I thought of buying a subscription to check for cheaters, but there were complaints on the net about Chegg charging credit cards on canceled accounts.

I didn't, my colleague did. Not sure how. He asked them to took down the tests, and they did. Withing a couple of days though. Answers to questions are up within minutes!

That's what I meant with "normalized grades": I wasn't familiar with the term "curved grades", but I covered that point with why I don't think that's a problem.

> I.e. the problem is being solved for the honest students, the ones I want to spend my time on.

As the original commenter notes, here the problem is being solved for "well-behaved" students, in a way which is easy enough for dishonest students to bypass and present themselves as well-behaved.

I get what you are getting at, but I'd rephrase it as "cheaters should remain a minority". When we phrase it like that, a number of other solutions might pop up to discourage cheaters from enrolling in the first place (eg. lots of custom projects through which students learn anyway, potentially invalidating the need for a final exam too).

And suddenly, privacy invasion gets off the table quickly (as soon as you are not aiming for 100% non-cheaters, the cost becomes obviously too high for everybody else).

As far as reputation, I'd rather see schools focus on the successful students, which is somewhat done with all those research-paper-grading systems (not a perfect system by any means because of gamification, but at least idea in the right direction), but mostly done with bragging about scientific break-throughts to come out of their students and staff.

Still, what is the purpose of a reputation or "well-respected degree"? The goal should be knowledge and applicability of that knowledge to actual problems in life (known as "jobs"): it's not like anyone accepts any graduate without interviewing them first, which is to say that nobody trusts any school to have done a proper job of evaluating them. Most of those schools don't trust themselves, so they hold interviews for post-graduate studies too! :D

Nobody looks at the "lemons" coming out of a school to consider it a bad school (I am sure you can find plenty from "top" universities too), but on the successful ones. Do the successful ones change with more cheaters at all? (Sure, there is a turning point, but catching all of them is meaningless)

Well, people aren't born cheaters or not, they choose to cheat as a result of circumstances [1]. Opportunity is one factor. Another is perceived unfairness about what they're asked to do. Our institution becomes better as our students do, when they don't feel the need to cheat. Avoiding opportunities to cheat and unfairness incentives is key to doing that. Invigilation software, the same test for online students as local students, and plenty of online tutor help are three approaches we're using for remote assessments. A small, brief reduction in privacy comparable to their online tutorials is proving perfectly acceptable to students. Unfortunately custom projects and the like won't work for teaching fundamental maths skills.

[1] There's quite a bit of research on this. Bretag is a key author.

Thanks for the references! I am simplifying a bit to get my point across: I am well aware that nobody is a born cheater, and that the fear of getting caught stops many from cheating too.

> Unfortunately custom projects and the like won't work for teaching fundamental maths skills.

I am not sure I agree. One of the projects I did for my projective geometry class was to do an inverse of a projected drawing (in AutoCAD) and save a 3D .obj file. In differential equations course, I was given a project to prove a theorem that is generally missing from the school books (or usually given as an exercise). You can also let people devise proofs in a closed system of axioms and a few theorems.

It is a hard and different type of work, but I am certain you can both teach and get to know students with theoretical math projects. If they get someone else to do it for them, yet they are able to present it in front of the class (online) convincingly, they have likely understood the concepts, which is what teaching is all about.

Realistically, if all existing diplomas were invalidated and the entire system of diploma-granting were to be stripped away from educational institutions, an equivalent would quickly be re-established by the free market - and it would probably resemble Proctorio.

> So my question is: who are we trying to solve the problem for? What is the expected outcome, knowing that there will always be people who "cheat" their way through life too?

For one thing, all the harm that incompetent professionals can cause - and in a moddern society, the scope of that is not inconsiderable - in fact, Proctorio is probably an example.

Let's not lose focus on the real problem here, which is Proctorio being an aggressive vendor of garbage.

Is there a correlation between having a degree and competence? Because my experience is that there very much isn't.

I would go so far as to say that the information age has made educational material so widely and easily available that the only value universities provide is signaling and wealth/class filtering.

Could engineers that cheated their way through college have developed microprocessors? Built bridges and skyscrapers? Achieved space travel?

Perhaps there is value in knowing someone has been able to work in a team setting and complete given tasks.

They certainly could. For instance, many of the still surviving bridges in Europe were built way before university degrees in architecture. I'll consider them cheaters because they didn't even attend a University! ;)

But there is another way to look at it: can all non-cheating students build bridges, design microprocessors or design rockets? I can give you an affirmative no.

> if all existing diplomas were invalidated and the entire system of diploma-granting were to be stripped away from educational institutions, an equivalent would quickly be re-established by the free market - and it would probably resemble Proctorio.

coming soon to a tech interview near you.

  Higher level education is largely voluntary, and it's up to
  the person taking it up to decide what they gain from it. 
  If they are only in it for a diploma, they'd get there one 
  way or another.

Employers definitely use grades as a mechanism to determine who gets an internship or a full time position upon graduation, especially in the legal industry. The idea that cheaters aren't a big deal breaks down once grades have real world consequences.

I've never once been asked about my grades, nor asked to provide proof of my graduation in getting a software engineering job.

Then again, I have a hard time envisioning what would someone cheat about in a legal exam, other than not memorizing the things, but that's to me just a signal that the content is badly presented (instead, put students in a pretend courtroom in a case that covers the study material, and they'll have to learn it, and learn to apply it).

But even if we accept it as so, it is not an argument to be so vigilant in catching cheaters majoring in other subjects.

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