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Online Colleges Could Spy On Students – By Law
skeazer writes "Tucked away in a 1,200-page bill now in Congress is a small paragraph that could lead distance-education institutions to require spy cameras in their students' homes. It sounds Orwellian, but the paragraph — part of legislation renewing the Higher Education Act — is all but assured of becoming law by the fall. No one in Congress objects to it."
Basically, this is talking about requiring webcams or biometric devices when you take an online exam. Whether or not that's a good idea, it hardly qualifies as "Orwellian". Timothy and skeazer seem to think this is going to involve 24/7 cameras in your bedroom or something like that.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
In all seriousness, isn't this why we have proctors, so that someone can watch you while you perform tasks required for your grade?
Simple answer: cost. I work at a community college, and although we do have an academic testing centre -- the priority is to provide an alternate testing environment for students with disabilities. The secondary priority is students who miss tests for legitimate reasons (medical, weather, etc.).
There simply isn't capacity to allow every student in every online course to come onto campus to complete their assessments. It isn't built into the costing/tuition.
For any "online" institution I've known, the tests need to be done at an approved institute under supervision, and after presenting proper ID, etc.
You might be able to fob off assignments on somebody else, but in a real school institution you could do this anyhow after classes.
For any "online" institution I've known, the tests need to be done at an approved institute under supervision, and after presenting proper ID, etc.
Well, that's the thing... they're trying to break that restriction.
Called Securexam Remote Proctor, it's about the size of a large paperweight and plugs into a standard port on a home computer. The pedestal includes a groove for scanning fingerprints, a tiny microphone, and a camera. The sphere reflects a 360-degree view around the test taker, which the camera picks up.
Nevermind proctoring, how about using this for round-table podcasts? Instead of a multi-camera shoot, put this on the table in front of everyone and do your cuts to who is talking all in post.
Students pay $150 for the device.
Losing the fingerprint scanner would drop the price a bit, and audio for each panelist could still be recorded using a multi-track recorder. But you may need HD resolution for capture in order to get SD-quality shots for editing, which you don't need for simple monitoring.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
"Won't that day of reckoning come when you show up to your first job and the boss asks you to modify a Java program and you give him a blank stare?"
No, when it get known that universities are putting out students that can't do the job, they are penalized for this.
Students don't sign up for the universities -- they would if they could because they think it is an easy degree, but parents generally pay the bills and they research this stuff.
Beyond this, a lot of post-graduation research goes into assessing a program. How much is the average student making? How quickly do they find jobs? Are they still holding a job in their field at 1 year, 5 years, 10 years?
The gov't gets involved because they back student loans. Lots of defaults on student loans. If a university has a default rate of say 50% (I'm making up this number), they stop getting loans sent to them. A good friend wanted to go to an experimental psychological program this fall -- only to find that he can't get a loan. Not going to happen.
My day job is in student testing...I get to hear all of this every day...we get all the blame if students are doing poorly, but never any of the credit. I don't like what the law is doing, but it is a start. It is the start of accountability. Beyond that, I really don't think anyone lives anywhere that is all that inconvenient to get to some place that can proctor an exam with the exception of those whom are disabled. Heck, I gave a few exams with a web cam for a student in Iraq this year (I also had a ranking officer present to make certain that what I couldn't see was still legit!)
So lots of reasons for the gov't to get involved. As a tax payer, I hope they are only propping up universities that are churning out students that are qualified...and you should expect the same.
They won't.
Students with dialup will either have to upgrade the connection or come to the college to do the exam if better connection is unavailable in their area.
That is one of the reasons my college is still against implementing some kind of a video link during a test.
It is not connection heavy just on the student - imagine maintaining couple of thousands of simultaneous video links with resolution high enough to spot possible cheat sheets?
Like... 4pt text printed cheat sheets stickers on your monitor.
There is a MUCH simpler solution that they implement.
Online tests that can be done from home constitute only a part of the grade. For those to be valid - you have to pass the final exam AT the college.
Many exams require you to write a seminary work and later "defend it" in person in front of the professor.
Here - students are the ones demanding something like that since some of us (like me) have to travel for 6 hours to get to an exam.
Which can be quite ironic when some of your tests take around 20-30 minutes.
Get up at 3 to catch a 5 AM bus, 6 hours one way, do a test, wait for the next bus home, 6 hours back.
Roads here suck. No highway. We might get one in about 10 years or so...
There is also a simple solution to that problem too.
Since most of the tests are done by logging into the college's system with your ID and password - it could be also done over the internet.
Like I said... we do it for the "lesser" tests. Only reason we are not allowed to do that for the final tests is cheating.
Now... my town has a university as well... A good one... only not with such a study program.
Why my college can't or won't contact the faculty of the university here and arrange for us to take the exam from the facilities of the university here (despite students suggesting and demanding that for years now), under the supervision of the local staff - well... I'd rather think its the old incompetence again instead of malice and money.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
>Everyone and his uncle demands to know my mother's maiden name.
This is culturally insensitive also. It is quite common for one's name and one's mother's maiden name to be the same name.
It's taken for granted as an assumption in the question, that you had married parents, and that your mother changed her name to your father's name, and that your parents gave you your father's name.
Not everybody does that.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.