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Preventing Networked Gizmo Use During Exams?
bcrowell writes "I'm a college physics professor. My students all want to use calculators during exams, and some of them whose native language isn't English also want to use electronic dictionaries. I had a Korean student who was upset and dropped the course when I told her she couldn't use her iPod during an exam — she said she used it as a dictionary. It gets tough for me to distinguish networked devices (iPhone? iTouch?) from non-networked ones (calculator? electronic dictionary? iPod?). I give open-notes exams, so it's not memory that's an issue, it's networking. Currently our classrooms have poor wireless receptivity (no Wi-Fi, possible cell, depending on your carrier), but as of spring 2011 we will have Wi-Fi everywhere. What's the best way to handle this? I'd prefer not to make them all buy the same overpriced graphing calculator. I'm thinking of buying 30 el-cheapo four-function calculators out of my pocket, but I'm afraid that less-adaptable students will be unable to handle the switch from the calculator they know to an unfamiliar (but simpler) one."
Well, I am not sure that this is the right approach but there seems to be plenty of jamming devices around that you could use during exams. Just put some signs near your exam room like "jamming devices at work" so everybody know that they have to go a little farther away in order to get connectivity and calibrate your jamming device appropriately so you do not jam the whole campus .. ;-)
http://www.netline.co.il/page/cell_phone_jammer.aspx
http://www.jammer-store.com/
http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info.php/pName/wifi-bluetooth-wireless-video-jammer-portable-wireless-block/
http://www.amazon.ca/Power-Portable-Signal-Jammer-Phone/dp/B003YFSKUU
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Make each test distinct, choose a throwaway question that you know there are online resources to utilize that would answer it.
Have the network operations guys gather proxy info during the exam period. Track anybody who connects to that site (or one
of it's ilk) and match it to their distinct question. Give them an F no questions asked and refer to the ethics board for cheating.
You don't have to beat the technology, you just have to catch them when they do what they know is wrong.
You can make WiFi unusable, however. Or you could alter the classroom so RF cannot enter through the walls or ceiling. And turn off the wireless AP in the room during exam time.
I suppose convincing the university to alter the classroom in this manner could be difficult, but they could also see the value in having some exam rooms that are essentially faraday cages
Depending on what level of physics you teach, 99% of students should already have a TI-83 or TI-89. Just as common as a pencil. But I'm of the engineer variety in the USA. Besides, math is a universal language (and on that note, if they can't understand the common spoken language that they've elected for... too bad). If they are not capable of understanding constants and universally applicable equations... they will fail anyways. However, at least at my university, I've yet to take a class where cellular or anything non-calculator allowed at all. You take out a cell phone or anything that's not a calculator and your booted out of the class. In many of the test questions in physics that I've taken, it's not a big stretch to deduce what the question is just based on a few key words and defined variables.
I was just on the other side of this situation a few years ago as a student. I worried that some other students were getting unfair advantages because of their devices. I would recommend getting some generic cheap calculators for the exam or doing away with the need for calculators at all. Consider the physics GRE doesn't allow calculators. As for translation devices it is only fair to let students use them, but you may want to work with some university accessibility office to find appropriate devices and restrict the rest. Of course you have to lay all of this out on the first day of class and remind students repeatedly before the exams.
When I took undergraduate physics, there were no calculators allowed... there were no numbers on the exams. Problems were like "If you throw a rock horizontally off a bridge at (v) m/s and it hits the ground after (t) seconds, how far away from the base of the bridge did the rock hit the ground, and how tall is the bridge?" And then the student has to understand that this problem requires the use of the projectile motion equations, and they to know what the question is actually asking and solve for it:
w = v t
h = g t^2
One particularly sadistic (but awesome) professor asked a question like this "Suppose you're stuck in the middle of a frozen pond with a perfectly smooth (frictionless) surface. Propose a way to escape the pond." My (correctly marked) proposal was throw away a shoe. Of course, I could show equations for conservation of momentum, but the point was to see if students understood what it meant to be a frictionless surface and to simply be aware of conservation of momentum.
The way I handle this is putting a lot of problems on the exam. It makes the average score tend to be low (although there are always a few percent that get them all right). But, it spreads out the remainder. I curve the exam to compensate for that.
Students that try to cheat by digging up answers or asking friends will simply run out of time and score very poorly. It is inefficient to cheat.
.
Absolutely. I attended a technical college that ran the exams on an Honor System. Most exams were open-book. Professors were not allowed in the classroom once the exam began. The exams were not about how much you could memorize, but how much you understood.
Basically, just make the test in a way that looking something up on the internet won't do any good. No need to jam/disable the wireless signal or restrict use of electronic devices to specific models.
I had an instructor who gave tests online and made it very difficult to cheat. For vocabulary, she either gave the definition or a contextual example, which wasn't something someone can just look up in Google. For extended response questions, I hear it is pretty easy to catch students who cheated after the fact; their work is inconsistent with what they submitted in the past and sometimes there are clues you can use to your advantage. For example, I had a Spanish teacher in high school who would call out students who used grammar structures not yet covered (such as past-subjunctive tense) in their take-home papers, a sign that someone else wrote the paper for them. He would politely ask the student a few questions about the grammar used in their paper. If they were able to explain "normally when referring to multiple subjects, you combine the last two with the conjunction 'y', but if the first letter of the word immediately following it is 'i' or 'y', you change 'y' to 'e'," but if they clearly didn't understand why it was used in their paper, it was a sign they cheated, and those students couldn't usually explain anything in their paper (in English).
Needless to say, don't make multiple choice tests identical, and if you proctor an exam at multiple times don't give the same version. If you think they're getting answers from an unethical "tutor", then I'm not really sure what you could do but I'd would be willing to bet there isn't a lot of "reasonable expectation to privacy" if you look over their shoulder for instant messages as long as you don't get the IT department to route their traffic through a squid proxy or something.
I'm late to this party, but: http://honorcode.stanford.edu/
On Apple Input Peripherals: They're okay, I guess, but I was really hoping for a one-key keyboard and a 109-button mouse
The main problem here is foreign students. I recently graduated from the math department, and many students had basically no understanding of English.
I really disagree that non-English-speaking students should be allowed in American universities. I just didn't get the feeling that they participated in the classroom at all. However, that's not how things work, so I'll be more pragmatic.
Since there are many students with little understanding of English, there are ESL departments that can be good resources. They might have a recommendation on acceptable translators. And, while it might not help you right now, you might be able to convey recommendations (ex. no network capabilities) that the university can provide to incoming ESL students. Then, you won't have as much of a problem in the future.
If it really turns out to be a problem, then in addition to spare calculators, you might need to provide a few spare translators that students can use if they forget theirs or bring an illegal one.
Yep. That pretty much sums up all formal testing. I don't trust anything more fine grained than a 25% box when it comes to knowledge. You and the 95? If your homeworks and projects were both pretty good, I'd call you both a 75%. If your homework and projects were perfect? 100%.
Anything more fine grained doesn't tell anyone anything at all.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
For any student who needs something that is not allowed for other students, they have to go talk to their schools Americans with disabilities rep. Otherwise they are giving that student an unfair advantage.
How do you know the one girl doesn't speak good enough English for your test? Perhaps she speaks/reads great English, but only tells you she doesnt to get access to a device that the other students arnt allowed to.
Note: This assumes the case in question is in the US.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
You seem to be confusing education with training. Doctors get their training during residency.
-Peter
Exactly. For every degree, there is a EXPECTED amount of stuff that you SHOULD have with your degree IN MEMORY. If that's not the case, then why not just give every single high school grad a bunch of DVDs with a few hundred textbooks, and then call them "Professional *"?
There is almost never a situation in the professional world where one must solve a problem with absolutely no references
This reminds me of a job interview for a field support job that went like this (paraphrasing because its been a while):
So the boss asks me a technical question which I honestly don't know the answer.
Me: "I don't know, but I'm sure I can Google an answer fairly quick."
Boss: "You mean you don't have this memorized? What if the internet is down?"
Me: "I'd use my cell phone to google the answer."
Boss: "What if you have no cell phone signal?"
Me: "I'd put the caller on hold and use the land line to call someone who has either internet or a cell phone signal and ask them to Google it."
Boss: "What if the land lines are out?"
Me: "Then the question you asked me earlier is no longer relevant because obviously no one would be calling me to get report the problem in the first place if the phone lines are out? And if the internet, cell phone, and land lines are out, it sounds we might have bigger problems."
Surprisingly enough I actually got that job, I just sort of went against the interviewees idea that candidates have to memorize every small technical detail because in real world situations it is always possible to look it up.
And if not... Well then you have other issues going on that need priority.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I see your point, but there's a wide gap between accommodating disabilities and accommodating those who have chosen to come to an institution where classes are taught and examined in English.
I'm very much aware and in favour of the fact that our society is multicultural, but I also think the person making the choice (be that moving to a particular country, attending a particular educational institution, whatever) should be the one to make the effort. It's a standard that I consider fair, and one I am more than willing to apply to myself.
G'day. School Teacher and occasional University part-timer (in social sciences and education) here.
TLDR: Use a preapproved list of calculators and printed dictionaries and materials that they can use.
I advocate a blanket ban on electronic devices, besides a list of pre-approved calculators, during exams. Students should be allowed to bring with them writing implements, watch and printed dictionaries and that's it. Most obviously to prevent cheating, and for the reason you pointed out: that it's getting difficult to tell whether a device is connected to the outside world or not.
But secondly, because most of the handheld dictionaries in use by non-English speaking background students at university are rubbish and cause more problems for them (whether they know it or not) than they realise. I have had students at university level turn in essays with grammar and vocabulary use that looked like it had been fed through Google Translate multiple times in different languages before being put onto the page. They're certain that it's right and can sometimes, in fact, give me the original language version (which has happened a few times, but I know very little Chinese or Korean, so it was rather pointless), but the English version is barely readable.
Printed dictionaries are much more reputable and generally produced by people who have actually done some research in the area. There are some online dictionaries which are also quite good, but internet access isn't something I'd like for my students to have in the exam room. I'm sure you can ask around your staff about decent translation dictionaries and put them on an approved list.
As an aside, I think it's important that you teach your students not to rely on dictionaries (particularly the bullshit handheld dictionaries). If they're studying in a foreign language, then it's not unreasonable to expect them to gain some mastery in that language, particularly for the technical language (after all, you've been spouting it to them for weeks before the exams come around). Now, if they need support while they do that, then you can point them to the learning centre (or what have you) of your university.
> Well, I am not sure that this is the right approach
Der... ya think?
Jamming cellular signals is a federal crime.
What a jackass.
Before you spout off obscenities, first you should understand this depends on what country you're in. Also that in the US, the legalities are not clear as the applicable law was written in 1934 and no real precedent or clarification has been set in the courts yet. In fact, the FCC has not prosecuted a single instance of localized cell-phone jamming. One interpretation is that its perfectly legal if the jamming doesn't extend beyond your private property.
During one of the last tutorials before an electronics exam the lecturer was asked to explain a problem from a text book. There was a very noticeable pause when he read and realised the question. Enough to make all of us twig something was up.
Sure enough, the same question was in the exam with different values.
Not his fault though, the alternative, saying "I can't answer this question because it's in the exam", would have been even worse.
I had a high school physics class like that. I used my Mac LC with an ImageWriter II to print the page in Magenta, then I overprinted a 2nd page in Cyan. I brought the double printed page and a pair of those comic book 3D glasses - one red lens one blue to the test. It worked perfectly except that I couldn't use it! I got a few points credit for creativity and in the end, I had spent so much time creating the note page that the info was burned into my retinas. Well, half on my right retina, half on my left. I did just fine on the test- i think the creativity credit put me at 101%. Good times.
-whoa, I'm jones'ing for a sig right about now...
> Technically possible but not practical for economic reasons.
Really?
Last time I checked, you could setup hostapd on OpenBSD using a $50 Linksys PCI WLAN adapter to automatically spam disassociate packets to *anything* that the WLAN adapter receives while in RFMON mode.
I knew a guy who did this once in his own house to keep his neighbours unencrypted signal dead. His BSD router would spam disassoc to anything that wasn't part of his own WLAN network. I'm told that this doesn't nuke the signal completely, but it does make it borderline impossible to push any data through the network at all.
It wouldn't be hard to buy and setup a small settop box to automatically do this. You'd just have to drag it into the room and plug the damned thing in then turn it on. Hostapd will take care of spamming disassoc to anything it finds. Theoretically, this is still all on the 802.11A/B/G/N spec, it's not like you're physically jamming the radio frequencies- so it should be legal.
-AC
No shit. I worked with a guy at my last shop that used to laugh about his cheapskate roomie. The guy spent hours grinding pennies so they would pass for dimes in the coke machines and toll booths. it never occurred to this brain trust he was wasting a hell of a lot more time than it was worth just to get his 'fake dimes" but he did it. I've seen guy go through all kinds of bullshit to get out of work, even knew a girl that screwed her teacher just to get out of taking the class. Never underestimate the power of lazy or cheap, ever.
On the other hand one has to make allowances for those with real needs. I was always allowed to carry a laptop into class because I got my right wrist smashed all to hell when I was 16 in a bad bike wreck. I can still play bass guitar as long as I only use my first two fingers on that hand to pluck, but if I hold a pen or pencil more than a few minutes the circulation quits and it swells like a balloon. But then again I also had my pride and was happy to have any teacher test me verbally without the laptop if they had any doubts.
So maybe the key is a non tech approach like my old VB teacher used to do? When he thought someone might be cheating he'd ask them a few basic questions and it really didn't take much to find out who knew what they were doing and who was just copypasta. If they are far enough along to be taking tests surely answering a couple of questions verbally wouldn't be too difficult if there was any doubt.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
That reminds me my CS grad school. There was a large percentage of Indian students and I found that regardless if they were good or bad (obviously there were both kinds) their defining characteristic was that they stuck together. When they were TA's (quite common) there were some weird things going on that the Professors were oblivious of. For example, I had a homework that involved storing some flight data on a db2 database, then a gui front-end that allowed you to select from/to locations and gave you the flight sequence that would make your trip. The specification gave 2-3 queries that you should test your solution on. Well, I got 95% for an error that was sort of cosmetic, i.e. not part of the algorithm used. I did not like it and I wondered how the TA graded the rest of the class. As luck would have it, he was one of the students that did not know what "your home directory is world readable by default" means and I got the spreadsheet with the results. Most of the Indians had 100%. I found one girl of those 100% who both had her home dir readable, and had her homework in there. To my amazement her homework involved a gui with HARDCODED results for the 2-3 "test queries"! No sql queries, nothing!
An even better story took place a year after I graduated. An Indian guy was trying to cheat during the midterm and the professor warned him. He tried to cheat at the final again and the professor told him "you are getting an F, I already warned you". So the guy responds "but what about all the guys that submitted the same project?". Haha, the professor looked at the projects which were graded by his Indian TA and half of them (belonging to the Indian students) were the same! It had never occurred to the Professors what was going on. Well, the students got away with just an F (well it could screw their funding though).
Again, I am not saying that Indians are bad, they have more or less the same variety as Americans, Europeans etc, the problem is that by sticking together so much and considering that "natural", you really have a hard time weeding out the good from the bad.
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