Students "Can Consult More Resources" Online and Other Fun Euphemisms

Plus, med students in Malta oughta scare ya. Plus, a lawyer talks proctoring.

Issue 109

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Hechinger Report’s Classic Euphemism

The Hechinger Report ran a lengthy story (published by USAToday) on how two years of remote learning in high school is sending record numbers of students to college unprepared for college work. Despite getting good grades in high school, colleges are reporting that these online pandemic students simply do not know what they should know.

I’m including the story here because it quotes a genetics professor from the University of Texas, Austin. She says many more people are failing her class now than in years past. That’s because she:

suspects it’s more difficult to assess students’ understanding of the class material with remote tests and quizzes, where students often can consult more resources.

“Can consult more resources” has to be one of the most ridiculous euphemisms for cheating that I’ve ever heard.

One in Three Medical Students in Malta Would Not Turn in a Classmate for Serious Misconduct

Malta Today has a little story about a survey of medical students at the University of Malta, and it has some disturbing findings.

For one, it says that:

one in three students would not inform their faculty of serious misconduct, according to a study of attitudes on academic misconduct.

41% said they were unsure whether they would report misconduct.

If I’m right to add those, that’s on the order of 75% of students saying they either would not or aren’t sure they would report misconduct. In medical school.

The results also include:

8% also admitted to copying answers in a final exam

And that:

less than 20% of medical students think that writing a piece of work for another student or lending their own work to be copied, were serious offences.

My goodness.

According to the coverage, the survey was conducted by Alexia Grech, Hackenbruch Sophie and Professor Isabel Stabile and results were published in the science journal, Xjenza. The authors who did the study said they think:

medical students at the University of Malta behave similarly to those in other countries in terms of academic dishonesty.

I really, really hope that’s not true.

The College Fix Covers Cheating

The College Fix is the Fox News of education coverage and it ran a story recently on cheating during online pandemic learning. For academic integrity coverage, it’s pretty good.

The author writes:

Quite simply, remote learning, especially virtual, at-home exams, facilitate and incentivize dishonestly.

It correctly cites reporting by NPR and others on the massive increase in cheating that followed the shift to remote learning (see Issue 50). It cites the recent cheating at Yale University (see Issue 106) and a 2021 study on misconduct (see Issue 73), which showed a link between online exams and misconduct, for example:

the rate of cheating in exams during this time depended on the examination mode, with online exams being more prone to the use of unpermitted assistance than on-site exams.

And I agree with this bit from the story:

With diminished accountability, the ubiquity of fact-finding technology, and massive groups of individual students completing similar assessments alone at home, the incentives and opportunities for cheating exploded during the pandemic.

If the full picture of academic dishonesty could be revealed, it would likely be a national scandal.

Likely.

Lawyer Talks Remote Proctoring, Privacy

My apologies; I’d been meaning to get to this for some time now.

Last month, an outlet called The Lawyers Daily ran a story on a talk that a lawyer in Canada gave on remote test proctoring. Teresa Scassa, of University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, spoke at or to the University of Manitoba.

Anyway, the coverage of the talk frames it this way:

At the heart of Scassa’s talk was the need to strike a balance between the effective prevention of cheating versus the risks remote proctoring poses to students.

And, overall, Scassa comes off as pretty well informed about proctoring, which is refreshing. She gets, for example, that proctoring companies don’t determine who is cheating - they alert professors or test administrators to possible or probable misconduct.

She says:

“I don’t think any of the companies maintain that anything that’s flagged is cheating — it’s just possible cheating — and there needs to be some sort of review of the flags,” Scassa said. “That review part, I think, is underexplored. … Who is going to do that review? And how is that going to be integrated with the universities’ disciplinary procedures and policies, and so on, and what implications does that review have for the students and the students’ relationship with the professor?

OK - two things. Again, the first part is right, but the second part is considerably off.

No school enlists a remote proctoring provider without knowing who will review the “flags.” In 95% of the cases, it’s the professor who’s giving the test, or a teaching assistant. And schools have procedures and policies for academic misconduct. We can debate whether they are good or too punitive or too passive but there’s really no question about how a finding of misconduct is “integrated” into those systems.

As to the student’s relationship with the professor, that’s just nuts. The only difference between a remotely proctored exam and one given in the classroom is when the review is done. Reviewing a test session in person, while it’s going on, is no more a danger to the professor/student relationship than reviewing it two days later, except that the latter review is probably more thorough and fair.

She is right about this:

Scassa during her presentation acknowledged the need for the effective monitoring of test takers, and the negative impact cheating can have both on universities and society as a whole.  

She pointed to a study from 2020 that found 62 per cent of student respondents admitted to cheating at least occasionally. (Although, Scassa notes that this statistic is based on self-reporting, and that the study focused on cheating in general, as opposed to only cheating on exams.)

If anything, 62% is low. And, yes, it’s a problem. “Effective monitoring” is needed.

But unfortunately, Scassa also goes full unfounded conspiracy:

In terms of privacy, Scassa pointed out that remote proctoring places students under constant direct surveillance — either by a human or through video recording. As a result, test takers can experience enhanced anxiety due to AI technology flagging the aforementioned common physical movements as possible cheating.

Remote proctoring can also lead to discrimination. Women who wear head and face coverings could run into difficulties due to having to physically identify themselves. Also, there are some students with disabilities or medical conditions causing movements or behaviours that could be red flagged by the technology as potential cheating.

That’s incorrect and off base.

A study came out recently showing that remote proctoring does not increase test anxiety - even among students with test anxiety.

And there’s very little difference between a live proctor providing “constant direct surveillance” at a test center, or in a classroom or via webcam. If you’re taking a test, and it’s proctored, someone is watching. That’s literally what proctoring is. It’s not as though you’re not under “constant direct surveillance” when you take a test in a classroom with the professor sitting 20 feet away.

And yes, proctoring providers do verify that the person taking the test is the student. Test centers do that too. We want that. Test impersonation is real. Sometimes, in order to verify our identities, we’re asked to remove hats or head coverings or masks. It sucks, but it’s important and there’s a reason for it. And it’s not unique to test proctoring.

Further, even if a “medical condition” or disability were to trip a proctoring company’s software - which I’ve never heard of actually happening - it’s a flag. As Scassa said, all flags are supposed to be reviewed and erroneous flags are easy to determine and dismiss. Surely a professor would know the difference between using your cell phone during a test and a medical condition.

Moreover, and as proctoring critics often overlook, this is why it’s really, really helpful to have a record of the test session that can be reviewed, even challenged if necessary. People with concerns about bias or discrimination during tests - and count me among them - should want evidence. I do. As we know from other settings, the people who are most at risk are the ones who suffer the most when we turn cameras off.

Anyway, it’s disappointing when ‘experts’ get it so wrong.