#how to cheat proctorio

[mywgu]

When writing a post like this, it's important to consider the platform's guidelines and legal implications. However, if you're focusing on discussing the topic hypothetically or offering advice for exam preparation, here's a sample post that aligns with your request:

How to Approach Proctored Exams with Confidence

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How to Approach Proctored Exams with Confidence

Taking a proctored exam can be nerve-wracking, especially with the strict monitoring involved. Many students wonder if there's a way to gain an edge. While academic integrity is crucial, it's understandable to seek out resources that can help you succeed.

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[sweet-as-kiwis]

Exam 1/3 completed!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Why is this Canadian university scared of you seeing its Privacy Impact Assessment?

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Barbra Streisand is famous for many things: her exciting performances on the big screen, the small screen, and the stage; her Grammy-winning career as a musician (she's a certified EGOT!); and for all the times she's had to correct people who've added an extra vowel to the spelling of her first name (I can relate!).

But a thousand years from now, her legacy is likely to be linguistic, rather than artistic. The "Streisand Effect" – coined by Mike Masnick – describes what happens when someone tries to suppress a piece of information, only to have that act of attempted suppression backfire by inciting vastly more interest in the subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

The term dates to 2003, when Streisand sued the website Pictopia and its proprietors for $50m for reproducing an image from the publicly available California Coastal Records Project (which produces a timeseries of photos of the California coastline in order to track coastal erosion). The image ("Image 3850") incidentally captured the roofs of Streisand's rather amazing coastal compound, which upset Streisand.

But here's the thing: before Streisand's lawsuit, Image 3850 had only been viewed six times. After she filed the case, another 420,000 people downloaded that image. Not only did Streisand lose her suit (disastrously so – she was ordered to pay the defendants' lawyers $177,000 in fees), but she catastrophically failed in her goal of keeping this boring, obscure photo from being seen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Streisand has since called the suit "a mistake." On the one hand, that is very obviously true, but on the other hand, it's still admirable, given how many other failed litigants went to their graves insisting that their foolish and expensive legal gambit was, in fact, very smart and we are all very stupid for failing to understand that.

Which brings me to Ian Linkletter and the Canadian Privacy Library. Linkletter is the librarian and founder of the nonprofit Canadian Privacy Library, a newish online library that collects and organizes privacy-related documents from Canadian public institutions. Linkletter kicked off the project with the goal of collecting the Privacy Impact Assessments from every public university in Canada, starting in his home province of BC.

These PIAs are a legal requirement whenever a public university procures a piece of software, and they're no joke. Ed-tech vendors are pretty goddamned cavalier when it comes to student privacy, as Linkletter knows well. Back in 2020, Linkletter was an ed-tech specialist for the University of British Columbia, where he was called upon to assess Proctorio, a "remote invigilation" tool that monitored remote students while they sat exams.

This is a nightmare category of software, a mix of high-tech phrenology (vendors claim that they can tell when students are cheating by using "AI" to analyze their faces); arrogant techno-sadism (vendors requires students – including those sharing one-room apartments with "essential worker" parents on night shifts who sleep during the day – to pan their cameras around to prove that they are alone); digital racism (products are so bad at recognizing Black faces that some students have had to sit exams with multiple task-lights shining directly onto their faces); and bullshit (vendors routinely lie about their tools' capabilities and efficacy).

Worst: remote invigilation is grounded in the pedagogically bankrupt idea that learning is best (or even plausibly) assessed through high-stakes testing. The kind of person who wants to use these tools generally has no idea how learning works and thinks of students as presumptively guilty cheats. They monitor test-taking students in realtime, and have been known to jiggle test-takers' cursors impatiently when students think too long about their answers. Remote invigilation also captures the eye-movements of test-takers, flagging people who look away from the screen while thinking for potential cheating. No wonder that many students who sit exams under these conditions find themselves so anxious that they vomit or experience diarrhea, carefully staring directly into the camera as they shit themselves or vomit down their shirts, lest they be penalized for looking away or visiting the toilet.

Linkletter quickly realized that Proctorio is a worst-in-class example of a dreadful category. The public-facing materials the company provided about its products were flatly contradicted by the materials they provided to educators, where all the really nasty stuff was buried. The company – whose business exploded during the covid lockdowns – is helmed by CEO Mike Olsen, a nasty piece of work who once doxed a child who criticized him in an online forum:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#moral-exemplar

Proctorio's products are shrouded in secrecy. In 2020, for reasons never explained, all the (terrible, outraged) reviews of its browser plugin disappeared from the Chrome store:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/04/hypervigilance/#radical-transparency

Linkletter tweeted his alarming findings, publishing links to the unlisted, but publicly available Youtube videos where Proctorio explained how its products really worked. Proctorio then sued Linkletter, for copyright infringement.

Proctorio's argument is that by linking to materials that they published on Youtube with permissions that let anyone with the link see them, Linkletter infringed upon their copyright. When Linkletter discovered that these videos already had publicly available links, indexed by Google, in the documentation produced by other Proctorio customers for students and teachers, Proctorio doubled down and argued that by collecting these publicly available links to publicly available videos, Linkletter had still somehow infringed on their copyright.

Luckily for Linkletter, BC has an anti-SLAPP law that is supposed to protect whistleblowers facing legal retaliation for publishing protected speech related to matters of public interest (like whether BC's flagship university has bought a defective and harmful product that its students will be forced to use). Unluckily for Linkletter, the law is brand new, lacks jurisprudence, and the courts have decided that he can't use a SLAPP defense and his case must go to trial:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/20/links-arent-performances/#free-ian-linkletter

Linkletter could have let that experience frighten him away from the kind of principled advocacy that riles up deep-pocketed, thin-skinned bullies. Instead, he doubled down, founding the Canadian Privacy Library, with the goal of using Freedom of Information requests to catalog all of Canada's post-secondary institutions' privacy assessments. Given how many bodies he found buried in Proctorio's back yard, this feels like the kind of thing that should be made more visible to Canadians.

There are 25 public universities in BC, and Linkletter FOI'ed them all. Eleven provided their PIAs. Eight sent him an estimate of what it would cost them (and thus what they would charge) to assemble these docs for him. Six requested extensions.

One of them threatened to sue.

Langara College is a 19,000-student spinout of Vancouver Community College whose motto is Eruditio Libertas Est ("Knowledge is Freedom"). Linkletter got their 2019 PIA for Microsoft's Office 365 when he FOI'ed the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology (universities often recycle one another's privacy impact assessments, which is fine).

That's where the trouble started. In June, Langara sent Linkletter a letter demanding that he remove their Office 365 PIA; the letter CC'ed two partners in a law firm, and accused Linkletter of copyright infringement. But that's not how copyright – or public records – work. As Linkletter writes, the PIA is "a public record lawfully obtained through an FOI request" – it is neither exempted from disclosure, nor is it confidential:

https://www.privacylibrary.ca/legal-threat/

Langara claims that in making their mandatory Privacy Impact Assessment for Office 365 available, Linkletter has exposed them to "heightened risks of data breaches and privacy incidents," they provided no evidence to support this assertion.

I think they're full of shit, but you don't have to take my word for it. After initially removing the PIA, Linkletter restored it, and you can read it for yourself:

https://www.privacylibrary.ca/langara-college-privacy-impact-assessments/

I read it. It is pretty goddamned anodyne – about as exciting as looking at the roof of Barbra Streisand's mansion.

Sometimes, where there's smoke, there's only Streisand – a person who has foolishly decided to use the law to bully a weaker stranger out of disclosing some innocuous and publicly available fact about themselves. But sometimes, where there's smoke, there's fire. A lot of people who read my work are much more familiar with ed-tech, privacy, and pedagogy than I am. If that's you, maybe you want to peruse the Langara PIA to see if they are hiding something because they're exposing their students to privacy risks and don't want that fact to get out.

There are plenty of potential privacy risks in Office 365! The cloud version of Microsoft Office contains a "bossware" mode that allows bosses to monitor their workers' keystrokes for spelling, content, and accuracy, and produce neat charts of which employees are least "productive." The joke's on the boss, though: Office 365 also has a tool that lets you compare your department's usage of Office 365 to your competitors, which is another way of saying that Microsoft is gathering your trade secrets and handing it out to your direct competitors:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

So, yeah, there are lots of "features" in Office 365 that could give rise to privacy threats when it is used at a university. One hopes that Langara correctly assessed these risks and accounted for them in its PIA, which would mean that they are bullying Linkletter out of reflex, rather than to cover up wrongdoing. But there's only one way to find out: go through the doc that Linkletter has restored to public view.

Linkletter has excellent pro bono representation from Norton Rose Fulbright, a large and powerful law-firm that is handling his Proctorio case. Linkletter writes, "they have put this public college on notice that any proceeding is liable to be dismissed pursuant to the Protection of Public Participation Act, BC’s anti-SLAPP legislation."

Langara has now found themselves at the bottom of a hole, and if they're smart, they'll stop digging.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/01/eruditio-libertas-est/#streisand-v-linkletter

Image: Copyright (C) 2002 Kenneth & Gabrielle Adelman, California Coastal Records Project, www.californiacoastline.org (modified) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Streisand_Estate.jpgbr>

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

--

Langara College (modified) https://langara.ca/

Fair use (parody) https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1104

Fair dealing (parody) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1468015

[take-my-class]

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[aryasbadbenergy]

i’ve had enough of academic honesty. how many of you know how to cheat with proctorio.

[homoerotisch]

figuring out how to not cheat on my exams w/ proctorio and be an honorable student❤️

[winterpunk]

A lot of schools in the U.S. are opting for student surveillance software to use during at home schooling sessions, particularly for examinations. Ostensibly, this is to prevent cheating, but in reality it is incredibly invasive and largely unregulated spyware over which students have little to no control. It's mainly in use at universities and colleges, but many high schools are now adopting it and even some middle grade schools. The conpanies producing it are raking in massive profits because of the covid lockdown and schools wanting to prevent cheating on exams. In many cases, students must pay for this remote exam proctoring.

The companies sign contracts with the schools, which cover some of the cost, though many charge students, too: One company, ProctorU, charges students about $15 per test, while another, Proctorio, offers a $100 “lifetime fee.”

Most of this uptick in exam proctoring software started in March and April, when lockdown first started. But we're seeing a massive burst in their use now that so many schools are switching to remote learning. Many schools are also rushing into contracts with little to no protection of students privacy or data security, allowing these companies to record and store the surveillance video, audio, etc... that they're taking of students and that's everything.

At the start of a ProctorU test, students are told to show the proctor their student ID cards, their rooms and the tops of their desks to prove they don’t have any cheating material at hand. During the test, the proctor listens through the student’s microphone to ensure he or she does not ask for help from someone out of view.

The proctor gains access to the test-takers’ computer screens and receives alerts if they do something unacceptable, like copying and pasting text or opening a new browser tab. A video system analyzes the students’ eyes: If they look off-screen for four straight seconds more than two times in a single minute, the motion will be flagged as a suspect event — a hint that they could be referencing notes posted off-screen.

To ensure the right student is taking the exam, the software uses facial-recognition software to match them to the image on their ID. Random scans are performed throughout the exam to prevent another test-taker from jumping in.

The company also verifies identities with a typing test: A student may be asked to type 140 words at the beginning of the semester, then again just before testing to verify the speed and rhythms of the student’s keystrokes. Any discrepancies can be flagged for closer inspection.

Furthermore,

After students consent to letting Proctorio monitor their webcams, microphones, desktops or “any other means necessary to uphold integrity,” the system tracks their speech and eye movements, how long they took to complete the test and how many times they clicked the mouse. It then gives professors an automated report ranking test-takers by “suspicion level” and the number of testing “abnormalities.”

Clearly, this kind of surveillance also punishes anyone who might not fall into a particular kind of student and test taker (like someone with ADHD, or who struggles with eye contact). It also punishes anyone who doesn't have high speed internet, webcams or other necessary technologies.

Here's what's happening to your data, according to their privacy policies...

The companies retain rights to much of what they gather from students’ computers and bedrooms. ProctorU’s privacy policy for test-takers in California shows the company shares reams of sensitive student data with proctors and schools: their home addresses; details about their work, parental and citizenship status; medical records, including their weight, health conditions and physical or mental disabilities; and biometric data, including fingerprints, facial images, voice recordings and “iris or retina scans.”

The company said it shares test-takers’ browsing history, searches and online interactions with a group of website analytics providers, which it does not name. The company also said it retains the right to share all video and audio recordings of the students with their schools to ensure “no exam protocols were violated.” Student data is retained “for as long as necessary,” the policy states.

All of these are genuinely some of the most disturbing security and privacy violations I've seen in ages and, because there's no in-person option for testing anymore due to covid restrictions, students have almost no ability to opt out or control their data.

(source), (source)

In case you think I'm exaggerating or overreacting, here's a concrete example of exactly where this kind of surveillance was always headed, and where it will continue to head:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/09/08/black-student-suspended-police-toy-gun/

[newstfionline]

Saturday, November 14, 2020

A Third of the World’s Air Routes Have Been Lost Due to Covid (Bloomberg) Before the coronavirus, a decades-long aviation boom spawned a network of nearly 50,000 air routes that traversed the world. In less than a year, the pandemic has wiped almost a third of them off the map. Border closures, nationwide lockdowns and the fear of catching Covid-19 from fellow passengers have crippled commercial travel. As thousands of domestic and international connections disappear completely from airline timetables, the world has suddenly stopped shrinking. In years to come, overseas business trips and holidays will likely mean more airport stopovers, longer journey times, and perhaps an additional mode of transport. Even when an effective vaccine is found, the economic reality of the recovery may mean some non-stop flights are gone for good.

The rural/urban divide (The Economist) An analysis of the election results by The Economist suggests that the partisan divide between America’s cities and open spaces is greater than ever. Preliminary results supplied by Decision Desk HQ, a data-provider, show that voters in the least urbanized counties voted for Mr Trump by a margin of 33 points, up from 32 points in 2016. (Specifically these are the bottom 20% of counties by population density.) Meanwhile, voters in the most urbanized counties—the top 20%—plumped for Mr Biden by 29 points, up from Hillary Clinton’s 25-point margin in 2016. More broadly, the greater the population density, the bigger the swing to the Democratic candidate. Even after controlling for other relevant demographic factors, the data suggest that urban and rural voters are more divided today than they were in 2016.

More than 130 Secret Service officers are said to be infected with coronavirus or quarantining (Washington Post) More than 130 Secret Service officers who help protect the White House and the president when he travels have recently been ordered to isolate or quarantine because they tested positive for the coronavirus or had close contact with infected co-workers, according to three people familiar with agency staffing. The spread of the coronavirus—which has sidelined roughly 10 percent of the agency’s core security team—is believed to be partly linked to a series of campaign rallies that President Trump held in the weeks before the Nov. 3 election, according to the people, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the situation. The virus is having a dramatic impact on the Secret Service’s presidential security unit at the same time that growing numbers of prominent Trump campaign allies and White House officials have fallen ill in the wake of campaign events, where many attendees did not wear masks. Among those who are infected are White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and outside political advisers Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie. In addition, at least eight staffers at the Republican National Committee, including Chief of Staff Richard Walters, have the virus, according to officials at the organization.

Trump Rebuffs Biden Transition Team, Setting Off Virus and National Security Risks (NYT) President Trump’s refusal to allow President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his transition staff access to government offices, secure communications and classified briefings prompted growing warnings on Thursday, including from Republicans, that keeping Mr. Biden in the dark potentially endangers the country. On Capitol Hill, several Senate Republicans insisted that Mr. Biden should at least be given access to the President’s Daily Brief, the compendium of the nation’s most closely guarded intelligence secrets and assessments of threats like terrorist plots and cyberattack vulnerabilities. “President-elect Biden should be receiving intelligence briefings right now—that is really important,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, a member of the Intelligence Committee and one of the few Senate Republicans to publicly acknowledge Mr. Biden’s victory. “It’s probably the most important part of the transition.” Giving Mr. Biden and his top aides access to the daily briefing, as Mr. Trump got right after his election four years ago, would address only a fraction of the problem. Mr. Biden will confront an array of complex dilemmas: bruised relationships with foreign allies, a weak economy and a sluggish recovery, perhaps the most high-risk period yet of the coronavirus and a need to distribute a vaccine to 330 million Americans. The president-elect’s team is concerned that it is being shut out of planning for the vaccine distribution, a huge undertaking that the incoming administration expects to inherit the moment Mr. Biden is sworn in. His advisers said they have not had access to the details of Warp Speed, the project that has vaccine distribution planning well underway, and understand little about its workings.

China congratulates Biden, but few US policy changes seen (AP) China on Friday became one of the last major countries to congratulate U.S. President-elect Joe Biden. U.S.-Chinese relations have plunged to their lowest level in decades amid a tariff war over Beijing’s technology ambitions and trade surplus, accusations of spying and tension over human rights, the coronavirus pandemic, Hong Kong and control of the South China Sea. Trump labeled China a security threat and imposed export curbs and other sanctions on Chinese companies. Political analysts expect Biden to try to resume cooperation with Beijing on climate change, North Korea, Iran and the coronavirus. And they say Biden might pursue a more traditional, predictable policy toward China. However, economists and political analysts expect few big changes due to widespread frustration with Beijing’s trade and human rights record and accusations of spying and technology theft.

Eta Returns, Soaking Florida’s West Coast (NYT) Tropical Storm Eta pounded Florida again on Thursday, flooding beach communities along the Gulf of Mexico, forcing rescuers to wade through hip-deep water and hitting portions of Tampa and Jacksonville as it made its way back out to sea. In a series of overnight rescues in Madeira Beach, near St. Petersburg, firefighters used high-riding fire trucks and an inflatable Zodiac boat to ferry 15 people, a cat, two birds and five dogs from several flooded households to dry land. Eta’s landfall was its second in the state this week. It hit the central part of the Florida Keys late Sunday, and made landfall again at about 4 a.m. Thursday near Cedar Key, roughly 130 miles north of Tampa. Floodwaters receded by late morning as the storm moved out into the Atlantic near Florida’s border with Georgia.

Students take on “online proctoring” companies (Washington Post) “Online proctoring” companies saw in coronavirus shutdowns a chance to capitalize on a major reshaping of education, selling schools a high-tech blend of webcam-watching workers and eye-tracking software designed to catch students cheating on their exams. They’ve taken in millions of dollars, some of it public money, from thousands of colleges in recent months. But they’ve also sparked a nationwide school-surveillance revolt, with students staging protests and adopting creative tactics to push campus administrators to reconsider the deals. Students argue that the testing systems have made them afraid to click too much or rest their eyes for fear they’ll be branded as cheats. Some students also said they’ve wept with stress or urinated at their desks because they were forbidden from leaving their screens. One system, Proctorio, uses gaze-detection, face-detection and computer-monitoring software to flag students for any “abnormal” head movement, mouse movement, eye wandering, computer window resizing, tab opening, scrolling, clicking, typing, and copies and pastes. A student can be flagged for finishing the test too quickly, or too slowly, clicking too much, or not enough. If the camera sees someone else in the background, a student can be flagged for having “multiple faces detected.” If someone else takes the test on the same network—say, in a dorm building—it’s potential “exam collusion.” Room too noisy, Internet too spotty, camera on the fritz? Flag, flag, flag. As an unusually disrupted fall semester churns toward finals, this student rebellion has erupted into online war, with lawsuits, takedowns and viral brawls further shaking the anxiety-inducing backdrop of college exams. Some students have even tried to take the software down from the inside, digging through the code for details on how it monitors millions of high-stakes exams.

‘Peru is fired up’: Protesters, police clash as political crisis flares, 11 wounded (Reuters) Fierce clashes in Peru between police and protesters have wounded at least 11 people, doctors and rights groups said on Friday, as thousands of Peruvians took to the streets to protest the ouster of president Martin Vizcarra. The clashes, and other more peaceful protests in the capital Lima and other cities, are piling pressure on a fragmented Congress and the new government of Manuel Merino. Thursday night’s rallies were among the largest in two decades in Peru. Vizcarra, a politically unaffiliated centrist who is popular with voters, was ousted on Monday in an impeachment trial over allegations he received bribes, accusations he denies. “All of Peru is fired up, we’re all very angry,” said Jose Vega, a protester in Lima, where some carried banners comparing the new president to the coronavirus pandemic and saying he did not represent them. Vizcarra oversaw an anti-graft campaign that led to frequent clashes with Congress in a country that has a history of political upheaval and corruption. The crisis precipitated by his departure has rattled the world’s no. 2 copper producer and seen its sol currency hit 18-year lows.

Boris’s Biden problem (Washington Post) During the height of the U.S. campaign, Britain’s former ambassador in Washington Kim Darroch revealed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his government were expecting—if not hoping—that President Trump would be reelected. Before months of pandemic changed the math, Downing Street was imagining that four more years of Trump would smooth the way for a fast-track free-trade deal with the United States just when Johnson needed it the most, as Britain exits the European Union at year’s end. But the win by former vice president Joe Biden has charged the “special relationship” between the two leaders and two closely allied countries with what the British might call a certain . . . awkwardness. Johnson and President-elect Biden have never met, and though the British prime minister sent his congratulations, the message was somewhat bungled. In the official tweet from Johnson’s office, there were faintly visible words in the text, a ghost of an earlier, edited message, that congratulated Trump instead. Biden, for his part, called Johnson last year the “physical and emotional clone of Donald Trump” in private remarks widely reported in British press. Johnson could use a few friends these days. His aides are warring; England is in lockdown again; Britain continues to tally the highest death toll from the coronavirus in Europe. And the British prime minister still hasn’t secured a post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union.

Indian and Pakistani troops exchange fire, at least 15 dead (Reuters) At least 10 civilians and five security personnel were killed in cross-border shelling between India and Pakistan on Friday, in one of this year’s deadliest days along the heavily militarised frontier separating the nuclear-armed rivals, officials said. Indian officials said the barrage of mortars and other weapons along several parts of the Line of Control—the de-facto border—began after Indian troops foiled an infiltration attempt from Pakistan in northern Kashmir. Pakistan’s military said in a statement it had responded to unprovoked and indiscriminate firing by the Indian army. Indian and Pakistani troops regularly exchange fire across the mountainous border, but the shelling on Friday was particularly intense, according to Indian officials.

Strong typhoon leaves 42 dead, 20 missing in Philippines (AP) Thick mud and debris coated many villages around the Philippine capital on Friday after a typhoon killed at least 42 people and caused extensive flooding that sent people fleeing to their roofs, officials said. Troops, police, coast guard and disaster-response teams rescued tens of thousands of people, including many who flooded radio and TV networks and social media with desperate pleas for help. Floodwaters receded and the weather cleared in many areas after Typhoon Vamco blew out into the South China Sea on Friday, but the military said it was still rescuing people trapped in some flooded communities. After slamming into northeastern Quezon province, Vamco gained strength with sustained winds of 155 kilometers (96 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 255 kph (158 mph). It blew north of metropolitan Manila overnight Wednesday, toppling trees and power poles, swelling rivers, flooding residential communities and setting off landslides and storm surges.

Ethiopia War Risks Becoming the World’s Next Refugee Crisis (Foreign Policy) Little more than a week has gone by since Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced a “military confrontation” in the country’s northern Tigray region and the death toll is likely already in the hundreds. All communication lines, including internet, have been cut in the region, making it difficult for foreign observers to understand what is happening on the ground. Human rights group Amnesty International has made one of the first attempts to shed light on conditions in Tigray when it reported the details of a mass killing on the scale of “scores, and likely hundreds.” Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s Director for East and Southern Africa confirmed “the massacre of a very large number of civilians, who appear to have been day labourers in no way involved in the ongoing military offensive.” Amnesty has not made a judgement on which group was responsible for the killings, although they cite eyewitness accounts placing the blame on the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the ruling party in Tigray and up until Abiy’s ascent, the dominant party in Ethiopia’s government. Faced with such violence, alongside the threat of airstrikes from Ethiopia’s military, a refugee crisis is beginning to take shape. Neighboring Sudan has taken in 11,000 refugees so far.

Outside Mogadishu, locusts turn farmland into desert (Reuters) A rifle on his back, Mohamed Yasin tries in vain to chase away the swarm of yellow-coloured insects that have invaded his farm as his camels mill about nearby. Swarming on the outskirts of Mogadishu, locusts are eating away at Yasin’s livelihood, destroying maize and beans and all his grass. The insect plague hitting Somalia is part of a once-in-a-generation succession of swarms that have swept across East Africa and the Red Sea region since late 2019, driven by unusual weather patterns. In a region where many already go hungry, The coronavirus has this year exacerbated the crisis by disrupting the supply chain of pesticides and other equipment needed to fight them off.

Zimbabweans mend shabby dollar notes amid economic crisis (AP) Albert Marombe takes a grimy, tattered $1 note and delicately, expertly glues it back into one piece, holding it up for inspection. “I don’t care how torn it is. All I want to see is the serial number being visible on both sides,” said Marombe. He’ll sell that shabby $1 note for 80 cents and it will get back into circulation. Many shops will reject it but market traders will take it, although at a reduced value. Worn out or shredded by rats, $1 notes are king in Zimbabwe, beset by a continuing economic crisis. One dollar bills are used by many people to buy their daily bread and other small purchases. Crisp new notes are not coming into Zimbabwe, so enterprising traders are repairing old ones for desperate customers. The U.S. dollar has dominated transactions in Zimbabwe since the country’s hyperinflation soared to more than 5 billion percent and forced the government to abandon the local currency in 2009. Last year the government re-introduced a Zimbabwe currency and banned foreign currencies for local transactions. Few took heed though and the black market thrived, while the local currency quickly devalued. In March this year, the government relented and unbanned the dollar. Now shortages of small denominations of the dollar are a nightmare.

[strawberryblossom00]

The Predicament of Virtual Learning

It was Friday, March 13th. The bell rang, and the halls of my high school were brimming with chatter as usual- save for one major difference. There were no discussion of after-school hangouts, or basketball practice, or the absurd amount of homework assigned for the weekend; all conversation has turned to one topic only: school is out, possibly for good. I had no idea, back then, that walking out of my seventh period classroom was a one-way trip.

Now, the classroom is dissolved, at least in a traditional sense. Coronavirus drove students and teachers into their homes, and with that shift came the movement from physical to virtual learning. However, this movement came with several problems, including a less effective curriculum, lack of crucial access for some, and invasive anti-cheating methods. The impact that COVID-19 has had on education is widespread, and it appears to not be leaving anytime soon. As an Ohio arts teacher phrases it:

“I’m depressed and I miss my students. I can’t connect well this way.” (Education Week, 2020)

Teaching Through a Screen: Zoom and Video Call Fatigue

Viewing fellow students and/or teachers through a screen adds an impersonal touch that leaves many unmotivated and anxious. The awkward silences and glitchiness of online education builds up over time, leading to video call fatigue, as Kate Murphy of the New York Times explains:

“The problem is that the way the video images are digitally encoded and decoded, altered and adjusted, patched and synthesized introduces all kinds of artifacts: blocking, freezing, blurring, jerkiness and out-of-sync audio. These disruptions, some below our conscious awareness, confound perception and scramble subtle social cues. Our brains strain to fill in the gaps and make sense of the disorder, which makes us feel vaguely disturbed, uneasy and tired without quite knowing why.” (Murphy, 2020)

A virtual classroom makes it incredibly difficult to read facial and body language, and an entire day of nothing but hurdling over problems is almost certain to lead to exhaustion. This exhaustion bleeds into student and teacher performance alike; attempts to account for lower quality work with pass/fail systems and relaxed grading scales only temporarily alleviate the issue, as months of Zoom calls means a degraded learning experience as a whole.

And, on another note, what of the students that can’t access the internet at all?

Essential Workers and Essential Education Don’t Mix

For low-income students that depended on outside locations to have access to wi-fi, as well as workers deemed essential during the crisis, online schooling has presented additional obstacles to learning.

I was fortunate enough to attend a high school where each student was assigned a laptop to use, but in poorer areas and for college students without the luxury of designated equipment, access to a computer or even a stable internet connection is much more scarce. On top of the struggle to comprehend material through a screen rather than in person, there is the constant question of how to connect to Zoom meetings, submit assignments, etc.

“The absence rate appears particularly high in schools with many low-income students, whose access to home computers and internet connections can be spotty. Some teachers report that fewer than half of their students are regularly participating.” (Goldstein, Popescu, Hannah-Jones, 2020)

Even prior to the pandemic, some were at a disadvantage due to their economic situation. Now, especially with the unemployment rate skyrocketing past fourteen percent, the highest in U.S. history according to tradingeconomics.com, more and more families are burdened with financial stress that make affording internet near impossible. For those that remain in the workforce, the long hours required of them during the crisis has introduced a new hurdle to scheduled meetings and even simply making time for assignments. Teacher Michelle Martin-Sullivan paints a vivid image of her problems trying to reach students:

“Many of her students are essential workers at stores like Walmart and have begun picking up extra shifts to support their families. Other students, as well as some teachers, don’t have internet access at all.” (Markus, 2020)

The strain of juggling work and school proves overwhelming for some, and an inability to access wi-fi doubles the load. To put it simply, switching to a pass/fail grading system is at best putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. The wealth gap is proving fatal to the education of low-income students, and even for those who can enter their virtual classrooms, a matter of privacy comes into question...

Did We Not Learn Anything From 1984?

Now, Zoom and test proctors are far from Orwell’s terrifying surveillance state, but the point of individual privacy and discomfort of being watched still stand. Zoom has been faced with criticism over its security and privacy practices from the moment it exploded in popularity at the front end of the pandemic, but even as the service has addressed these concerns, one major flaw continues to present itself: for free users, end-to-end encryption of data will not be offered. As explained by Wired’s Lily Hay Newman:

“End-to-end encryption allows data to move between devices in a form that is unreadable to anyone other than the recipients—protecting the information in transit from snooping by your internet service provider, the government, or communication platforms themselves.” (Newman, 2020)

On top of Zoom ‘hackers’ infiltrating calls and potential for sensitive information to be stolen, the company seems to be more concerned with profitability than the safety of its users.

Post-lecture, many teachers and professors have taken to using proctoring software/services such as Examity or Proctorio to discourage cheating. However, both algorithmic and live proctors suffer from drawbacks. Using a machine to detect cheating may initially seem productive, but based on how the a.i. was trained, there could be a bias in favor of certain skin tones, face shapes, etc. as experienced by a University of Washington student and described to Rebecca Heilweil:

“...the tool’s facial detection algorithm seemed to struggle to recognize them, so they needed to sit in the full light of the window to better expose the contours of their face, in their view an indication that the system might be biased.” (Heilweil, 2020)

In a separate article, Heilweil explains this trained bias in more detail.

“Often, the data on which many of these decision-making systems are trained or checked are often not complete, balanced, or selected appropriately, and that can be a major source of — although certainly not the only source — of algorithmic bias.”

Human proctors, on the other hand, are widely viewed as an invasion of privacy by students. Having a teacher walk around the room during the exam is quite different than this virtual ‘equivalent,’ where students are monitored one-on-one. As if exams weren’t stressful enough, test-takers must additionally try not to alert the proctor, who is watching them for the entirety of the exam, to potentially suspicious behavior such as eye movement or whispering. As Jackson Hayes from the University of Arizona phrases it:

“’Every student I know finds this the creepiest thing ever,’ Hayes says. On his campus, he finds, ‘the predominant feeling towards Examity is ‘Screw this.’” (Chin, 2020)

Orwell is laughing in his grave, as far as I’m concerned.

 All this is to say...

Through the mess of virtual learning, it is beyond troublesome for students to get the education they (or their parents) are paying for. Despite this, though, teachers are still working hard to reach their students. This may be our temporary normal, but just as this haphazard system was created, so can we try to make the best of a less than ideal situation. I’ll always feel a pang of regret not getting to experience the last third of my senior year live, but hopefully I- and everyone else- will come out stronger for it.

“The COVID-19 crisis may well change our world and our global outlook; it may also teach us about how education needs to change to be able to better prepare our young learners for what the future might hold.” (Luthra, Mackenzie, 2020)

Sources:

Images, in order of appearance:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/31/21197215/how-to-zoom-free-account-get-started-register-sign-up-log-in-invite

https://www.forbes.com/sites/yolarobert1/2020/04/30/heres-why-youre-feeling-zoom-fatigue/#b6a61112ac69

https://lakecentralnews.com/45022/top-stories/life-with-essential-worker-in-family/

[created by author]

[created by author]

Links, in order of use:

https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/06/03/how-did-covid-19-change-your-teaching-for.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/sunday-review/zoom-video-conference.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/coronavirus-schools-attendance-absent.html

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate#:~:text=Unemployment%20Rate%20in%20the%20United,percent%20in%20May%20of%201953.

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21233042/coronavirus-online-learning-teachers-students

https://www.wired.com/story/zoom-end-to-end-encryption-paid-accounts/

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/4/21241062/schools-cheating-proctorio-artificial-intelligence

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/18/21121286/algorithms-bias-discrimination-facial-recognition-transparency

https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/29/21232777/examity-remote-test-proctoring-online-class-education

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/4-ways-covid-19-education-future-generations/

[mywgu]

How to Pass the TEAS Without Studying at All: The Secret to a Guaranteed 90%

If you're gearing up to take the Test of Essential Academic Skills (TEAS), you're probably feeling the pressure. With so much on the line—like getting into your desired nursing program—acing this exam is crucial. But what if I told you there’s a way to pass the TEAS without hitting the books? Even better, you could secure a 90% score effortlessly.

It might sound too good to be true, but there's a growing trend that’s making this possible. The solution? Pay someone to take your TEAS on your behalf.

Why Study When You Can Guarantee Success?

The TEAS covers four main areas: Reading, Mathematics, Science, and English & Language Usage. Preparing for these subjects can be daunting and time-consuming, especially if you're balancing work, school, or other responsibilities. Instead of stressing out, there's a convenient alternative: letting an expert handle it for you.

How Does It Work?

At TakeMyTEASPro, professionals with a deep understanding of the TEAS exam offer to take the test on your behalf. They have mastered the material, know the ins and outs of the exam format, and are well-versed in the strategies needed to secure high scores.

Here’s how the process works:

Sign Up: Visit the website and create an account.

Provide Details: Share the necessary information about your upcoming exam—like the date, time, and testing platform.

Relax: Once everything is set up, you can sit back and relax. The experts at TakeMyTEASPro will handle the rest, ensuring a score of 90% or higher.

Is It Worth It?

Absolutely. The time and stress you'll save are invaluable. Plus, the peace of mind that comes with knowing your future is in good hands is priceless. Whether you're struggling to find study time or simply want a guaranteed pass, this is the perfect solution.

Don’t Leave Your Future to Chance

When it comes to something as important as the TEAS, why take risks? With take my teas you're not just passing the exam—you’re acing it. Forget the late-night study sessions and endless practice tests. Opt for the smarter, stress-free route to success.

Disclaimer: While this method guarantees a high score, it's important to consider the ethical implications and potential consequences. Always make informed decisions that align with your personal values and academic goals.

By leveraging services like hire someone to take my teas online , you can confidently face the TEAS without the anxiety that comes with preparation. Make the smart choice and ensure your success today!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Proctorio's awful reviews disappear down the memory hole

Remember Proctorio? They’re the “remote proctoring” company that boomed during the pandemic by promising that they could stop exam cheating through gross, discriminatory privacy invasions and snake-oil machine learning.

In case you’ve lost the thread (it’s been a minute), Proctorio is a tool that transforms students’ personal computers into surveillance tools.

For example, when you sit down, you have to use your webcam to give a remote party a tour of your room. If you live in crowded conditions (say, in a one-room flat with an “essential worker” who works night shifts), you can get failed before you even start.

Got kids? Better get ’em used to LARPing Flowers in the Attic (or, you know, The Diary of Anne Frank) because their crying or talking can also flunk you. Shhh, the robots are judging Mummy.

Homeless? Studying from a library? Getting your broadband in a car in a Taco Bell parking lot? You just failed.

But say you can find a private, silent room to sit your exam in. Do you look up or stare into space while you think? Do you sometimes whisper to yourself as you try to work out complicated ideas?

Fail.

OK, say you can find a private room, good broadband, and discipline your unconscious facial expressions — are you clear?

No.

Do you get so anxious from sitting exams that you throw up? Better not lean over to do it.

Do you need to go to the toilet? Maybe because you’re recovering from surgery, or on meds? Fail. Do you have a chronic pain condition that requires you to stretch? How can we be sure you’re not cheating?

But say you manage to sit perfectly still, eyes locked on your screen, mouth and urethra clamped shut, in an empty room suffused with the strong, invisible waves of powerful wifi signal.

Do you have brown skin? Ooh, sorry.

Proctorio’s facial recognition “AI” struggles with dark skin. No worries, though: parents of brown and Black kids help them succeed in education by shining multiple task lights directly in their faces while they write their exams. When life gives you SARS, make sarsaparilla!

Despite all of this, Proctorio continues to attract customers, often publicly funded universities, who have showered it in money. To keep those money-faucets gushing, the company has to keep its critics’ mouths shut.

Which is how the company’s CEO came to dox a child who complained about his product in a Reddit forum (don’t worry, the company told The Guardian that they “take privacy seriously”).

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#moral-exemplar

But it’s not just students that Proctorio tries to terrorize into silence — it’s the employees of educational institutions, the people whose job it is to assess products like Proctorio and help instructors integrate them into their teaching.

People like Ian Linkletter, an ed-tech specialist at UBC who was sued by Proctoriofor linking to its publicly accessible training materials while pointing out how Proctorio’s claims about fairness and privacy were belied by its own documentation.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/17/proctorio-v-linkletter/#proctorio

The suit was a pure SLAPP, a bid to use obviously bogus legal theories in a bid to intimidate a critic into silence. Linkletter didn’t fold — he fundraised tens of thousands of dollars and fought them in court — and won.

https://twitter.com/Linkletter/status/1418344850009722883

Now, after 18-odd months of pandemic profiteering, the riches they coronagrifted off the misery of children, especially poor and racialized children, are in danger. For one thing, it’s becoming undeniable that remote proctoring is bullshit.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/24/proctor-ology/#miseducation

High-stakes testing is already pedagogically bankrupt, but when you add in remote spyware, it descends into (blisteringly expensive, absolutely terrifying) farce. It’s morally, technologically and educationally indefensible.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3871423

Major customers like the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are ditching Proctorio after mass student uprisings.

https://twitter.com/Linkletter/status/1432134123708207108

The company is getting desperate. This week, all of the user reviews for the Proctorio plug-in in the Google Chrome Store disappeared. We knew that Proctorio is awfully think-skinned about criticism, but this is next-level poopy-diaper-baby tantrum stuff.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/proctorio/fpmapakogndmenjcfoajifaaonnkpkei

Because those reviews were…not a good look. We know that because Ian Linkletter scraped them, sorted and highlighted them, and preserved them. He calls them the Proctorio Papers. You can read them here:

https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AFiWHroUCtRaPHk&id=6C6065C80051AF3C%212131&cid=6C6065C80051AF3C

The disappearance corresponded with Linkletter’s open letter to his senators (he’s a US citizen) asking them to investigate Proctorio’s corrupt practices, starting with the reviews left by students who’d been subjected to its products. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

https://twitter.com/Linkletter/status/1433507616651612164/photo/1

Image:

Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[fictionz]

In the interest of spring

I signed up for four classes this semester, and dropped each one in sequence when the parameters of the class didn’t align with the way I wanted to learn from them.

Piano I was by far the class I was most excited to try, having taken Music Fundamentals last semester. I can now read sheet music on a basic level and play simple ditties and that alone was an incredibly exciting experience. It’s like learning the letters/symbols of a new language and then being able to read a menu at a restaurant. In this way, to learn musical notation and its arrangement on the piano is the means to playing a melody, like learning to read a restaurant menu is a means to selecting a meal. I cannot cook the meal, but I can understand its contents and relay that to a fellow diner. But the class was synchronous and I couldn’t/wouldn’t make time for the biweekly class meetings. But I did invest in the cheapest 88-key digital piano that I could find, so I will chip away at this as a hobby. I’ve always wanted to learn to play music and this is the cusp of that long-held dream.

Then came History of Video Games. This should have been a nice course in which to learn some new tidbits about a subject I know a great deal about, but my recent aversion to writing essays and the professor’s chaotic organization of the class materials put me off.

I’d taken a basics of computer science course some years ago, believing I should pivot to programming as the cornerstone of my career. I’ve been in video games for two decades now and it just feels like I need to make a change to maximize my earnings potential (blargh) because getting old in the United States is terrifying. So hey, why not try Intro to Python Programming? That would’ve been fine except the professor chose to utilize a terrifying quiz and exam security tool called Proctorio. I’ve never seen such bullshit in my many years as an online student. I have the privilege to opt out but I feel awful for students who need to take these classes and abide by this garbage. This monitoring software requires a complete view of the desk the student is using and then tracks their eyes during the test in an attempt to prevent cheating. This also assumes a student has the privilege of a private space in which to conduct this nonsense, which of course makes the experience that much worse for students who are likely living with family or must use a computer and connection out in a public space like a library. It’s like having the professor staring at you during the test. This fucking sucks and I’m still mad and disappointed that this is how colleges and universities have decided to tackle cheating for students who must learn online. Needless to say, I noped out.

And finally, I did find a friendlier programming course in Intro to C++, but realized today that I just don’t have it in me to learn this material seriously right now. I dropped it earlier today and now I’m just working on more videos about licensed video games. Our studio recently granted us 3-month paid sabbaticals (what a concept... and a miracle these days), so I’m thinking I’ll use the time when I get the time off in a few years to find a good programming bootcamp in which I can leverage my unhealthy binge-like productivity and come out of it a programming hopeful.

In the meantime, this will be a spring of reading about piano (I’m still hyped for David Sudnow’s takes on it), video games (Boss Fight books can’t release quickly enough), Deep Space Nine (natch), and going on long walks around the bay area.

[hackernewsrobot]

Teaching Students How to Cheat During the Pandemic

https://daveeargle.com/2020/09/11/kobayashi-maru-proctorio-version/ Comments

[cicadacreativemag]

Proctoring software is a nightmare for students. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Jay Serrano, Editorial Director

As you all know: COVID. In response to the lack of in-person interaction, many colleges and universities have begun to use proprietary software to ensure students do not cheat during exams, most often ProctorU, Proctorio, and ExamSoft. I take 3 issues with this development:

1.) This is spyware.

When you require students to install software that quite literally watches them, that is spyware.

“Spyware describes software with malicious behavior that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send such information to another entity in a way that harms the user; for example by violating their privacy or endangering their device's security.” (Wikipedia)

Modern tech’s propensity for obsessive surveillance has become increasingly difficult to combat and virtually impossible to avoid. However, one would hope higher institutions would advocate for things like data privacy and personal agency. Instead, the director of academic testing services at Utah State University lightheartedly described Proctorio as “sort of like spyware that we just legitimize.” (Washington Post) The University of Arizona’s assistant director of technology  insisted students don’t mind because “they know this is an expectation because their professors put it out there.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the student body says otherwise. (The Verge)  Additionally, the chief executive of Proctorio reflected on the situation with a dystopian, “we’re the police.” (Washington Post)

I could spiral into a separate tangent about how the US obsession with policing and instinct to punish accelerates the meritocratic rot of late stage capitalism under collaborative neoliberal and fascist rule, but suffice to say that no academic software should ever be comparing itself to law enforcement. That’s how dystopian horror movies start. Putting aside this horrendously inappropriate take, violating student privacy is a pattern—schools force us to engage with abusive proprietary software every day. Whether it’s opting us into a relationship with Google via school Gmail accounts, forcing students to have accounts with Adobe Creative Cloud as a requisite for even being able to engage with a course, or holding office hours via Microsoft Teams, there is an insidious drip of our data that is all being funneled through people who want to profit from it. All of these companies have been revealed to be astonishingly abusive with data. Google alone would take an entire new post to cover (4 lawsuits and counting).

I don’t expect universities to be a beacon of free and open-source software, especially given how frankly inconvenient most FOSS is. But I also don’t expect them to gleefully make it worse. Proctor software requires a webcam to view (and, usually, tour) a student’s living space and often uses biometrics to track their physical motion; it often features facial recognition and eye tracking. It also records the event and human proctors may be able to remotely control the student’s machine. (Washington Post) It seems almost absurd to have to explain the Orwellian nature of this type of surveillance, but in case this wasn’t clear: allowing for-profit companies to record and monitor students in their private living spaces because they might look up a Calculus formula is absolutely unhinged.

2.) It isn’t an effective measure for cheating and does not account for students with disabilities or, really, the majority of people.

One of the most infamous features of this type of software is that it tracks eye movement and physical motion. These are, perhaps, pretty easy behaviors to latch onto as signs of academic dishonesty. But, as is often the case, the easiest path is also the laziest and least thoughtful. The assumption that darting eyes and excessive motion are indicators of dishonesty is a lazy one that perpetuates ableist beliefs and assumptions.  Students with ADHD may have a difficult time sitting still or staring directly at the monitor. Students with anxiety may need periods of time to readjust, perhaps closing their eyes to re-center. A student on the autism spectrum may need to stim during an exam. Students with chronic pain and/or fatigue may need to take breaks to stretch or struggle with uncomfortable seating (hi, that’s me.) As one student reported, she struggles with tics, particularly in stressful situations (such as exams), which puts her in a situation where she is being recorded in a vulnerable moment as she struggles with her disability, which she describes as embarrassing.

Even neurotypical students often fidget (clicking a pen, shaking a leg, etc.) It’s a very normal response to stress and hyper-concentration. Several peer-reviewed studies indicate that motion can be an effective tool to aid memory retrieval and clearer cognition. There is no reason to flag this as a suspicious or negative behavior, either in person or virtually. The only reason to discourage this behavior is for their benefit--it is much easier to identify any behavior other than the strictly prescribed one than it is to actually prioritize all students’ learning. Conventional academic settings are notoriously unfriendly to neurodivergent students and are often directly detrimental to the professed goals of teaching and learning. This is very much an institutional problem. It is just even more glaring and naked when distilled in this way--when given the choice between letting students learn comfortably (requiring some recalibration of course material) and forcing disabled students to be recorded by a software that is trained to view them as inherently suspicious, universities chose the latter.

To refocus and summarize: This software strips students of effective coping tools to take a test and hinders their academic performance.

So far, we’ve identified two ways this software works to the detriment of students and have identified zero ways it works to our benefit. At this point, we must ask: “Who does this serve?”

3.) This is a byproduct of institutional laziness that does not value its undergraduate students.

We have access to all the information we could ever need to perform our tasks competently, rendering many old testing styles archaic and impractical. Of course, we should have some working knowledge, but most of us will not be in situations where we have 2 minutes to recall the types of fault lines of the North American plate.

It demonstrates a broader issue: universities take their undergraduate students for granted; they fleece us for money we don’t have under the pretense that good education costs good money, then refuse to intervene when they do not deliver on that promise. We’re forced to spend inordinate amounts of money on textbooks—an 88% increase between 2006 and 2016 (Vox)—and additional equipment like clickers (which are usually just used to take attendance). We have little recourse when our professors (especially tenured professors) implement abusive practices. But we make these institutions run. Without undergraduate students, every single one of these universities would go under. The institutional arrogance and entitlement seems to grow every day, becoming harder and harder to ignore. But we--and more importantly, they--know college is the single most important tool for upward class mobility. As the casualties of late stage capitalism’s death rattle, we have no choice. It’s why they do it--they know they’ll get away with it. They know we have nowhere else to go.

In this specific context, I understand the burden of reconfiguring a course is not an easy one to shoulder and I do not expect professors to suddenly have all the answers. However, by introducing this software, the professor shifts this burden to this student--again. It is not our burden to bear--again. We’re struggling as well—there is no need to make it worse.

Where do we go from here?

Some of my fellow Cicadas pointed out I left this on a fairly depressing note. Although I am determinedly cynical, I don’t think there’s any harm in sharing some ideas.

Proctoring software is generally used for summative assessments, which evaluates student learning at a given benchmark, like a midterm or a final exam. These are high stakes, which means there is a high incentive to cheat, hence the proctors. Formative assessments are lower stakes, things like a quick summary of a lecture or a mini-quiz. Formative assessments aid learning and summative assessments measure learning. Conventional wisdom says both are necessary. A trickle of research has indicated that this may not be the case and this teacher makes a very compelling case as for why summative assessments might not even be necessary anymore.

That in mind, the most logical way to resolve this proctoring issue would be to eliminate time-based, closed note summative tests. There are many ways to achieve this

Solution #1: More (formative) testing.

I think almost everyone can identify with the “cramming for a test” experience. You sit down at 11:00 PM to engage with the material for the first time before your 8:00 AM exam. If you’re like me, maybe you’re only just now reading the textbook (oops). You open Quizlet and stare at the screen till your eyes hurt. Is it too late to email the professor a clarification question? You sleep for 3 hours, remorsefully wobbling your way through the test as you desperately chug the dregs of your coffee. You leave the room and feel overwhelming relief. You pass the test and learn almost nothing.

Henry L. Roediger III, a famous cognitive psychologist known for his research on memory, asserts the following: fast learning leads to fast forgetting. Cramming is popular because it works. At least, long enough to get through the test. His study reveals that self-testing is an incredibly effective tool for learning, but that it is not leveraged in a productive way. He elaborates on a concept known as the “testing effect” and studies better testing practices, all of which you can find here.

Basically, he asserts that one day of intense formative assessments was so effective for learning that it enabled the student to survive a summative assessment. In other words, many times, a cramming situation occurs because the formative assessments either did not happen or they were not effective,

How to implement/Examples:

Quizzes can be embedded into lecture videos using Canvas. Every lecture could be split into multiple videos, each one with graded, embedded quizzes.

This could be a weekly quiz that goes over lecture material. Maybe this quiz has 2-3 attempts and records the highest score.

Solution #2: No memory-based testing.

If summative exams are really necessary, there are other ways to measure mastery of the material. One could argue that assessments such as recitals and other performances require a component of memory, but generally, performance-based summative assessments are an accumulation of all you’ve learned and retain the pressure of a traditional exam without requiring a proctor.

Have you ever taken notes so desperately you didn’t actually absorb what was said? Have you ever just listened to a lecture and been surprised at how much you absorbed? Our fear of not remembering something we’ll need on an exam can be extremely distracting. However, if you can focus on the lecture completely without being distracted, you can have a more meaningful recollection of the material. Maybe you don’t remember Crime and Punishment was published in 1866, but you do remember that it was published in a serialization for 12 months in the 1800s.

How to implement/Examples:

Essays take the place of traditional exams. Instead of a time-based hunt through the treasure trove of young adult memory, a student can take their time to sort through the information they’ve been presented and create a unique response. This does, of course, have its own host of challenges and should be treated carefully, but essays could just as easily measure mastery.

Perhaps a class could be conducted almost entirely through discussions and direct engagement. After every single lecture, you post a summary of what you learned with 3 questions. This is a type of formative testing that could replace mini-quizzes and other memory based assessments.

[mywgu]

How to Override Proctorio: A Guide to Understanding Proctoring Systems

As online exams become increasingly common, proctoring software like Proctorio has gained popularity for its ability to monitor and maintain academic integrity. Proctorio is used to prevent cheating by tracking students’ behavior, monitoring their screens, and analyzing various data points to detect suspicious activity during exams.

How to cheat with proctorio

However, the rise of these systems has also led to debates about privacy, fairness, and how to "override" or circumvent proctoring tools. This blog will explore how Proctorio works, its features, and why trying to bypass or "override" it could have serious consequences for students.

Understanding Proctorio and Its Functions

Proctorio is an AI-driven proctoring software that works by:

Monitoring the student’s screen during the exam to detect any forbidden activities like accessing unauthorized websites or documents.

Tracking student behavior using the webcam and microphone, analyzing face movements, eye tracking, and surrounding noise.

Flagging suspicious behavior such as leaving the exam screen, using multiple screens, or attempting to talk to others during the exam.

Proctorio integrates with learning management systems (LMS) like Blackboard or Canvas, ensuring seamless exam supervision from a student’s home. It uses advanced algorithms to identify patterns of cheating or behavior that deviates from expected norms.

Why Students Want to Override Proctorio

Many students search for ways to "override" Proctorio for several reasons:

Privacy Concerns: Students may feel uncomfortable with the software having access to their cameras, microphones, and screens.

Technical Issues: Proctorio can sometimes falsely flag innocent behavior, leading to unfair exam results or requiring extra explanations.

Performance Anxiety: The constant monitoring can lead to stress and anxiety, negatively impacting the student’s performance.

Unfair Situations: Some students believe Proctorio can misinterpret natural behaviors (e.g., looking away from the screen briefly) as cheating, which can result in unfair accusations.

While these concerns are valid, it's crucial to understand that attempting to override or circumvent Proctorio’s systems can have serious repercussions.

Consequences of Overriding Proctorio

Before considering ways to "override" Proctorio, it’s important to be aware of the consequences:

Academic Penalties: If caught, you can face severe academic penalties, including failing the exam, being reported for academic misconduct, or even expulsion.

Permanent Record: Many academic institutions keep a permanent record of cheating attempts, which can affect your educational and career prospects.

Ethical Implications: Beyond academic consequences, overriding Proctorio goes against the values of honesty and integrity that educational institutions promote.

Is It Possible to Override Proctorio?

Proctorio is designed to be highly secure, but some users might attempt to circumvent it using tactics like:

Disabling the camera or microphone: This might prevent Proctorio from monitoring the student properly, but the software can detect when devices are disabled and will flag it as suspicious behavior.

Using a virtual machine: Some students may try to run Proctorio within a virtual machine to bypass monitoring. However, Proctorio’s detection mechanisms can often identify the use of such software and flag it as a violation.

Screen sharing with another device: Attempting to use a secondary device for assistance (such as a mobile phone or another laptop) can also be detected by Proctorio’s screen and environment tracking capabilities.

External help: Collaborating with someone off-camera for answers may not go unnoticed, as Proctorio monitors audio for unusual noises and shifts in the test-taker’s environment.

While these methods may seem tempting, it's essential to remember that Proctorio’s algorithms are designed to detect abnormalities in behavior, environment, and system use. Even if a circumvention method initially works, the software’s post-exam analysis can reveal irregularities.

Ethical Alternatives to Proctorio

Rather than trying to override Proctorio, consider these ethical alternatives to reduce stress and ensure success in your exams:

Preparation: Make sure you thoroughly prepare for your exam. This will reduce the need to seek shortcuts.

Communicate with your instructor: If you have concerns about privacy, anxiety, or technical issues with Proctorio, talk to your instructor. They may offer accommodations or alternative proctoring methods.

Practice Exams: Many institutions provide practice exams with Proctorio, allowing you to familiarize yourself with the software and reduce anxiety.

Ensure a Proper Testing Environment: Eliminate distractions, make sure your equipment works correctly, and follow the guidelines to avoid any accidental flags during the exam.

Conclusion

While the temptation to "override Proctorio" may arise out of frustration or anxiety, it’s important to weigh the risks and consider the long-term implications of such actions. Proctoring systems like Proctorio are designed to uphold academic integrity and fairness. Instead of seeking shortcuts, prepare well, follow the rules, and maintain open communication with your instructors if you experience difficulties with the software.

Ultimately, maintaining integrity and staying within the boundaries of ethical behavior will not only help you avoid trouble but also ensure your hard work and achievements are rightfully earned.

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The pandemic showed remote proctoring to be worse than useless

Before covid, “remote proctoring” tools were a niche product, invasive tools that spied on students who needed to take high-stakes tests but couldn’t get to campus or a satellite test-taking room. But the lockdown meant that all students found themselves in this position.

This could have prompted educators to reconsider the use of high-stakes tests. After all, high-stakes testing has well-understood limitations in pedagogy, and organizes education around a highly artificial ritual completely unlike the rest of scholarly and industrial life.

It’s not like anyone does a job where you are prohibited from consulting reference texts or collaborating with your colleagues (if you have an colleague who does this, you should probably ask to be transferred to another team).

While in the academy, neither scholars nor researchers work without collaboration or access to references. It’s not clear what, exactly, a high-stakes test measures, apart from your ability to engage in the useless, non-transferrable skill of sitting a high-stakes test.

But rather than rethinking assessment, educational institutions doubled down on remote proctoring, throwing stupendous sums at companies that made outrageous promises about their ability to automatically detect cheating with “AI.”

While this threw every student into a meat-grinder of opaque algorithmic cruelty, not every student suffered equally. In “Rejecting Test Surveillance in Higher Education,” Georgetown Law’s Lindsey Barrett describes the unequal and disproportionate harms.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3871423

While Barrett’s paper is long and thoughtful, the introduction tells five stories, smartly making the case that if you are already marginalized, remote proctoring hurts you more than your fellows, magnifying your existing disadvantages.

Jazi: “a first-generation student” and caretaker (thanks to covid), who “was flagged for ‘suspicious noise’” (small children) “by the software recording her take an exam in her family’s home,” who “emptied her bank account to pay for on-campus housing.”

Ashley, who “dissolved into tears” when “a remote proctor with access to her computer kept moving her cursor…distracting her and exacerbating her anxiety about her performance.”

Audrey, “a transgender student at the Georgia Institute of Technology” who was “humiliated” when a remote proctor demanded their professor to confirm Audrey’s identity thanks to a photo ID that didn’t match their gender presentation.

Tracy, a OSU grad with ADHD who could only use “‘half her brain” on her remotely proctored exam, using the other half to police “the minor fidgeting that is a side effect of her condition, as she was afraid the software would characterize her movements as suspect.”

Ahmed, “an Arab-American law school graduate, estimated that he tried 75 times to get the remote proctoring software he would be required to use on the bar exam to recognize his face. It never did.”

If you are poor, if you have a disability, if you struggle with your mental health, if you are racialized, if you are gender nonconforming, then remote proctoring tools punished you for who you were, far more than it did your peers.

Remote proctoring companies were incredibly successful covid profiteers, growing by leaps and bounds during the pandemic. As they grew, so did the harms they imposed on the public.

The companies responded to bad news about their products by deploying their covid riches to threaten their critics. Proctorio went after educators like Ian Linkletter with a baseless — but ruinously expensive — copyright claim to silence his criticism.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/17/proctorio-v-linkletter/#proctorio

But Proctorio didn’t limit its harassment to adults who could take care of themselves — the CEO personally doxed a student who criticized his product on Reddit.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#moral-exemplar

Proctorio isn’t an outlier. The entire sector runs on bad faith, bullying and legal harassment. EFF’s massive roundup of the lies and frauds of the remote proctoring sector is a good place to refresh your memory.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/long-overdue-reckoning-online-proctoring-companies-may-finally-be-here

Be sure to read to the end, where Jason Kelley and Haley Amster document how, after apologizing and promising changes, the leading remote proctoring companies are still wreaking havoc.

After all, these are companies that claim they can automatically rank whether students are “high integrity” or “low integrity” and produce “suspicion rankings” based on data analysis. This isn’t computer science, it’s digital phrenology.

Barrett ends well: “Recommendations For Use of Remote Proctoring Software: Don’t.” Instead, she sets out a of alternatives to high-stakes testing, including “long papers graded at multiple stages,” “short response papers” and “presentations with a peer critique component.”

If you must use timed, remote exams, change parameters to make gaming harder: allow open books, randomize question orders, and encourage collaboration.

If you need to hire more TAs to help grade these more pedagogically useful assessments, look to the savings from ditching remote proctoring tools, like the $500k/year that some schools are paying Proctorio.

Above all, Barrett says, don’t normalize this. This was a mistake, something that compounded the pain of the lockdown. This is the moment to reassess our approach: to reverse the alarming trend of increasing commercial surveillance of our students.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/06/boogeration/#i-spy