Posts Tagged ‘proctoring software’

automated proctoring

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-11-19-automated-proctoring-swept-in-during-pandemic-it-s-likely-to-stick-around-despite-concerns

law student sued an automated proctoring company, students have complained about their use in student newspaper editorials and professors have compared them to Big Brother.

ProctorU, which has decided not to sell software that uses algorithms to detect cheating

recent Educause study found that 63 percent of colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada mention the use of remote proctoring on their websites.

One reason colleges are holding onto proctoring tools, Urdan adds, is that many colleges plan to expand their online course offerings even after campus activities return to normal. And the pandemic also saw rapid growth of another tech trend: students using websites to cheat on exams.

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More on proctoring in this blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=proctoring

AI use in education

EDUCAUSE QuickPoll Results: Artificial Intelligence Use in Higher Education

D. Christopher Brooks” Friday, June 11, 2021

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2021/6/educause-quickpoll-results-artificial-intelligence-use-in-higher-education

AI is being used to monitor students and their work. The most prominent uses of AI in higher education are attached to applications designed to protect or preserve academic integrity through the use of plagiarism-detection software (60%) and proctoring applications (42%) (see figure 1).

The chatbots are coming! A sizable percentage (36%) of respondents reported that chatbots and digital assistants are in use at least somewhat on their campuses, with another 17% reporting that their institutions are in the planning, piloting, and initial stages of use (see figure 2). The use of chatbots in higher education by admissions, student affairs, career services, and other student success and support units is not entirely new, but the pandemic has likely contributed to an increase in their use as they help students get efficient, relevant, and correct answers to their questions without long waits.Footnote10 Chatbots may also liberate staff from repeatedly responding to the same questions and reduce errors by deploying updates immediately and universally.

AI is being used for student success tools such as identifying students who are at-risk academically (22%) and sending early academic warnings (16%); another 14% reported that their institutions are in the stage of planning, piloting, and initial usage of AI for these tasks.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents said that ineffective data management and integration (72%) and insufficient technical expertise (71%) present at least a moderate challenge to AI implementation. Financial concerns (67%) and immature data governance (66%) also pose challenges. Insufficient leadership support (56%) is a foundational challenge that is related to each of the previous listed challenges in this group.

Current use of AI

  • Chatbots for informational and technical support, HR benefits questions, parking questions, service desk questions, and student tutoring
  • Research applications, conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and data science research (my italics)
  • Library services (my italics)
  • Recruitment of prospective students
  • Providing individual instructional material pathways, assessment feedback, and adaptive learning software
  • Proctoring and plagiarism detection
  • Student engagement support and nudging, monitoring well-being, and predicting likelihood of disengaging the institution
  • Detection of network attacks
  • Recommender systems

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more on AI in education in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=artificial+intelligence+education

Chegg and academic integrity

https://www.dailyemerald.com/news/students-cheat-with-online-learning-service-professors-hope-to-identify-users/article_552d56f4-5a31-11eb-98ae-879264ec0299.html

Services like Chegg have become more accessible to students during unproctored exams in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, causing what UO chemistry professor Shannon Boettcher believes is a “huge problem with academic dishonesty across the nation in the light of remote learning and COVID-19.”

he Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s notice and takedown process requires that service providers remove material that a copyright owner identifies on their website through a valid notice of copyright infringement or become subject to potential secondary liability for assisting with copyright infringement, according to Copyright Alliance.

Chegg Inc. has been sued twice in federal court for claims of copyright infringement, denying allegations in both instances.

Apart from its subscription services, Chegg rents and sells textbooks. The publishing company John Wiley & Sons Inc. filed a lawsuit against Chegg on Dec. 18, 2018, in Manhattan U.S. District Court, alleging that Chegg sold counterfeit versions of its textbooks.

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This $12 Billion Company Is Getting Rich Off Students Cheating Their Way Through Covid

https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2021/01/28/this-12-billion-company-is-getting-rich-off-students-cheating-their-way-through-covid

Chegg is based in Santa Clara, California, but the heart of its operation is in India, where it employs more than 70,000 experts with advanced math, science, technology and engineering degrees. The experts, who work freelance, are online 24/7, supplying step-by-step answers to questions posted by subscribers (sometimes answered in less than 15 minutes).

Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig has profited handsomely. His holdings in Chegg plus after-tax proceeds from stock sales add up to $300 million. Rosensweig, who declined to speak to Forbes, has said that Chegg Study was “not built” for cheating. He describes it instead as the equivalent of an asynchronous, always-on tutor, ready to help students with detailed answers to problems. In a 2019 interview, he said higher education needs to adjust to the on-demand economy, the way Uber or Amazon have.

Throughout the pandemic, schools have spent millions on remote proctoring, a controversial practice in which colleges pay private companies like Honorlock and Examity to surveil students while they take tests.

Chegg Study was enjoying steady growth and little competition. Its only serious rival, privately held Course Hero, is a much smaller operation, valued at $1.1 billion, that generates most of its answers from students.

My note:

such proliferation would not have been possible, if the middle and upper administration has been more supportive of faculty when misconduct is detected. If the administration turns blind eye due to “enrollment” and “retention” priorities and curbs faculty reports regarding academic dishonesty, the industry naturally fills out the gap between a mere syllabus statement and inability to act upon it.

There is plenty of lipservice regarding “personalized learning,” but the reality is overworked faculty, who do not have the opportunity to spend sufficient time with students, less to educate them about plagiarism, cheating and similar “auxiliary” trends besides the content of the course.

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more on cheating in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=cheating