[PragmaticPulp]

> You don't succeed in remote teaching and learning by trying to make it as close as possible to the in-person setup. You have to treat it as an entirely different problem.

I agree at a high level, but practically speaking it's not realistic to expect colleges to completely reinvent their entire teaching systems for a temporary, 1-2 year remote learning period.

Now that we've been dealing with COVID for almost an entire year, it's easy to forget that at one point we thought this would all be over in a matter of weeks or months. The situation was also evolving in real time. Colleges were looking for the most efficient stop-gap solutions, not for ways to completely overhaul their learning experience.

> It is also practically impossible to prevent cheating.

It's a mistake to assume that because we can't eliminate all cheating, we shouldn't bother reducing any cheating.

The advantage of synchronous test taking is that everyone is exposed to the problem set at the same time. The obvious cheat with asynchronous test taking would be for one person to volunteer to take the test early and then send the questions to their peers, all of whom take the test at the last possible minute.

This happens whenever in-person classes offer two time slots for taking a test. The later time slot is always far more packed than the first and comes back with significantly higher scores. Adding the internet and screenshots/camera phones to the equation amplifies this because students can share the exact test, not just what they recall from memory.

> In an online setting however, people can face all sort of troubles in a few hour window in their home. Your internet might stop working, neighbor might be making too much noise etc.

Educators aren't oblivious to this fact. Working with students who have interruptions is just part of the job. Having someone lose internet isn't much different from having someone get a flat tire on the way to the test. It happens, we deal with it, and it's fine.

I also think you're not giving students enough credit. They're not dumb. If noise is a problem, they're going to use headphones. If internet is flakey, they're going to find a better location to take a test.

It's such a weird double standard to see HN champion work from home as unequivocally superior to working in an office, yet whenever the topic of learning from home comes up we get a laundry list of what-about possibilities that might make the experience worse.

[KallDrexx]

> I agree at a high level, but practically speaking it's not realistic to expect colleges to completely reinvent their entire teaching systems for a temporary, 1-2 year remote learning period.

I don't really understand what you mean by this though. I graduated college in 2007, and all throughout my time from 2003-2007 I had half my courses online, including the quizzes and tests.

Online courses and asynchronous testing isn't something new to Covid, colleges have been doing it for well over a decade now.

Yes you had people try and cheat their way through asynchronous testing by having friends take them earlier, but why is that more of a big deal now than it was previously?

[saagarjha]

> I also think you're not giving students enough credit. They're not dumb. If noise is a problem, they're going to use headphones. If internet is flakey, they're going to find a better location to take a test.

They aren't, but many are much less privileged than you are making them out to be. My mom teaches students who join her class from their car parked as close as possible to get a weak Wi-Fi signal from their house because they have no quiet places at home.

[saghm]

> It's such a weird double standard to see HN champion work from home as unequivocally superior to working in an office, yet whenever the topic of learning from home comes up we get a laundry list of what-about possibilities that might make the experience worse.

This seems like a false equivalence; most employers don't use surveillance software to ensure their remote employees keep their microphone and webcam on, continue looking at the screen at all times, etc. One of the benefits of working from home is that your privacy is _increased_ compared to working an office; if everyone needed to allow their boss or HR or whoever to demand microphone and webcam access to me as they worked (and no, this is NOT comparable to Zoom meetings), then of course they wouldn't be praising work as much.

[Wowfunhappy]

> Now that we've been dealing with COVID for almost an entire year, it's easy to forget that at one point we thought this would all be over in a matter of weeks or months.

I absolutely agree, but I have to say, I also think it's somewhat bizarre that anyone ever thought that. I know it seemed weird to me at the time.

Where exactly did everyone think the pandemic would go after a few months of lockdown?

[DanBC]

> Where exactly did everyone think the pandemic would go after a few months of lockdown?

We thought we'd combine lockdown with tighter quarantines for visitors and excellent test & trace systems with quarantines for people with covid and that we would, like several countries, get covid under control.

[wasdfff]

I TAed this semester and a surprising amount of students have totally terrible internet. One poor kid had to attempt the blackboard exam a dozen times due to connection issues. Even my home network gets saturated with everyone in the neighborhood working from home, which makes zoom calls impossible when lag is spiking, despite having the fastest internet my limited ISP choices offer me.

[lazyasciiart]

In a college scenario, perhaps you can say that dealing with problems is the students responsibility, but for k-12 schools it is the responsibility of the school to provide education even to children with no internet or headphones.

[syshum]

Absent COVID, institution should have been (and many have been) embracing remote learning anyway.

This should have been an option all along, with out the need for a pandemic to force their hand.

>>The advantage of synchronous test taking is that everyone is exposed to the problem set at the same time. The obvious cheat with asynchronous test taking would be for one person to volunteer to take the test early and then send the questions to their peers,

This problem has been largely solved for a long time, because as you noted it is generally impossible to give a test to EVERYONE at the same time.

Thus properly written tests will draw a random selection of questions from a larger pool, the ratio between Pool:Questions the better the security. (i.e a 25 question exam using a 50 question pool is not as secure as a 25 question exam using a 200 question pool)

This method is also used for standardized tests given at the same time, as it cuts out the problem of shoulder surfing or other in-person cheating methods.

[posguy]

PragmaticPulp doesn't seem to have a grasp on how college systems work. From what I have seen UW, Oregon State, Seattle Colleges, etc were already employing question banks and timed test windows rather than resorting to poorly functioning half measures like Respondus LockDown Browser and its ilk.

Many colleges were already fully capable of distance learning in multiple forms, whether through correspondence courses (what WGU often pitches, complete the project or test and bypass the class, though some of their certificate partners abuse test takers with Respondus or similar) or online learning with systems like Canvas.

Decent colleges offer a mix of these, I can attest to the quality of these programs at Seattle Colleges (specifically North Seattle College & Seattle Central). There is little value in building a panopticon of surveillance in higher education, especially when these divert resources that would otherwise enable students to better master the subject.

[throwaway201103]

Most colleges offered correspondence courses in the pre-internet era. You did everything by mail. There was no proof that you did the work yourself; it was just a matter of trust. I took a required writing course that way because it never worked out to schedule it as a regular class. I think for some of the classes that had exams you maybe went to a local exam center where a proctor would check your ID and you'd take the exam. I don't know what they did if there wasn't an exam center conveniently nearby.