[Bodell]

While none of this would push me so far as to personally cheat, I do completely agree with your comment. Due to lose of work and virtually any prospects, caused by covid, I have returned to school for the first time in 10 years. Since doing so I have felt emphatically everything you have mentioned.

Although I do not attend a top school ( it’s a local tech school) and they do not have “top-proctoring” software, the same points still hold.

1: my classes are mostly just me reading my book and filling out online material with next to no feedback on anything. The computer grades most of my work. Some of my professors have refused to answer questions and respond to emails. I even proved my English teacher wasn’t reading my assignment by asking questions personally to him parenthetically which have gone unnoticed. I accidentally turned in the same summary assignment twice and received wildly different grades ( one a 100% the other 75%). Math has been okay but the free materials online are far better and most fellow classmates I talk to are learning everything on Kahn and ignoring the online class material.

2: We do use a proctor software. And I have been threatened more times than I can count about zeros and cheating, as if every single one of us is out to cheat. This holds particularly true, and rather ironically, for my ethics class. Where even our pre-test prep materials have to be done on camera, with full “environmental checks” etc. To top it off the system also keeps us from seeing what we got right or wrong on any test, pre/prep or not. Which to me defeats the purpose of the whole exercise, and really the foundation of learning.

Agin I do not condone cheating but I do agree that backing everyone into a corner like this offers them less options and they will fight back to some degree. Mostly, what I am seeing though is a 25% drop out rate (at half way through the semester). I’m not sure if this is normal but to me it feels high considering most of those happened after the date in which you could be refunded.