Finals are the natural end to a semester, showcasing cumulative knowledge, testing critical thinking and Quizlet expertise. The future is now, old man.
Having final exams held only online would be a mistake, lessening the importance of a degree.
Tests taken online, no matter what the rule is, are now an open-note free-for-all. Proctoring can only go so far. Previously, an open-note test made a question a critical thinking exercise. Not having questions taken directly from a textbook tested understanding, deciphering what’s being asked to express an answer into someone’s own words. From experience, tests taken online tend to be multiple choice, and the sophistication through sites such as Quizlet, Chegg, Course Hero or the abused ChatGPT, turns the student into nothing more than a middle-man.
Yuja, now used in all nine colleges in the LACCD, allows for “secure test proctoring” while “protecting integrity and balancing privacy concerns.” Unfortunately, downloading a browser extension isn’t something that is comfortably done by everyone (such as installing Zoom). A major difference is that YuJa requires a webcam feed to be rotated, showing the student’s surrounding area in a 360 degree turn and even asking to see under their seating area to show no outside sources helping them. An audio and video recording is made of the person taking the test as well as a recording of their screen, validating their trustworthiness, but it only goes so far.
The attention span on average is 47 seconds before switching to another screen, according to Chancellor’s Professor of Informatics at the University of California Gloria Mark during an interview with Steve Parton for Singularity (su.org) on Nov. 14, 2022.
“And that’s the average. The median is 40 seconds,” said Mark. “Attention spans are shrinking.”
Reviews.org in 2024 did a report showing that the average American checks their phone 205 times a day and this is only rising, an increase of 42% from 2023.
So why is this important? Yuja only monitors what is being accessed on a person’s computer and whatever it can see from the webcam. A phone could easily bypass any of this proctoring protection the extension applies. So, if people aren’t able to stay off their phone when going from point A to B, why wouldn’t a student use theirs to avoid an F.
