The bottom line is that our upper administration does not trust students to learn and they do not trust us to serve them well. I think we already knew this (can anyone define the acronym NCAA?).
Right now, I am trying to make sure students have enough food and are thinking ahead to the possibility of total lockdown. I am asking them to figure out who they can help and who can help them. I am asking them to draw a picture of their pod, and make a schedule
for checking in on people. I am asking them to compare their drawings with their friends and see if they can identify anyone who might slip between the cracks (‘what about that weird Italian guy in the back of the class, I bet he’s scared and stuck here, what
is his name??’)
To me, helping them be good people is better than forcing them into a situation where they see no choice but ‘cheating’. We are the ones putting them into a morally compromising situation. Please, friends, help them help themselves!
From: Christopher Pavsek <cpavsek@sfu.ca>
Sent: March 20, 2020 9:16:19 PM
To: academic-discussion (academic-discussion@sfu.ca)
Subject: Re: Good ideas for final exams?
You are not alone in such a thought. Years ago, I heard a great story from Enrique Dussel, who was a guest prof at my grad school. Dussel was in Louis Althusser’s office and told Althusser that Foucault had come back from the asylum where he was doing
research (for Madness and Civilization, I’m guessing?). Althusser said, “They should have kept him there!” Clearly, Althusser, who later would belong in an asylum, thought Foucault deserved a dose of the medicine he was studying.
(Dussel also told the even better story of how he was talking with Althusser about Derrida and Althusser said, (and imagine this in Dussel’s super thick Argentinian accented English, “That Derrida, HE TALKS TOO MUCH!,” the irony being that Derrida
had wanted to undermine the primacy of speech but couldn’t shut up. Dussel could tell these stories and then quote Hegel line and verse through the tears of his laughter.)
My point? I guess Foucault would have probably been fine with being mugged—he may even have celebrated it as an act of resistance or an instance of the class struggle--but I am not certain. But I can bet that he would not have minded a bit of
cheating on an online final exam in the middle of a pandemic.
Chris
I've always wondered what Foucault would do if he were mugged. Would he hope that there was some surveillance video handy to help bring his attacker to justice? Just as a thought experiment : )
Michael Filimowicz, PhD
Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology
School
of Interactive Arts and Technology |
Simon Fraser University
Office: SUR 2818
| 250-13450 102 Ave. Surrey, BC V3T 0A3
T:
778-782-8178 | Skype
ID: michael.filimowicz
Thank god the administration has at least the sense to see problems with online surveillance technology.
It’s astonishing that such tech is even being considered on our campus: is the Virus and Cheating such a threat to the integrity of society that we need to monitor our students’ eye movements? What’s next, facial recognition technology? Or are
we already down with that too? Just as having a cop walk the beat is a far cry from having server farms process millions of points of facial data, so too is Proctorio a far cry from a prof and a TA walking the aisles of a lecture hall looking for crib sheets
on the brims of baseball caps.
I can’t help but feel a profound sense of déjà vu—as an American who watched the US pass the Patriot Act after 9-11, which “normalized” levels of surveillance and intrusion into American lives that were unthinkable on September 10, I can’t help
but feel that the apparent “urgency” of our current moment leads us to adopt this kind of surveillance practice with barely any debate or even the slightest flutter of doubt. The crisis here is one of health, and we are permitting it to make us go nuts in
the university. (As an aside: at this point, really, who cares if our students cheat? I worry for the honest amongst our students, but they will do well no matter what.)
I can only imagine what will be coming in the months ahead. What will the Covid-19 pandemic be used to justify in the university, in higher education more broadly? Already some uni administrations are using the speed with which faculty have adapted
to online teaching as a demonstration that it could be used more broadly. (Look what we did in 10 days! This ends the debate! Online is the way to go!) What will the financial urgencies of the coming months lead to? Will we accept all of that as easily as
we seem to want to accept something like Proctorio? The name alone—it reminds me not only of proctors of exams, but also of intrusive physical examinations into our nether regions that are, of course, good for us. “You will feel some discomfort, but really,
in the end, it is for your own good."
Please. Don’t let a health emergency make us go crazy in realms that have nothing to do with protecting our health.
God, I wish Foucault were here to say something about all this. One can only imagine what he’d have to say.
Chris
Good evening,
From today's Deans Advisory Council meeting: CEE strongly recommends against using Proctorio because of serious privacy issues and a high rate of false positives in cheating.
- Sean Zwagerman
Sean Zwagerman
Associate Dean, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies,
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Associate Professor, Department of English
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby/Vancouver, BC
office: 6164 AQ
cell: 604-374-1468
campus: 778-782-4967
From: Leanne Ramer <lramer@sfu.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2020 4:00 PM
To: Nicholas Blomley; Christopher Pavsek
Cc: academic-discussion (academic-discussion@sfu.ca)
Subject: Re: Good ideas for final exams?
I have requested an institutional license for Proctorio (similar to UBC's). If anyone has a connection for making this happen more quickly, please reach out to them! This is the best way to offer online exams (in my opinion).
Thanks and best,
Leanne
Leanne Ramer, PhD
lramer@sfu.ca
Lecturer, Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology
Anatomy Aficionado
|