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from the 1984-was-not-a-"how-to"-manual dept.
When Syracuse University freshmen walk into professor Jeff Rubin's Introduction to Information Technologies class, seven small Bluetooth beacons hidden around the Grant Auditorium lecture hall connect with an app on their smartphones and boost their "attendance points." And when they skip class? The SpotterEDU app sees that, too, logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade. It also alerts Rubin, who later contacts students to ask where they've been. His 340-person lecture has never been so full.
"They want those points," he said. "They know I'm watching and acting on it. So, behaviorally, they change."
Short-range phone sensors and campuswide Wi-Fi networks are empowering colleges across the United States to track hundreds of thousands of students more precisely than ever before. Dozens of schools now use such technology to monitor students' academic performance, analyse their conduct or assess their mental health.
But some professors and education advocates argue that the systems represent a new low in intrusive technology, breaching students' privacy on a massive scale. The tracking systems, they worry, will infantilise students in the very place where they're expected to grow into adults, further training them to see surveillance as a normal part of living, whether they like it or not.
In response we have:
How to (Hypothetically) Hack Your School's Surveillance System:
This week, hacktivist and security engineer Lance R. Vick tweeted an enticing proposition along with a gut-punch headline: "Colleges are turning students' phones into surveillance machines, tracking the locations of hundreds of thousands," read the Washington Post link.
Vick countered with an offer to students:
If you are at one of these schools asking you to install apps on your phone to track you, hit me up for some totally hypothetical academic ideas on how one might dismantle such a system.
We're always up for hacker class, so Vick supplied Gizmodo with a few theories for inquiring minds.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday December 29 2019, @11:20PM (1 child)
Let's be clear: the ideal learning model is one on one learning with a professor who is both an expert in the material and in pedagogy. Unfortunately, that is not practical or cost efficient, so you end up with one professor in a subject paired with multiple students, but not enough that the professor cannot provide personalized education.
That's the problem with most "universities", where the professors do research and by contract are required to teach classes (esp. to undergrad) where they lecture (not teach!) to an auditorium of hundreds of students.
I had the fortune of going to a great liberal arts college where the class sizes ranged from 5 to 30, and the traditional university lecture - office hours - test format worked just fine.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 30 2019, @03:22AM
That beats the shit out of my university with an "average class size of 9 students," because - if you know how averages work, you can have 101 classes in that university, 100 graduate level specialty classes with a 1:1 student-teacher ratio, and a single massive freshman lecture hall with one professor for 809 students - that's 101 classes with a total of 909 students in them et. voila': average class size 9 students. Nevermind that 89% of students are experiencing horrific ratios, the published number is 9:1. Of course, I exaggerate, slightly. First semester I think I had 2 classes in the major 100+ student lecture bowl format, most of the rest were in the 35-50 class size range (though the published average was 9:1). The upper level graduate classes I attended later tended to be around 5 or 6 students each.
Yeah, it worked fine for me in the 1980s too - when there wasn't much of an option, I was in my late teens and didn't have anything else to do with my life besides attend school. Here, now, I feel like I can get as much quality learning out of a (well prepared) free online class with lecture videos, robot graded lab exercises and quizzes, at least in computer/math/science/engineering oriented subjects. The main point is: I can slot those learning hours in when they're available in MY existing life, slow days at work or home, not having to restructure my life, and the lives of everyone who depends on me now, around class.
If you want to practice the fine art of literature interpretation and similar things, yeah, that's still best done face to face in a small room with a small number of students paired against a wise old man - and that's going to require some schedule-structure.
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