From Pine View Farm

Proctoring Gamble 0

I have seen numerous references to schools and colleges monitoring of student behavior during these times of remote teaching via Zoom and similar applications.

Like Google and Facebook, they watch what students are doing on their computers to make sure they are behaving the way the educational institution thinks they should behave or, indeed, have the unmitigated gall to take a bathroom break or get a Coke (Above the Law has some particularly egregious examples from bar exams).

At Psychology Today Blogs, Phil Reed takes a look at the larger issue machine learning and includes some strong thoughts on micromanaged digital monitoring. Here’s a bit:

In fact, the new digital approaches to learning retain all of the old aversiveness of classrooms from the 1930s but now coupled with a rather unpleasant odour of Orwell’s 1984. The fact that digital environments lend themselves so easily to this type of Big Brother-esque monitoring and control does not mean that they should be used in that way. Controlling learning, like governing, by aversive outcomes does not work. The fact that it is used so often may say something about the psychology of those setting up such systems, but it does not say much for their reading of the science of learning.

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