No, they shouldn’t scan the room. But the tests shouldn’t be taken at home either.

Anyone who thinks this won’t increase cheating is lying to themselves. This is not helping the kids.

The kids are gonna cheat. Tests should be taken in a classroom.

No. Professors should write their tests in a way that actually tests understanding, which is much harder to fake than memorization.

Tests aren't really a good way of assessing learning in the first place. Doing well in them usual just involves temporary memorisation, which has no real value. Education systems should move towards better assessment methods, like project work. analytic reports, and summaries, which also have the benefit of being able to be done remotely if needed.

Agreed. We can't ignore that in many cases, students are in competition with each other for grades. If there's a reasonable assumption that the others have an unfair advantage, you're really not left with an alternative other than to cheat yourself. I think it's fair to compare it to the prevalence of adderall at universities.

I took some graduate courses in an online environment back when that was a relatively new concept in the late 2000s. Everything up until the midterm and final exam were online, and I had to physically go to a designated test area for those. I felt reasonably assured that everyone else was being held to the same standard.

In other words poor assessments demand even poorer methods of enforcing integrity. Also, a graduate program should definitely be the point in a person's education where they aren't really competing with other students based on points on a quiz.

Glad to see some things moving in the right direction. Even a couple years before COVID lockdowns brought even more surveillence to the classroom, I had numerous instances of monitoring taking place during online classes similar to what is discussed here. Scanning a driver's license, panning the room, microphone checks, etc.

This is a positive step. There is still a lot of work to be done to ensure privacy for students and workers, especially in their own homes.

Remote monitoring and proctoring of any kind should be seen as an invasion of privacy and strictly prohibited by law.