Some University of Alberta students are calling for an end to the use of online monitoring services meant to prevent cheating, as final exams approach.
This year, with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing the university to use remote learning, many U of A classes have used online proctoring services like Smart Exam Monitoring and Exam Lock.
They run in the background of students’ computers while they write tests, monitoring movement to flag anything that could be a sign the student is cheating.
“Fundamentally, what this software does is it tries to prevent cheating. But all it does instead is make it so that you’re more scared and the assessments themselves are less effective,” said David Draper, University of Alberta Students’ Union vice-president academic.
Student representatives have raised concerns about e-proctoring since May.
Draper said the type of suspicious activity it flags include things as simple as students reading questions aloud, going to the bathroom or people walking in the background of the camera’s view, a problem for people living with roommates or family.
They also have led to equity issues, Draper said.
He’s heard from students of colour who say the programs sometimes don’t recognize their face, asking them to move to rooms with better lighting.
He’s also heard from students with disabilities about e-proctoring not working with accessibility programs that are provided by the university, such as screen readers.
“It sends a message to students about who is welcome within a university and who this university caters to,” Draper said.
“Online proctoring, in my opinion, does more to enforce compliance and does more to enforce structural and systemic views of what somebody should look like, rather than actually enforcing academic integrity.”
David Draper from the University of Alberta Students’ Union demonstrates how to log on for a remote-proctored exam and why students are concerned about the assessment tool. 2:13
Some also see it as invasive.
Inaara Kanji, a second-year criminology student, has had to use online proctoring in many of her classes this year. Privacy is often the main concern for her and other students, she said, with many questioning the security of the video recording them writing tests in their home.
“Online proctoring really just feels like you’re trying to avoid getting caught for something that you didn’t even do,” Kanji said.
University strikes task force
A blog post by University of Alberta president Bill Flanagan on Jan. 28 announced a task force on remote teaching and learning that would include students and instructors, with a goal to reduce online proctoring in the spring and summer term.
“We know that this is a challenging time for everyone and continue to remind members of our teaching and learning community to reach out if they are experiencing added challenges or barriers because of the COVID-19 emergency,” said deputy provost Wendy Rodgers on Tuesday.
Lucas Marques, vice-president external at the U of A’s International Students’ Association, said he’s frustrated the university hasn’t acted more swiftly.
Marques spent the fall semester studying from home in Brazil. The four-hour time difference was enough for him to sometimes be awake past midnight writing tests.
With some students having to do this while living in a timezone more than 10 hours away, Marques said more students are feeling fatigued and burned out this year, especially as they see the high price of their university tuition come with a seemingly declining quality of education.
“Students need help now,” Marques said. “They have midterms around this time of the year; this semester is almost ending, and just now we are starting to get some sort of talks into it.”
Some schools were worried last summer that studying from home could lead to more academic dishonesty. But Draper says from what the students’ union has gathered, students aren’t cheating more often, but are instead are getting more confused over what is and isn’t cheating.
Other schools have rejected using it. The University of Calgary opted not to use online proctoring for exams this semester, citing privacy issues with technology that records people in their homes.
Increasing burden on instructors
Tim Mills, vice-president of the Association of Academic Staff of the University of Alberta, has been teaching online for several years. He said he’s used remote proctoring in the past, but finds it too awkward and invasive.
Last fall, Mills worked in a support role to help staff use e-proctoring programs. He said the burden on instructors this year has been difficult after provincial budget cuts led to larger classes and an increased workload.
On top of this, Mills says, it’s been hard for professors to find the best way to assess their students to the same standard as the structure of their in-person courses.
“We don’t have that substantial training or the time to build up the experience to deliver these alternative formats the way we would want, or even, I think, to really understand all the ins and outs of remote proctoring,” Mills said.
David Draper, vice-president academic of the University of Alberta Students’ Union, worries about how often online exam proctoring is used. (CBC)
Draper is happy to see more students and staff raising concerns to the university, but he said the onus should be on administration to restrict use of online proctoring and promote alternatives.
And while the university’s task force is a positive step, it can only offer recommendations or guidelines, but students need to see more action, Draper said.
“It’s been eight months more or less since we started talking about these issues and we know the issues,” Draper said.
“We know the problems, we don’t need to scope them out anymore. We don’t need to do the research on it, it’s already been done.”
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
The European Space Agency is fast-tracking a new mission called Ramses, which will fly to near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis and join the space rock in 2029 when it comes very close to our planet — closer even than the region where geosynchronous satellites sit.
Ramses is short for Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety and, as its name suggests, is the next phase in humanity’s efforts to learn more about near-Earth asteroids (NEOs) and how we might deflect them should one ever be discovered on a collision course with planet Earth.
In order to launch in time to rendezvous with Apophis in February 2029, scientists at the European Space Agency have been given permission to start planning Ramses even before the multinational space agency officially adopts the mission. The sanctioning and appropriation of funding for the Ramses mission will hopefully take place at ESA’s Ministerial Council meeting (involving representatives from each of ESA’s member states) in November of 2025. To arrive at Apophis in February 2029, launch would have to take place in April 2028, the agency says.
This is a big deal because large asteroids don’t come this close to Earth very often. It is thus scientifically precious that, on April 13, 2029, Apophis will pass within 19,794 miles (31,860 kilometers) of Earth. For comparison, geosynchronous orbit is 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above Earth’s surface. Such close fly-bys by asteroids hundreds of meters across (Apophis is about 1,230 feet, or 375 meters, across) only occur on average once every 5,000 to 10,000 years. Miss this one, and we’ve got a long time to wait for the next.
When Apophis was discovered in 2004, it was for a short time the most dangerous asteroid known, being classified as having the potential to impact with Earth possibly in 2029, 2036, or 2068. Should an asteroid of its size strike Earth, it could gouge out a crater several kilometers across and devastate a country with shock waves, flash heating and earth tremors. If it crashed down in the ocean, it could send a towering tsunami to devastate coastlines in multiple countries.
Over time, as our knowledge of Apophis’ orbit became more refined, however, the risk of impact greatly went down. Radar observations of the asteroid in March of 2021 reduced the uncertainty in Apophis’ orbit from hundreds of kilometers to just a few kilometers, finally removing any lingering worries about an impact — at least for the next 100 years. (Beyond 100 years, asteroid orbits can become too unpredictable to plot with any accuracy, but there’s currently no suggestion that an impact will occur after 100 years.) So, Earth is expected to be perfectly safe in 2029 when Apophis comes through. Still, scientists want to see how Apophis responds by coming so close to Earth and entering our planet’s gravitational field.
Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!
“There is still so much we have yet to learn about asteroids but, until now, we have had to travel deep into the solar system to study them and perform experiments ourselves to interact with their surface,” said Patrick Michel, who is the Director of Research at CNRS at Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France, in a statement. “Nature is bringing one to us and conducting the experiment itself. All we need to do is watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by strong tidal forces that may trigger landslides and other disturbances and reveal new material from beneath the surface.”
The Goldstone radar’s imagery of asteroid 99942 Apophis as it made its closest approach to Earth, in March 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/NSF/AUI/GBO)
By arriving at Apophis before the asteroid’s close encounter with Earth, and sticking with it throughout the flyby and beyond, Ramses will be in prime position to conduct before-and-after surveys to see how Apophis reacts to Earth. By looking for disturbances Earth’s gravitational tidal forces trigger on the asteroid’s surface, Ramses will be able to learn about Apophis’ internal structure, density, porosity and composition, all of which are characteristics that we would need to first understand before considering how best to deflect a similar asteroid were one ever found to be on a collision course with our world.
Besides assisting in protecting Earth, learning about Apophis will give scientists further insights into how similar asteroids formed in the early solar system, and, in the process, how planets (including Earth) formed out of the same material.
One way we already know Earth will affect Apophis is by changing its orbit. Currently, Apophis is categorized as an Aten-type asteroid, which is what we call the class of near-Earth objects that have a shorter orbit around the sun than Earth does. Apophis currently gets as far as 0.92 astronomical units (137.6 million km, or 85.5 million miles) from the sun. However, our planet will give Apophis a gravitational nudge that will enlarge its orbit to 1.1 astronomical units (164.6 million km, or 102 million miles), such that its orbital period becomes longer than Earth’s.
It will then be classed as an Apollo-type asteroid.
Ramses won’t be alone in tracking Apophis. NASA has repurposed their OSIRIS-REx mission, which returned a sample from another near-Earth asteroid, 101955 Bennu, in 2023. However, the spacecraft, renamed OSIRIS-APEX (Apophis Explorer), won’t arrive at the asteroid until April 23, 2029, ten days after the close encounter with Earth. OSIRIS-APEX will initially perform a flyby of Apophis at a distance of about 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from the object, then return in June that year to settle into orbit around Apophis for an 18-month mission.
Related Stories:
Furthermore, the European Space Agency still plans on launching its Hera spacecraft in October 2024 to follow-up on the DART mission to the double asteroid Didymos and Dimorphos. DART impacted the latter in a test of kinetic impactor capabilities for potentially changing a hazardous asteroid’s orbit around our planet. Hera will survey the binary asteroid system and observe the crater made by DART’s sacrifice to gain a better understanding of Dimorphos’ structure and composition post-impact, so that we can place the results in context.
The more near-Earth asteroids like Dimorphos and Apophis that we study, the greater that context becomes. Perhaps, one day, the understanding that we have gained from these missions will indeed save our planet.
