Can a college seriously force this?

I've made the huge mistake in deciding to take an online class from my college (admittedly a Community college). Problem is they are trying to force me to use this piece of shit to take online tests:

http://www.respondus.com/products/lockdown.shtml

Their feature list reads more like that you'd see in a Trojan horse or a virus and/or worm. It gets better, apparently it can shut off 250+ applications including anti-virus programs!

http://opensource.osu.edu/lockdown

An analysis from three years ago that is likely valid. Some basic Googling shows that if the damn thing crashes the registry changes it makes are permanent. It refuses to run within a VM (I've tried VMWare and Virtual PC built into Windows 7 so far) and good luck if you've got some flavor of Linux going on.

It's requirement wasn't revealed to my class until today as the syllabus doesn't mention it at all nor any sort of non-standard requirement for the class. At least my online math classes make it known that you need Flash and Java. I just can't believe they'd seriously ask the student population to play guinea pig for an application whose own manufacturer admits that it isn't even close to 100% effective unless used in a proctored environment. Which is how they usually do tests for online classes.

Thoughts? Ideas? I'd ask the head IT guy but frankly I get the feeling I'd be labeled a potential cheater if I brought it to anyone's attention as opposed you guys. :nod:

 

I bet they are getting paid to use that crap.

You wouldnt believe the kind of money some people are making by pretending to a legitimate business and rape customers with this forced-datamining stuff.

zynga, the fuckers behind every fb game, make a shitload with shady deals like these.

 

Really I think the best you can hope for is for them to install it on a library PC or something like that, and do your work there - at this stage I presume they'll have all the infrastructure in place to support this package, so you'll be using it one way or another.

If I was in your position I'd write a polite letter to the whoever's in charge of the class/syllabus, just a simple bulletpoint list of potential issues/problems, and a statement that I'd be happy to use the software so long as it isn't installed on my own computer.

 

College online classes? wtf?

Damn, how far must I have lived behind the moon?

 

I got yelled at the other day because I didn't force my students to buy an expensive textbook to use for just a month. Good thing that I wasn't informed officially or on time, though, and I can claim that as a reason.

Nobody told me I had to force them until halfway through the course, but it is "required" as the "whole exam is based on it".

Which is administrative language for: "the publisher is paying the higher-ups a fuckload of money to force this on students".

Tomorrow, They'll audit my class to see that my students all have the damn thing.

Fucking private colleges, man.

They keep fucking doing this shit, like this book and your spyware, and then people complain about our educational level...

 

UPDATE: I read your post more clearly (^_^); You could always try running it under Xen or another visualization package. I think you just need to figure out how to mask the fact that it's running under a VM.

Worst case, you install it on a laptop and use two machines at once. Make a disk image before you install so you can restore later.

MORE UPDATES: You can also use VNC or another remote protocol to connect to a box to take the test, or perhaps use it within your virtual machine under a foreign OS. For example, if you use a Linux host, I'm told you can run VirtualBox and it won't complain. Probably it doesn't know all the Linux distros to blacklist so it can't tell if its virtual or not. KVM also works as well.

You can also just hack the program like so:

http://digitalinquest.com/archives/217


Or you can download a user agent switcher for Firefox and just use this:

"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/4.0; SLCC2;
.NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center
PC 6.0)"

Which I think will fake it so it looks like your browser is Respondus or whatever. Or just grab the user agent it uses.

 

If you can't take the tests from home due to concerns about computer installations, they may be able to offer you the ability to go into the college for extra cost (i.e.: cost of an invigilator).

Personally, whilst this software sounds a great idea on paper, it doesn't prevent the user from using a second machine in order to cheat and essentially has to tie itself into the entire operating system so I'm not surprised you have your concerns, especially as it could easily damage your machine.

Trouble is, the college are completely in their rights to only allow you to take the test using the software, as they are not the only college in the country and they are not offering a life-critical service. They are a business, if you don't like their practices you can get your money back, but essentially that's all that you can do, aside from request you take the tests at the college as stated above.

 

I guess the tests are nothing super important (e.g. Microsoft certification), or you'd be doing it under exam conditions in a room at a college, supervised - possibly with noone else in the room at the same time. Anything you want to take in has to be in a clear plastic bag.

I'd say get a cheap, shitty laptop or desktop (look in the freeads/local paper/craigslist) and use it for that. It'll probably cost you the same as a textbook, and you can dump it after.

 

Can you install it on a bare hard drive or dual-boot it if virtualization doesn't work? If you are really concerned about it, and I can understand why, ask to set up a proctor for the tests instead (though you'll most likely have to go on campus or pay for them).

So, what is the class?

 

The purpose of this software is to keep you from using the internet to cheat while taking the exams, correct? But you take these exams from home, correct?

So what exactly is supposed to prevent you from simply opening the book for the course and looking your answer up that way?

 

Beats me. Computer problems like that are so useless against properly skilled users.

 

Tests are generally taken at approved locations. I've yet to hear of one that didn't. So yeah, they're probably forcing that shit on you for some kick back or some shit, but they're a school.... nobody's forcing you to go. They can do what they want.

 

University's can also suspend you and kick you off your basketball team for having premarital sex.

 

Somewhat ironically, Sociology.

I've been allowed to use a library computer that has the software installed or go into the proctored environment where tests are usually issued where students are almost guaranteed to be unable to cheat. A result which I find defeats the purpose of allowing students to take the test at home.

What I think I will do for sure is to put back together an old Dell P3 I've got, slap 2k on it then install this piece of garbage and pick at it to see what hacks can be done while promptly publishing the information as anonymously as possible. I don't think they are trying to stop anyone but the most casual of cheaters however by being invasive they're turning me, someone who has never cheated/plagiarized, into someone who is all but being accused of cheating for not wanting some malware on his system.

Though I did tell the prof that I was running Linux. He all but ignored the fact that Linux cannot run Windows or Mac executables and somewhat insinuated that I was refusing to use the "browser" and that I would have to drop the class. Given how late into the semester it is that would mean I'd be below full time status and likely would lose the health insurance I do posses. No way to replace the class and no way to avoid getting a mark on my transcript.

Over a barrel and they reach for the splintery, wooden dildo.

 

Online courses? What? I'd never take them. Go to the freakin' university, in any case you go a bit outside.

 

I am/will be. This is the cheap route to fulfill about all of the lower division courses so I don't waste good money taking them elsewhere. Plus I get priority in admissions over run of the mill High School kids.

Online classes were just a mistake.

 

What ? lol ! oh well, I would rather have some horizontal bed gymnastics.
Than thinking about such a silly thing, but then I am perfectly happy by not playing basketball . But seriously ? kicking people off a team, for having sex with your girlfriend ? well, I think I will leave it at that.

 

There is nothing wrong with a good online program, it just doesn't sound like this is one of those. Most of the courses where I teach (as an adjunct) are moving away from proctored exams to more practical evaluations of student performance, like all-encompassing final projects. Decent online exams should be designed such that having access to the course materials or even the internet would not change the outcome much (e.g. timed application of the coursework, not just rote memorization of terms).

 

Well, we had timed exams at school. What we did was gather in a large group with laptops and made a mini think-tank. We worked on different questions and we came to consensuses as to which answers were right or wrong. (^_^);