Cheating In The Classroom With Apple Watch

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I'm actually surprised it has taken this long for this to become an issue. When you think about it, smart watches are ideal for students wanting to cheat on tests.

That's why we may be on the brink of a new phase in classroom cheating using smartwatches. The way the Apple Watch works makes it a cheater's dream utility. This became clear to me when I heard about an actual episode in a classroom using the watch from Apple.
 
The only way this type of cheating I could think of working effectively is someone getting a copy of the test before hand with the answers or at worst gets a copy of test outside of the testing area and then feeds answers in real time. Would seem to be more of an issue with testing protocol and procedures than a communications device.
 
The university I went to had already disallowed watches during exams because Seiko made a organizer watch in the 90s that could store 640K of text (more then enough for study material). I'm always surprised when I hear stories about schools today that are behind where the one I attended years ago was then.
 
Apple watches, come on people what happend to writing on the inside of your hands.
 
I bet my low tech method is still viable... simply cram as much as you can remember directly onto the surface of the desk. Most of our desks were laminated wood, so it hid the graphite pencile will with its texture while still easy to wipe away.

In college I had a lady straight up offer me sex to cheat for her on an exam. Basically I had a class where the lowest exam score was dropped, including the "final." Since I decided not to take a final, a complete stranger and classmate emailed me to take the test for her in exchange for sexual favors. Forwarded that shit off to the professor immediately. No, I don't know what she looks like. :D
 
I've always used watches for cheating, but in a different way: I rested my head on my hand in such a way as to catch the reflection of the paper from the person sitting next to me on the face of my watch :cool:. No one ever suspected a thing.
 
Quix said:
That takes too much effort, I just stored all the answers in my head. Way less work.
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I remember I prep cheatsheets before exams, then simply take the exam without the cheatsheet as I already memorized 95% of the stuffs on it. The smaller the cheatsheet the better as I need to figure out how to put the answer on it, and thus able to retrieve the answer from my brain simply by remembering how I put it.
 
Cheating is only a problem because a lot of modern tests are idiotic multiple choice fact sheets.

When was the US constitution ratified?
A.) 1592
B.) 1776
C.) 1788
D.) All of the above.

That's a meaningless question with a meaningless answer and it tells you nothing on whether or not the student understand the context/history/meaning of the US constitution. That would be the real meaningful thing to test. Questions with long form answers would be much better for gauging students understanding and they're not really something you can cheat through.

I had calculus (or physics can't remember) tests in college where the professor would let us use the book. That didn't help one bit. The questions covered the entire breadth and depth of the material and you either knew how to solve the problem or you didn't.
 
SPARTAN VI said:
In college I had a lady straight up offer me sex to cheat for her on an exam. Basically I had a class where the lowest exam score was dropped, including the "final." Since I decided not to take a final, a complete stranger and classmate emailed me to take the test for her in exchange for sexual favors. Forwarded that shit off to the professor immediately. No, I don't know what she looks like. :D
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You can go to school anytime and take any class you want. You won't always have young ladies offering you sexual favors. You made the wrong choice.
 
heatlesssun said:
The only way this type of cheating I could think of working effectively is someone getting a copy of the test before hand with the answers or at worst gets a copy of test outside of the testing area and then feeds answers in real time. Would seem to be more of an issue with testing protocol and procedures than a communications device.
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Tell me I have it wrong, this is a guess.

Standardized Tests mean teachers arn't creating them individually so the test can become a known entity, add in the old Teacher's Aid who is frequently a student who helps with grading tests, etc, too easy for one to get a copy of the test with answers and post it. The same test will be used again the next year.
 
lcpiper said:
Tell me I have it wrong, this is a guess.

Standardized Tests mean teachers arn't creating them individually so the test can become a known entity, add in the old Teacher's Aid who is frequently a student who helps with grading tests, etc, too easy for one to get a copy of the test with answers and post it. The same test will be used again the next year.
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This was certainly a problem in school I saw with standardized tests. But I would say this is a problem with the testing protocol and process and can be used to cheat without the aid of technology.
 
Bigbacon said:
i remember writing shit inside the desk.
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When I went to teach a class once, one of my students asked what was on her desk, glancing at the desk I noticed a ton of notes on a particular subject that I knew the previous class just had a midterm on. I took a picture of the desk and forwarded it to the colleague who taught the prior class, some students are just too stupid to get rid of any evidence of cheating.

That said, as mentioned this only is an issue if someone has the answers ahead of time, or you have a teacher who's not watching students, it's very VERY easy to see if a student is doing something other than their test. You have a broad view of everyone, and any actions they take are easily caught even in the largest of classrooms. And in a case like this, anyone taking the test wanting to pass on answers presumably needs to type that into the phone as I don't think Apple quite has "thought to text" done yet. However if you have a typical teacher that likes to sit down at the desk read the paper or catch up on grading or anything other than actually proctoring their test then yeah it's fairly easy to cheat.
 
mastaBlasta said:
You can go to school anytime and take any class you want. You won't always have young ladies offering you sexual favors. You made the wrong choice.
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All I know is that the professor 'caught' her on the day of the exam, and she was blaming the soliciting email on her "boyfriend." Sounds like I made the correct choice.
 
I'm just surprised it has enough battery life to last the length of the testing period.
 
Cheating is a learned skill that makes the finest politicians.
 
mastaBlasta said:
I had calculus (or physics can't remember) tests in college where the professor would let us use the book. That didn't help one bit. The questions covered the entire breadth and depth of the material and you either knew how to solve the problem or you didn't.
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Several of my Computer Science courses (undergrad and grad) operated this way. I specifically remember by graduate database courses where we were allowed to use course notes on the exams. They didn't actually help at all because the scope of the questions and the time provided meant that you'd never have enough time to finish the exam if you were flipping through the notes the whole time. You'd need to already know where to look, which meant you didn't need the notes to begin with.
 
Reading texts through the Apple Watch is cheating for dummies.

Set your phone to read the texts aloud and listen through a hidden ear bud instead.
 
King of Heroes said:
Several of my Computer Science courses (undergrad and grad) operated this way. I specifically remember by graduate database courses where we were allowed to use course notes on the exams. They didn't actually help at all because the scope of the questions and the time provided meant that you'd never have enough time to finish the exam if you were flipping through the notes the whole time. You'd need to already know where to look, which meant you didn't need the notes to begin with.
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This, but typically only works for science/math/literature types of classes. Good teachers allow notes because they will write a problem that requires fundamental understanding to complete.

Unfortunately the people most inclined to use smart watches are younger people, and younger people in middle school, or early high school will take tests that are basically straight memorization/multiple choice where the watch does what it's supposed to do...
 
Comp Sci/Math Major graduate here. Generally my courses, at least for in major stuff. If the test/exam was open book and/or note. It was generally much more difficult as you had access to those resources.
 
JL6speed said:
In the real world you would have access to resources.
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Yes and for nurses if they had to Google every time they saw something in a patent then we'd save a butt load in healthcare dollars because half the people would be dead!
 
mastaBlasta said:
I had calculus (or physics can't remember) tests in college where the professor would let us use the book. That didn't help one bit. The questions covered the entire breadth and depth of the material and you either knew how to solve the problem or you didn't.
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This is pretty common in my CS/EE/Math courses nowadays. A lot of them even do take home tests, which always makes me nervous, because well-designed questions REQUIRE conceptual understanding.

And I concur, multiple choice tends to test memorization, not understanding. The main problem with long answer problems is that they also require understanding to grade.
 
I remember in my day the only electronic device you were allowed to have was a graphing calculator and a wrist watch. Cellphones and everything else was banned and only some graphing calculators were allowed...
 
cvinh said:
Apple watches, come on people what happend to writing on the inside of your hands.
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Or the bottom of your shoe. This seems like it's easily defeated by taking all phones and turning them off. Watches don't have cell service. Of course if the class has wifi (and maybe they all do now), then that needs to be turned off too.
 
JL6speed said:
In the real world you would have access to resources.
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Which is good for some tests. Others, not so much. Plus, you need to learn the material. Like learning subnetting. You need to know how to do it in your head so you know how it works. Yes, there are a shit ton of apps that can do it in seconds, and give you all you need to know.

Most math stuff is this way. You need to know how it's done.

History? It's for the credit for the class. Everything is available at the touch of your fingers or in a book. But, how do you prove you took the class and are learning? Tests. After that, use all the resources you want. Tests are just to prove you were productive in class.

This has been an issue, even with the old Casio calculator watches in the 80's.
 
Cheating is prevalent among all levels of education and at every institution. It just depends how important academic dishonesty really is.

In my program, you are not allowed any electronic products on you except maybe a pace maker. A calculator is provided on the computer you are taking it on. Don't worry the computer records every keystroke, every click and turns off network. Lastly mutilple cameras are setup to record the session.
 
serious said:
I remember I prep cheatsheets before exams, then simply take the exam without the cheatsheet as I already memorized 95% of the stuffs on it. The smaller the cheatsheet the better as I need to figure out how to put the answer on it, and thus able to retrieve the answer from my brain simply by remembering how I put it.
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That's the whole point of cheat sheets (provided you have to make your own). At least in the classes I've taught, I emphatically suggest the students make cheat sheets (even for open-note exams) because the act of making one is an incredibly good study tool, as it forces you to synthesize and reiterate all the material (and there's value in the physical act of writing, too).
 
spugm1r3 said:
This is pretty common in my CS/EE/Math courses nowadays. A lot of them even do take home tests, which always makes me nervous, because well-designed questions REQUIRE conceptual understanding.

And I concur, multiple choice tends to test memorization, not understanding. The main problem with long answer problems is that they also require understanding to grade.
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There is nothing worse than the words: "The midterm will be take home". With an in-class exam, the prof can only torture you for 2 or so hours. Not the 10-15 of a take-home exam. :D
 
JL6speed said:
In the real world you would have access to resources.
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True, but in the real world, a professional starts working with a requisite minimum education. You have to pass GO first.

I use Google all the time in IT work, things change too fast for books. That being said, much of my answers are the google search results that link back to the manufacturer/vendor who makes the equipment I'm working on. It's just a quick way to get there and it pulls up the odd IT blog which may also have the answer in a more condensed form, along with links to ... you guessed it, the manufacturer's page on the equipment.

But you don't get there from nothing, you get there after you finish your basic education, some college, and usually relevant entry level job experience and a cert or two.
 
Lunas said:
I remember in my day the only electronic device you were allowed to have was a graphing calculator and a wrist watch. Cellphones and everything else was banned and only some graphing calculators were allowed...
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Take an IT Certification Exam from PearsonView, you won't even get to keep the watch.
 
Yes it is true out here you get to google many things. You will need a good understanding of what you are looking for (aka knowing how to ask the right questions) or you will spend hours searching for something that someone else could find on the first click with the right search terms.
 
Derfnofred said:
There is nothing worse than the words: "The midterm will be take home". With an in-class exam, the prof can only torture you for 2 or so hours. Not the 10-15 of a take-home exam. :D
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Ugh... graduate E&M course, here's the final, it's a take home exam, you may schedule a 1 hour period to ask me questions. There were 3 questions on the test.

Some of teaching at higher levels seems to be "I had to go through torture so you should too" mentality.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Ugh... graduate E&M course, here's the final, it's a take home exam, you may schedule a 1 hour period to ask me questions. There were 3 questions on the test.

Some of teaching at higher levels seems to be "I had to go through torture so you should too" mentality.
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As someone just about finished with his Ph.D (thank every deity, science, nothingness and whatever other belief system out there), that's exactly my take on it. The class that sticks out in my mind was an optoelectronics class. At least I *knew* I didn't understand the material!
 
Man I used to cheat on English tests back in 1997 or so with my watch. Anybody remember that Timex Datalink watch, which flashed barcodes on the screen in order to get programmed (and later had issues with LCD screens hit the market that the barcodes no longer worked for a while). Those were the good ole days.
 
Derfnofred said:
As someone just about finished with his Ph.D (thank every deity, science, nothingness and whatever other belief system out there), that's exactly my take on it. The class that sticks out in my mind was an optoelectronics class. At least I *knew* I didn't understand the material!
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Yeah my wife and I were cleaning out a room of old papers and I was looking at one particular set of papers/notes and thinking to myself, who wrote this (I didn't even recognize my own handwriting, granted it was 15 or so years ago), and then found out that was from my intro to solid state physics course, but I didn't understand a single thing that was written, education money well spent!
 
Sounds like an ad disguised as an article. Anyone with common sense knows any device with wireless connectivity can be used even old calculators with infrared.
 
mi7chy said:
Sounds like an ad disguised as an article. Anyone with common sense knows any device with wireless connectivity can be used even old calculators with infrared.
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Heh. I was wondering if anyone would mention those.

Ye olde HP-28S worked wonderfully for that -- especially once you took it apart and removed the filter from the IR. Once you did that, it would pick it up from halfway across the room -- and anything type into a running term program would show up on the screen of any other device nearby that was also running it (which was pretty much the entire class in some cases).
 
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