Jason Antman’s Blog

A friend recently showed me the syllabus for one of her classes, which is partially given online through the Sakai course management system. At the bottom was a section on course policies which stated, in part, that the “Academic Integrity policy is in full effect”. Apparently, this professor is giving online exams in Sakai. The policy goes on to state that not only is collaborative test-taking not allowed, but also that use of any resources (including a textbook) is not allowed. The policy states that use of electronic resources (”a second web browser”) is also not allowed, and that the course management system includes “features” to prevent “cheating” – enumerated as a time stamp for every answer.

To me at least, this shows not only an unrealistic outlook, but also a horrible lack of understanding about technology.

1. Does this professor actually expect that he can have students taken an exam at home, on a computer, and none of them will Google an answer? If so, he should take some steps to actually prevent such actions – like having the students take the exam in a proctored environment. If not, what is the purpose of this intimidation?
2. I know I’m not a programming wizard, but if someone can tell me the algorithm to determine whether or not a student is cheating – based solely on their answers and the submission time of each answer – I’d really like to be enlightened.

If professors want to administer exams online and prevent students from using any outside resources, it seems to me like the only way to realistically do this is to setup a human-proctored computer lab (perhaps University-wide at a number of locations, available for members of any class) that allows access only to HTTP/HTTPS for the course management system and nothing else. All the human proctor would have to do is sit in the room and make sure students aren’t looking in textbooks or conferring with each other.

Higher Education cms, course management, education

While some people whom I greatly admire have stronger feelings than I on the subject, and many others, I felt the need to share some thoughts on DRM this morning.

Here at Rutgers, we had been promoting Ruckus for music downloading. The idea was that if you go to Rutgers, you get to use their service for free and download your music. I’ve never used it. Even if their software had worked with Linux, it’s still so badly DRM’ed that I couldn’t even burn the music to a CD. Being an old-fashioned person who has a regular old non-MP3 cd player in my truck, what good would that do me?

So, today Ruckus just shows this:

I’ll admit it, I’m not the least bit sad to see it go. And not just because it was Windows-only at a time when Linux is gaining in popularity and MacOS is all-out exploding. What was my real problem with it? The DRM. What good is a bunch of 1’s and 0’s if I can’t use it the way I like? You couldn’t burn Ruckus music to CD, and I doubt you could use it on my ancient Sansa 512MB MP3 player either, as it doesn’t support DRM (and runs Linux).

So what’s my final thought? From TechCrunch.com:

We’re told that music that has not passed its “renew date” still works, but that music that has expired will no longer work because the DRM licensing server has apparently shut down.

If DRM wasn’t bad enough to begin with, the music you already have will just stop working… because the original distributor isn’t there anymore to tell it to work.

Higher Education drm, music, rutgers

The next week will be quite busy. For one, I’m going to attempt an OpenSolaris operating system installation on my Asus eeePC. Last I heard, there were some compatibility issues – though this was my first attempt at running the Solaris operating system on a laptop, and it took quite an effort to get my favorite mainstream Linux distro installed on the eeePC, though I’ve been running that on laptops for 6+ years.

This Sunday, March 30^th, the Rutgers University Student Linux Users’ Group (RUSLUG) will be hosting our annual Installfest in the EIT Lab from 10 AM until 6 PM. While the event is generally marketed towards Linux newbies, it’s usually attended by a diverse range of students (and staff) from first-timers to Solaris sysadmins. I’ll be attendance, as always, and will also be conducting some demos of new Sun technology (mainly OpenSolaris and NetBeans). For anyone in the New Brunswick/Pisctaway area, I’ll also be armed with some door prizes and a whole plethora of CDs and DVDs. For anyone interested, I’ll be providing information and pointers on NetBeans and Solaris, as well as installation assistance (and maybe some prizes) for anyone looking to give OpenSolaris a whirl on their system.

Following up the Installfest, on Tuesday, April 1^st at 9 PM (also in the EIT lab) will be the RUSLUG Newbie Night. It’s generally a fun-filled evening with Ubuntu LiveCDs and a general Q&A session about Linux. Generally this includes one-on-one assistance for new Linux users. In an effort to raise the level of content (and provide a diversion for more experienced users if there aren’t many new faces), I’ll be once again demo’ing some Sun technology, and specifically providing an overview of my recently completed personal mailserver migration from SuSE Linux to OpenSolaris. Once again, visitors can expect some door prizes and lots of fun CDs to take home.

In other RUSLUG news:

• It looks like I’ll be running to become an officer next year. Anyone else at Rutgers can feel free to contact me with ideas, etc.
• RUSLUG’s current box, ruslug.rutgers.edu, is a Dell desktop thrown on a shelf in a closet. I’d like to find someone willing to help out with procuring a new box. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy – just pretty simple, though I’d like to look into high capacity storage for mirroring distros. FYI, the current box is a Dell desktop with a 1.7GHz P-4 (256KB cache), 512 MB RAM, and about 250GB of IDE storage (150GB + 100GB, no RAID). We don’t need a big upgrade in processor power, but more RAM and RAID for the system and user disks would be nice (distro mirrors can be a big IDE/SATA or an external disk).

Higher Education ruslug, solaris, sun

So, I’m a computer science major at Rutgers. What is computer science? And WHY is it my major?

I was recently reading an excellent article online, by Neil McBride, a principal lecturer in the School of Computing, De Montfort University, UK. The Death of Computing essentially speaks to the fact that the IT industry is different now than it ever was in the past – IT is no longer a programingdiscipline. Just look at job listings in IT, whether as upper-level managers or summer interns. How many of them demand the degree of skills in, say, Java, that are taught in CS classes? Most of them ask for Python, Ruby, PHP, maybe some Java. But more importantly, the jobs aren’t programming-centric. As many have said, all of the software that’s needed is already out there. The modern emphasis in IT is on providing a service – on SLAs, uptime, optimization, security, and incident response. Not on developing new systems in low-level languages, but in synthesizing many assets into a coherent, high-availability system with as much transparency to the user as possible.

Just have a look at the Rutgers CS course catalog: Data structures, Discreet structures, numerical methods, design and analysis of algorithms, compilers, operating systems design, artificial intelligence. Sure, that’s nice. Where is something that will prepare me for a career?

Not one course in an overview of Information Technology. Where’s networking? Where’s systems management/administration? How about a course in embedded systems design, or internet/intranet security? There’s not even an intro course to Unix.

Yes, these courses provide lots of information so I can know what my computer is doing at every step of the way. But why do I need a semester of algorithm design when there’s a world of open-source software at my fingertips? Why should I know operating system design, when 99% of it is done by a relatively small group of people?

It seems to be just what Mr. McBride mentioned in his article – at least here at Rutgers, they are trying to haul up the drawbridge, to educate a small minority of elite programmers. Where are the skills that myself, and people my age, need when looking for a job? Internet applications, firewall/router design, embedded systems, languages like Python, Ruby, Perl, and other scripting languages that allow me to quickly and efficiently accomplish a task? Is it really true that a degree in CS is actually just “a degree”, a prerequisite for a job, and everything else should be learned on our own?

My data structures class is a perfect example. One of our projects was using Java and Linked Lists to implement a crude example of string comparison in a security application. Why would I do that when I can store the data in a MySQL database and write a simple script to perform comparisons? There’s not even an introductory systems course. Are we really aiming to educate programmers who have never seen a tape drive, who have never had an introduction to scripting languages, how to perform a good system backup, or how to secure their workstations?

Higher Education, Ideas and Rants