Top of the morning, TAYers! Today, we contend with the workings of our modern era that may be unfamiliar to us.
For the past few months at my job, I’ve been studying and working towards an in-company technical certification, basically so that I have something that formally indicates that I’m an expert* in the technology that I service. Though in this case, “studying” mostly means either taking online courses that were essentially glorified PowerPoint presentations or watching video recordings of PowerPoint presentations. So, in other words, useless stuff; thank goodness that I had been getting a good deal of on-the-job experience to pick up the important things well before this point.
*”expert” being used kind of loosely around these parts
The capstone for this certification was an online final exam. “Sure, that’s fine,” I thought upon seeing this. “I’ve taken plenty of quizzes and tests for all these online courses already! No big deal!” Typically, I’d just boot up the test, tackle it with the urgency that you would fill out one of those BuzzFeed online quizzes, submit my answers, and get back a score. If I passed, yay! If not, I could just review the answers I got right and wrong if that’s an options, then take it again, hopefully with the insights picked up from the previous time leading me to the minimum score requirement. For that matter, there’s no one monitoring anyone taking those tests, so they’re practically open-book when you get right down to it.
That’s the thing about those tests: They’re really easy to game. Yes, that is arguably unsportsmanlike and dishonorable. But in my experience with this job, the online courses are utterly horrendous, and all they ultimately do is take up time that could’ve instead been spent doing work of actual importance. So when coming across these tests, I pull out all the exploits with no remorse, because they are just not worth the time.
I thought that the final hurdle for the technical certification would be the same way, so I didn’t sweat it. Cue my surprise, then, upon finding out that what I was going to take was a proctored (i.e. monitored, similar to how the SATs and other standardized tests are supervised) online exam, handled through this service called ProctorU.
As it turns out, it’s some of the same shit that colleges and other schools use to administer online tests and quizzes, adopting it once COVID19 forced most schools to close their campuses and move to remote learning. The goal, as they tell it, is to ensure the academic integrity of the test takers and the test results by making sure that nobody is cheating.
And how does ProctorU do that? By having someone watch (and I’m pretty sure also record) a webcam broadcast of your face and monitor your computer screen output in real time as you take the test. All for the sake of making sure that the test taker doesn’t do anything that raises suspicions of cheating, such as, I guess, appearing as if you’re reading off a cheat sheet that you weren’t allowed to bring.
Oh yeah, and the software that ProctorU uses also does shit like give the proctor control over your computer. So on top of broadcasting your messy face to some stranger in some undisclosed location in the world, that sure is fine and cool, definitely not creepy as hell.
Plus, on top of the dystopian techno-hellscape stuff, it’s also annoying as shit to prepare to take the exam, because they are very particular about the kind of room you’re allowed to be in and how your table setup is. I had to carry one of the coffee tables upstairs because none of the rooms with closable doors–the test needs to be taken somewhere totally enclosed and isolated–require a goddamn table in them 99.99999 percent of the year.
And this is the kind of bullshit that students have been forced to deal with on a regular basis?! They have it rough.
Thank goodness I passed the exam on the first try. This is not something I hope to experience a second time.
Today’s questions:
- What’s something new that you dealt with–maybe a new app or other piece of technology, or some otherwise new way through which something got done–which weirded you out?
- On the more positive side of the coin, what’s something new that you dealt with which you found to be cooler or easier than “the old ways?”
- How is The Jetsons?
And, as always, Talk Amongst Yourselves!
That’s all from me. Happy Thursday, everyone.
Today’s Morning Jam, since Rocket League has planted it squarely in me and my wife’s heads the past couple of days:
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Comments
When we started working from home we needed a way to communicate between our employees since we weren't sitting next to each other anymore. Our company had an internal chat service we used for a bit but our boss wanted us to switch over to Slack so that way they could go back and read all of the messages in the main room. We thought that was kind of weird but we went with it because what other choice did we have? It ended up being fine and we're used to Slack now but the motive for changing to it was a little odd at first.
**On the more positive side of the coin, what’s something new that you dealt with which you found to be cooler or easier than “the old ways?”**
Just working from home in general. I love being able to roll out of bed 10 minutes before I have to be at work and I don't have to get dressed for the office anymore. Also having access to my kitchen and my tv and video games during my hour break has been fantastic. I never want to go back.
**How is The Jetsons?**
Fine? It's been a long time since I've seen that show. Probably seen then more recently when they had them in Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. Good episode.
**And, as always, Talk Amongst Yourselves!**
I started playing Wrestling Empire on my Switch and it is such a throwback to N64 wrestling games. It reminds me of playing WWF Wrestlemania 2000 back in the day. I had so much fun with that game. This looks and plays just like those and really gives me those good nostalgia vibes. I'm going through the story mode right now and it's just as ridiculous as you'd expect from a story mode from a wrestling game but without the brand license to weigh it down so it can really do whatever it wants. I'm still not 100% sure how to do reverses or break out of holds or even if it's possible but the game is overall just fun to play.