For their own good...

[Pyrrho]

Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines, tracking the locations of hundreds of thousands

When Syracuse University freshmen walk into professor Jeff Rubin’s Introduction to Information Technologies class, seven small Bluetooth beacons hidden around the Grant Auditorium lecture hall connect with an app on their smartphones and boost their “attendance points.”

And when they skip class? The SpotterEDU app sees that, too, logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade. It also alerts Rubin, who later contacts students to ask where they’ve been. His 340-person lecture has never been so full.

“They want those points,” he said. “They know I’m watching and acting on it. So, behaviorally, they change.”

[sparks]

And here I thought grades were determined by competence.

[solely]

And here I thought grades were determined by competence.

Dinosaur.

[Pyrrho]

An entrepreneur type would carry student phones to class for a reasonable fee.

[Anaxagoras]

I thought about that too, but most young people these days can't bear to be separated from their phone for that long.
I'd also be concerned about what they might do with it. A clever person could probably figure out how to unlock it. Not a chance worth taking just to skip a lecture. I figure if I'm paying for it, I might as well get what I'm paying for. I know, not everyone goes to college for the education, but still.

Also, literally everyone of college age owns a smartphone these days I guess. They don't have to consider alternative ways for people who don't own smartphones?

[Rob Lister]

I thought about that too, but most young people these days can't bear to be separated from their phone for that long.
I'd also be concerned about what they might do with it. A clever person could probably figure out how to unlock it. Not a chance worth taking just to skip a lecture.

Burners.

[Pyrrho]

It's an example of a company taking advantage of an opportunity created by technology that did not exist before the smartphone era. Also, it's an example of "authority" taking advantage of the same opportunity--although the "authority" in this case had to decide it was a good idea. The colleges don't necessarily have to require students to use the SpotterEDU app. The goals appear to be lofty: to help students who don't have their minds right and are skipping classes, by making it much easier for professors and administrators to chase and catch students who got rabbit in their blood. That requires the purchase, installation, and maintenance of technological infrastructure and, one might guess, administrative positions to maintain the database. All to ensure that students successfully graduate and earn degrees so that they can take jobs where they can "work from home".

<insert bloviation upon psychological aspects of the exercise of petty power by professors and administrators>

For any who care:

Code: Select all

https://spotteredu.com/

[sparks]

Why not grade and take attendance the old fashioned way? In fact, why bother to take attendance at all? It's fucking college after all. And if Dipshit gets good grades without showing up much, who the fuck cares? And if Dipshit doesn't get good grades in spite of showing up every day, then they have a problem with Daddy and Mommy who are footing the fucking bills.

The new fangled tech is unnecessary crawdad shit.

[Pyrrho]

I wonder if professor evaluation is linked to class attendance and grade averages.

[sparks]

Good point Pyrrho! Should be. Further, professor evaluation should be directly tied to professor salary.

That'd weed out the fucking ineffective idiots right quick.