Technology offers perks for cheaters

When one of Jay Smith’s students wants to make a trip to the restroom during an exam, he’d better be prepared for a quick detour.

“My students have to empty their pockets before leaving an exam,” said the history professor.

Students might perceive such stringent guidelines as overblown, Smith said, but in an age when they commonly have access to gadgets ranging from camera phones to Web-enabled BlackBerry devices, “I see it as a necessity for maintaining the integrity of the test.”

Colleges nationwide are grappling with a way to reconcile two equally pressing dilemmas: how to keep students competitive in the 21st-century economy and how to prevent cutting-edge technologies from being exploited for academic dishonesty.

Such issues abound at UNC, deemed the fifth most wired campus in the nation by the Princeton Review in 2004.

Even Smith’s future students are likely to experience a curriculum with computer-administered tests and assignments.

“It’s mainly because the students are more technologically attuned than I am,” Smith said. “And it makes sense to come to them with media they understand and use.”

It is projected that China and India alone will have 200 million skilled workers 20 years from now. Part of the way to keep the United States ahead of the curve with such a relatively small population is through using modern technology, said Ken Kay, chairman and co-founder of consulting firm Infotech Strategies.

But an increased reliance on technology could bring an increased threat of academic dishonesty.

Two years ago, 12 undergraduates at the University of Maryland were caught cheating on a final exam with Web-enabled cell phones. Professors posted false multiple choice answers on the class Web site, and all 12 students had identically incorrect tests.

UNC’s student attorney general, Matt McDowell said that while the Maryland case got the Honor Court’s attention, the court has not yet seen anything on quite that scale at UNC.

The two most common cases at UNC are plagiarism and cheating on examinations or other academic assignments, McDowell said.

The Honor Court hears at least a handful of cases a year in which professors suspect that students get outside help on a Web-administered assignment or test, he said.

“I feel like in the general population, there may be a perception that simply because technology is new and still being discovered that it is fair to utilize it for an unfair advantage,” McDowell said. “We need to be proactively educating the community.”

The revision of the Student Code in 2003 demonstrated foresight of technological advances, McDowell said.

Two students who wanted to be known by first name only to protect themselves against punishment say such advances already have helped them in their classes.

Maria, a freshman, said she often collaborated with other students without authorization on Web-administered quizzes for her Chemistry 21 class.

“Whoever did it first would write down the answer and give it to us, and it would take about five minutes,” she said.

It felt less morally wrong at the time because there was less effort involved, she said.

David, a freshman chemistry major, said he has seen cases in which students text-messaged one another answers since high school.

“We’d get someone smart willing to help us out and keep our phone in our lap,” he said. “Each message would include about five answers at a time.”

John Stewart, an economics professor, said that although there’s no way to check for illegal calculator programs during his large lecture exams, “There was never really a way to check for notes under a shirt cuff either.”

Kay emphasized that it doesn’t make sense to say technology itself is corrupt. “Part of the legitimate issue is having thoughtful regulation and asking, ‘What do we need to do to accommodate these new tools?’”

UNC and similarly equipped campuses are “essentially laboratories” that should be commended for their ground-breaking efforts, Kay said.

“I think campuses experimenting with technology in a thoughtful way are doing us a service.”

Contact the Features Editor at features@unc.edu.