Finals disrupted by cheating

Due to several recent cheating incidents during last semester's finals period, the administration is working to revise exam policies to prevent future occurrences.

The administration is considering blocking access to the Internet on public computers and WebCT during final examination hours to prevent students from accessing class notes following incidents of cheating in the Environment and Your Health exam and ongoing scrutiny of student actions during the biochemistry exam.

Two separate incidents of cheating were reported to the professor and teaching assistants for the Environment and Your Health test.

Some students reportedly brought miniature cheat sheets concealed under their extensive amounts of clothing while some put cheat sheets on the floor near their desk to look at during the test.

During the exam, some students also requested permission to go to the bathroom and accessed the Internet with their cell phones or the public computers outside the testing room in order to go on WebCT to look up answers for questions on the test.

"With the increasing advancement of technology, students are becoming more and more creative with their methods of cheating," Thomas Kensler, the lecturer for Environment and Your Health, said.

However, after receiving e-mails from students concerning the alleged cheating, Kensler immediately contacted the deans and received permission from the school administration to access records of students that logged in to WebCT during the exam time. According to Kensler he and the teaching assistants were able to determine with relative certainty who the culprits were.

Students mostly accessed WebCT for a minute, which, according to Kensler, would only affect one to two questions at most.

"The cheating that occurred during the final examination wasn't as consequential as I thought. There's no doubt that cheating happened, but I have high confidence in the integrity of the grade spectrum and that no student gained any noticeable advantage during the final," Kensler said, who contacted the Ethics Board and the department.

The incident that occurred during the Biochemistry final is currently under investigation by the Ethics Board.

Much of the debate surrounding the final concerns the clear lines between cheating and resourceful studying.

Many students expressed their frustration to both the biology department and to the University's Ethics Board because the Biochemistry final administered last semester had the exact same questions as those administered the previous year.

Professors uploaded last year's final and answer key on the Biochemistry WebCT after last year's final exam was over for students to review and go over. Therefore, students who had friends who had taken Biochemistry before asked their friends for a copy of last year's test in order to get a better idea of the sort of questions that would be asked on the final.

To their surprise however, the test they used to study was the exact same one being administered.

"When I got the final in my hand and started working, I wondered why the questions seemed so familiar. As I went on to the next page it finally hit me, this was the same test I used to study the night before," a sophomore who wished to remain anonymous said.

Blake Hill, an associate professor of biology at Hopkins, addressed the issue on the WebCT class discussion forum explaining how he, as well as Biochemistry lecturers Emily Fisher and Joel Schildbach, established the new curve. He admitted that it was a mistake on both his part and Fisher's to reuse last year's final.

"Clearly, our plan to re-use the final was a mistake, given what occurred. Should we have anticipated that someone would unethically obtain a copy of the exam? We did not think it could or would occur. We were wrong, and we regret that mistake," Hill wrote on a WebCT discussion board, which was openly viewed by the class for discussion.

According to Hill, because the answer key was not posted publicly as study material, students who had obtained it before the exam acted in violation of the Hopkins ethics code.

Students claimed that he also issued an apology regretting the incident that occurred but removed it a few hours later.

The Hopkins academic ethical policy dictates that all previous exams that students are allowed to consult with are placed on the library E-Reserves. Several biochemistry exams that were not posted on the library e-reserves were posted on WebCT.

"According to the academic ethics policy, those students would be considered cheating because the test was posted on last year's Biochemistry WebCT, not this year's," a member of the Ethics Board who wished to remain anonymous said. "That doesn't mean the professors weren't at fault though. I think everyone is partially at fault here."

In response to the skewed grade distribution, the professors normalized the grades to the top five percent of scores.

Though the normalization did not account for the cheaters who were not in the top five percent of the class, this would not affect a student's final score because the score is measured by where the normalization is set and the score received on the final.

"When we decided how to deal with this problem, every possibility was put on the table from not including the final exam score to retesting. Not including the final exam has the disadvantage of penalizing honest students who did well enough on the final to drop a midterm exam score. After looking at the performance of students this year and compared to previous years, we acted in the manner that we think does not penalize honest students," Hill wrote on WebCT.

Because an inquiry into the incident is still ongoing, professors involved in the incident were unable to comment more extensively on the situation. However, Fisher did note that the professors took precaution to ensure that no student was penalized with a lower grade because of the incident.

According to Benjamin Reynolds, a member of the Hopkins IT staff and Academic Computing Advisory Committee, putting new anti-cheating policies will most likely not be implemented until the next academic year.

According to Kensler, the best way to curb the recent rise in cheating is better teaching on the professor's part, as well as encouraging students to be more honest and perceive the dishonesty of their peers as detrimental to every student, including themselves, who follow the rules.

"Cheating is looked on differently now by students. They are no longer embarrassed or fear the negative consequences of it," McCabe wrote in an e-mail.

Because of the recent incidents of cheating involve personal PDAs, Blackberries, cell phones and public computers to access the Internet, professors from both the School of Public Health and the School of Arts and Sciences are urging the administration to prevent this potential avenue of cheating.

"I understand there are pressures to do well, but cheating is inexcusable," Kensler said. "I've had cheating episodes in my classes before."

"If we can develop more rigorous open discussions of cheating and its consequences, be more forthright and receptive to students and follow our obligations as teachers to create a fair evaluation of the student's knowledge and grasp of the material, I think that will help alleviate the cheating problem."