Using software that takes over student computers, colleges and universities can now examine what students were doing with their computers during their exams. At Dartmouth Medical School they found 17 students had looked up information on the internet in order to answer exam questions. Student are protesting invasion of their privacy and lack of due process. The students are pushing for in-person exams and asking for leniency. One quote, “Some students have built their whole lives around medical school and now they’re being thrown out like they’re worthless.” Natasha Singer and Aaron Krolik, “Cheating Charges at Dartmouth Show Pitfalls of Tech Tracking,” New York Times, May 9, 2021, p. A1.
Actually they are being thrown out for cheating, not because they are worthless. As Dean Duane A. Compton of Dartmouth’s Giesel Medical School explained, “We take academic integrity very seriously. We wouldn’t want people to be able to be eligible for a medical license without really having the appropriate training.” The privacy issues are red herrings. Most colleges and universities make it very clear that when you are using their online programs you have no privacy. Indeed, colleges and universities are required to monitor things such as the unauthorized downloading and pirating of copyrighted films and music or risk costs and penalties themselves. That those systems can pick up cheating is a given once the student has signed one. Another given is that the tests is to be done alone and without Google.
Speaking as a patient, the Barometer feels that a doctor should know the basics by heart: That the shoulder bone is connected to the arm bone and the arm bone’s connected to the wrist bone, etc. Having one’s doctor looking up terms and body parts online during a visit would rattle all a patient’s bones and nerves.
Update: All the cheating charges were dropped against the students. The dean apologized to the students who were charged with violations of the honor code. In seven of the cases the administration decided that the online activity data of Canvas can be in error as to whether students are online during exam times. With the remaining ten students, the dean decided to just let things go, Canvas error or not. Given the Canvas cover, we will never know. The university is silent due to privacy rights of the students. The students are silent because, well, why risk anything? You have a pass and a plausible explanation. Still, that question of whether they know about the knee bone connected to the leg bone and all– it looms large.
Perhaps the updated article should also have an updated title. “Value of Dartmouth medical degree succumbs to Covid.”
Yes — if we begin to think about the whole online instruction mode we will slowly unravel the lack of hands-on training during the nearly 18 months of panic-induced isolationism. In some fields, medicine of all types included, nothing online instruction can do replaces the need to actually do. In short, the online cheating may only be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the quality of education. Watch as the onion is peeled layer by layer.