Academic integrity challenged by technology

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The recent controversy over a study guide at the University of Nebraska’s College of Dentistry should be viewed in the context of the ongoing communications revolution.

Back when the parents of today’s college students were taking classes, channels for disseminating materials such as exam questions, lecture notes and other materials were limited.

Now one handheld device — whether cell phone, personal digital assistant or whatever — can transmit text, images and video, as well as connect to the Internet.

Today, an exam question literally can be around the world, and in the hands of every student in a class, moments after it appears on a test.

The challenge of maintaining academic integrity in a world in which information flows so freely is immense.

In the dental school controversy, students were selling a study guide, either as a compact disc or a 1,200-page notebook, and using the proceeds for an annual pig roast.

After administrators and faculty eventually learned of the guide, John Reinhardt, dean of the dental school, reacted by putting the entire guide online so that all students could use it. No students were given failing grades or expelled.

Reinhardt’s actions have been assailed anonymously by faculty members, who think investigation should have been more aggressive and discipline should have been harsher.

“Notes are one thing, exams are another,” one said.

In the case of dental students, there is an outside, independent verification on whether the students have mastered their material when they take the National Board Dental Examinations.

As Reinhardt wrote in a Local View in Wednesday’s Journal Star, NU students compare well with peers across the country, ranking in the top 10 nationally in Part I for seven of the past eight years and in the top 10 on Part II for 12 of the past 14 years.

Those results provide some reassurance that the study guide flap is not part of a larger problem.

Nonetheless, the episode drives home the point that university professors and administrators must be alert to the temptations offered by electronic gadgetry.

The University of Central Florida and Penn State, for example, are installing test centers for some classes in which tests are taken under the watchful eye of video monitors at each desk using computers on which all ports and video access has been blocked.

The controversy at the NU Dental College appears to be over, barring new revelations from State Auditor Mike Foley.

But the problems that surfaced there are hardly unique. University officials in all disciplines must take care that safeguards for protecting academic integrity are equal to the challenges of ever-evolving technology.