“Do the Right Thing”

A Thayer prof offers some low-tech methods for thwarting student misuses of technology in the classroom.

CELL PHONES, LAPTOPS, WIRELESS networks and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are powerful educational tools, but they also enable cheating in ways alumni of yesteryear can hardly imagine. Edmond Cooley, a professor of engineering at the Thayer School, believes the honor principle, plus some old-fashioned, low-tech common sense, can shut down a cyber-cheater. Cooley, who also is the Thayer School's director of information technology, pioneered Dartmouth's first public wireless Computer network and continues to explore ways to make the system more useful in an academic setting.

What's the downside to new technology in terms of academic integrity?

As one friend of mine puts it, rather waggishly, "There's a little bit of larceny in everybody." These devices are a tremendous temptation. You have extraordinary power at your fingertips with either an iPod or a PDA or a camera-enabled cell phone or laptop or any of these sorts of things. We use them all the time as research tools and educational tools. So the problem then becomes how do you discaurage people from using these familiar tools at certain times while you encourage their use at other times.

What have been some of the more innovative uses of these devices?

You hear about folks taking pictures of the exam on their cell phone and transmitting it to their Ph.D. older sibling who's just trying to help them out. Or folks can set up a network within the classroom using their wireless devices to share information by e-mail or by instant messaging. There certainly are some new and creative ways of passing information around these days that didn't exist when we were in school.

No, you passed notes.

Exactly. Or had it written on your sleeve. Now you can have the entire textbook in a device that is smaller than your sleeve.

How does a professor discourage hightech cheating during an exam?

One way is to literally disable the wireless network in that space during class, but the PDAs themselves can set up a wireless network so students can still communicate. I make it clear to the students that all this equipment is to be off and put under the table during exams. I'm also walking around and looking at them. I'm not trying to create a police state, but I am trying to reduce that temptation—just making sure they've got everything shut off.

Is that always realistic given the subjectmatter? Don't some classes allow theuse of calculators to complete an exam?

That is, in fact, the challenge. In the old days folks would program all the equations into their calculators and, to be honest with you, most of the time that's fine because it's not going to help them if they don't understand the basic concept. I try to make exams that are based on the concepts that students need to remember, that are not based on equations they program into their calculators. I've been known to do things like put essay questions on an electrical engineering exam. Besides, calculators aren't good at messaging so you can't run an instant message session with your buddy across the room, as you can with a PDA.

Do you think students see theDartmouth honor principle as ananachronism, or do they adhere to it?

What I do with the honor principle is give them specific directions in the course notes about what it means. For example, in the performance of homework problems I say, "Go ahead and discuss it with folks; I want you to discuss the basic concepts. Engineers work in teams anyway so that's fine. However, the work that you actually write down and submit, with the exception of the group report, is your work." And I say that it is explicitly a violation of the honor principle to collaborate on exams because they are a one-person exam. That kind of thing.

What do you see in the future?

If I look into the information teachnology crystal ball I think that the next big thing is what's being called the Personal Area Network (PAN). Sometimes it's called the Body Area Network, but the marketing folks figured that wasn't quite as cool. It's mostly conceptual, but it is coming along. You'll have some kind of a data device the size of a pager that you wear. You can think of this device as being wireless so it's communicating with the network. Those devices are very interesting because, as I often joke, my carbonbased memory isn't so good anymore but my silicon one works fine. This device can be very useful for reminding me of somebody's name and phone number, all those things that get lost in the clutter of life. But I think the next big thing as we look at this sort of wearable computing is that now you have a whole new array of potential technologies that perhaps can be used for other than friendly purposes.

How would a PAN help a cheater?

Instead of having to do something obvious like looking at your sleeve every two minutes to see what you've written there, these devices are going be based on heads-up displays, soyoud be reading the text on the inside of your eyeglasses and anybody looking on wouldn't see. You could be watching videos or downloading the Oxford English Dictionary looking for just that perfect word. I think that there are emerging technologies that will make catching cheaters a lot more difficult. So then we start thinking about electronic counter measures—which is a polite way of saying jamming.

Doesn't that get expensive in terms oftime and money?

Yes. It's a lot easier to let people try to do the right thing and not make that apple too tempting, as it were.

Edmond Cooley