08-16-2009, 11:06 AM
UTB-TSC = SACS-accredited University of Texas at Brownsville-Texas Southmost College
RA unis continue to do their damnedest to undermine distance learning.
‘Gross academic fraud' at UTB-TSC rocked Office of Distance Education
RA unis continue to do their damnedest to undermine distance learning.
‘Gross academic fraud' at UTB-TSC rocked Office of Distance Education
Quote:August 01, 2009 9:29 PM
By LAURA TILLMAN, The Brownsville Herald
A two-month UTB-TSC police investigation found school employees in 2008 had committed "gross academic fraud" after student employees and regular staff used their positions to steal test answers, according to a UTB police report obtained by The Brownsville Herald.
The wrongdoing occurred within the Blackboard Learning System, an online service commonly used at universities.
The system allows professors to post tests and course materials for students, teach entire courses online and keep online grade books. Blackboard generally serves to enrich the learning experience; however, former student employees of the school’s Office of Distance Education, the office that manages Blackboard, confessed to a police investigator that they had used the online system to access test answers to help themselves cheat, give the answers to other students, or even to sell.
The employees involved are no longer working for the Office of Distance Education, according to the school’s attorney, Michael Blanchard.
Police concluded that the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College had not created sufficient safeguards at the time of the 2008 police report that would have prevented employees from misusing the Blackboard online learning platform.
EXTENSIVE INVESTIGATION
The investigation yielded confessions from six school and student employees, who admitted they misused the system to access and profit from private information, the police report states. One student extended the time limit on a test he took; another student said a teaching assistant had given his personal username and password to a class of students to use during the semester to cheat.
The investigation began in May 2008 when UTB-TSC administrator David Marquez was looking into an allegation of cheating, the police report says. After Marquez learned of a possible Blackboard security breach, the office of the Vice President for Business Affairs requested that UTB police investigate whether Distance Education employees were misusing Blackboard, according to the police report.
Employee confessions to university police revealed that 20 people had participated in academic fraud — the six employees who misused their system access and 14 students who obtained answers from the employees to cheat or help others cheat.
Because of student privacy laws, UTB-TSC did not release the names of the students involved and the names were blocked out of the police report.
NO COURT ACTION
In June of 2008 university police met with the Cameron County District Attorney’s office to discuss the possibility of pressing criminal charges.
Although the investigation was extensive — police conducted 24 polygraph tests and spent most of May and June of 2008 investigating the incident — the university did not press charges.
"After weighing the available options, we felt that it was ultimately an academic issue and handling it that way served the university’s educational mission," said UTB attorney Michael Blanchard.
Juliet V. Garcia, the school’s president, when asked why the administration decided to treat the issue as a case of student misconduct rather than pressing criminal charges, responded in a written statement.
"After the police investigation and after careful deliberation, we handled the issue under our established procedures for addressing academic misconduct," Garcia wrote.
"It’s the job of institutions of higher education to preserve and honor academic integrity. Yes, academic dishonesty is a challenge that all educators must be prepared to handle," Garcia continued. "The policies and procedures in place at the university provide the means for the campus to investigate and make informed decisions on courses of action appropriate for each case."
Dean of Students Maria Fuentes-Martin said that the university aims to rehabilitate those who violate the code of student conduct, rather than demoralizing them. In this sense, she said, exposing students who cheat to public scrutiny would undermine the school’s mission.
But one of those who confessed was a full-time employee and not a student at the time of the investigation, though he had formerly been a student at the school. It is therefore unclear if his case should have been handled through the student code of misconduct. The investigator in the police report said a third-degree felony charge could have been filed against some people in the case for Misuse of Official Information.
‘IT WAS VERY EASY’
The police report shows that one student employee, who worked in the Office of Distance Education, sold test answers to another student through a student middleman for $60. The student employee got $30 and the middleman got $30. That same student employee agreed to take a test for another student in exchange for $40. A different student middleman was involved in this deal, but it’s unclear how much money that person was to receive. The student employee said he never received payment in this scam.
"The agreement was I would take the exam for a friend of (the middleman) and score no less than 96," the student employee wrote in his confession. "The friend would then give (the middleman) $40, so that (the middleman) could give (the money) to me."
That student goes on to give a detailed explanation of how he was able to obtain the other student’s Blackboard password, and take the test for the friend on one monitor, while pulling up the answers to the exam on a second computer screen.
"It was very easy to use this method," he wrote. That student employee also said he stole answers for a friend to give to a girl his friend wanted to "get with."
The police report further states that another male employee, who was not a student at the time of the investigation, initially denied wrongdoing, but after "calming down" eventually admitted to stealing answers to a test for a female student saying: "I guess I was influenced by the fact that I liked her." That employee no longer works for UTB-TSC, and Blanchard, the school’s attorney, said he is "not re-hirable."
Distance Education employees said they had heard rumors of students misusing the Blackboard system, and even discovered signs that cheating was occurring, but that they were unsure of how to safeguard against it.
While the school had rules in place — most obviously "no cheating" — university officials admitted there had been a lack of controls to limit access to administrative privileges.
However, after the cheating was uncovered, police investigators and the UTB-TSC Internal Audit Department offered plenty of advice on how such breaches could have been prevented.
SAFEGUARDS ABSENT
While Blackboard recommends that only two to three administrators be given the highest level of administrator access, UTB-TSC’s Office of Distance Education had given this information to 15 employees, including student employees, according to the police report. Employees also made a habit of sharing such passwords with those who were not explicitly given access by a supervisor. Rene Sainz headed the Office of Distance Education at the time of the investigation. Sainz told investigators that he had no knowledge that misconduct had occurred.
Sainz, who today continues to direct the office, declined to comment for this article.
In contrast, officials at the University of Texas at El Paso said their online education office has given such access to seven employees, including one student employee, but that the student employee’s access is monitored.
UTB-TSC student employees with administrator access were able to access all course materials for classes that used the program, including tests, as well as professors’ usernames and pin codes.
The police investigation found that protected information, like tests, was misused. Nonetheless, the administration did not change professors’ usernames and pin codes as a result of the malfeasance, the school’s attorney said. Blanchard said the administration did not order the change of usernames and pin codes because there was no specific evidence in the police report that this login information was misused.
Professors surveyed by The Brownsville Herald said they had heard rumors of something going on at the Office of Distance Education, but were not explicitly warned by the school’s administration that student employees who had misused the system would have had access to their usernames and pin codes.
However, Blanchard said deans and department chairs were notified, as were the professors of specific classes affected by cheating.
"As far as we know, no professors’ pins or usernames were compromised," Blanchard said. But Blanchard said that just because information is confidential, it does not mean no employee should have access to it. " ... Appropriate employees on campus have access to confidential information. If we learn our trust has been breached, we take appropriate action."
Blanchard also said financial information is not recorded on Blackboard, but rather on a separate Web site called Scorpion Online.
Professor Mimosa Stephenson said if student employees had wanted to use her username and password to log in, they would have been able to do so and she likely never would have noticed it. It is not unusual for university classes to have 50 or more students.
"They would have access to my grade book," Stephenson said. "It would be the grade book I would worry about the most."
If student employees were to misuse their administrative access, they could have changed their own grades or the grades of other students, she said.
Blanchard said there was no evidence that students changed grades, based on the police investigation.
TSC Board of Trustees Chair David Oliveira said he was notified when the investigation unfolded, but was assured the university was looking into the issue and therefore did not follow the situation.
"We (TSC Board of Trustees) don’t micromanage," said Oliveira.
Blanchard said other students in classes in which the cheating occurred were not notified by the school’s administration.
It is unclear whether the grades of other students could have been affected by the student employees’ misconduct. Some professors at the university grade on a curve; therefore, it is possible that if a student was in a class alongside someone who cheated, the rule-abiding student’s grade could have been impacted. Some incidents of cheating occurred years before the investigation, so it would have been difficult for the school to retroactively adjust other students’ grades. However, it is not shown in the police report whether any of the classes involved were graded on a curve.
DA CONSULTED
At the conclusion of the investigation, campus police Lt. Armando Pulido contacted the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office. Pulido showed prosecutors the evidence he had gathered, and suggested that Texas Penal Code 39.06, Misuse of Official Information, was violated. It’s unclear how many people could have been subject to prosecution. However, such violations of the law would constitute a third-degree felony that’s punishable by two to 10 years in state prison, according to the district attorney’s office.
Pulido also said Education Code 39.0303 was violated, Secure Assessments Instruments, a Class C Misdemeanor.
The police report shows that Assistant District Attorney Juan Mendiola told Pulido: "The criminal laws listed above were appropriate in this case" and that it was his opinion that "the district attorney would accept charges if presented to his office."
However, Mendiola said the district attorney’s office would prosecute the case only if university administrators elected to press criminal charges.
Ultimately, UTB-TSC did not.
Pulido was on vacation when this story was being prepared and written, and did not respond to calls and e-mails from The Brownsville Herald.
INTERNALLY RESOLVED
In the end it was Marquez, the person who initially suspected that academic dishonesty might be linked to Blackboard, who was given the task of disciplining those involved. Because student records are private, UTB-TSC declined a request from The Brownsville Herald for records of how the student employees were punished for their wrongdoing.
Maria Fuentes-Martin, the dean of students, provided a general explanation of what her office does in cases of academic dishonesty, but would not say what happened specifically to those involved in the online cheating.
Students who are found to have committed academic dishonesty — whether through a confession or a university hearing — are given an F in the course involved, Fuentes-Martin said.
Those who are caught in more than one case of academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, cheating, or collusion (more than one student conspires to cheat), are also suspended.
In either case, students are put on disciplinary probation and referred to counseling and to the school’s Learning Enrichment Center. In the case of suspension, a letter of apology may also be required from the students.
The Dean of Students’ office, which mediates allegations of student misconduct, received 56 allegations of academic dishonesty in 2008, up from just 15 in 2007. These numbers, Fuentes-Martin says, are likely just skimming the surface of student academic dishonesty at UTB-TSC.
"This is a small fraction (of those who cheat)," said Feints-Martin, adding that cheating is common at universities.
Fuentes-Martin said the school’s mission is not to shame students who cheat, but rather to punish them and provide them with opportunities to achieve future academic success. Again, school officials would not specifically discuss any disciplinary actions against the student employees. However, in a case such as what occurred among Distance Education student employees, they said the school would not expose students to the campus community as examples of wrongdoing.
The Office of Distance Education since has implemented new policies and limited the number of employees with high levels of administrative access.
Student employees today cannot be enrolled in online courses or hybrid courses if they work in the Office of Distance Education. Additionally, there is now a formal process for student employees to obtain an administrative password.
Blanchard said that because of these new policies, it is not necessary to eliminate student employees from the Office of Distance Education.