MD Cheating allegations engulf Dartmouth medical school

[BluMist]

It is a "learning management system". Depending on the school, they might use Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle, D2L, etc.

just wondering, what is Canvas?

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[7331poas]

Yes. Their procedures and methods would not hold up to any half decent actual court of law. We’ve seen it time and again - schools having these hearings when they hold a disproportionate amount of power, having already made their mind up, and then saying “just admit it and we’ll go easy on you.” In this case they were easily willing to ruin the careers of 7 students based off of what? Their own IT department was too incompetent to understand the data. I’m glad they were humiliated and had to exonerate the students - and I’m extra glad it’s coming to light. School administrators need to understand that these types of things have potential to ruin lives academically and financially.

I’m sure there are students who cheat even in medical school, but you can’t just blanket go out and paint 17 of your students as cheaters without verified evidence and at least a half decent attempt at due process.

I feel incredibly bad for the students that were accused when they knew they did nothing wrong at all. Complete power tripping behavior. We obviously still need more details but if the school was forced to overturn judgment for so many of the students, then they massively ****ed up somewhere, even if they caught a few actual cheaters.

Of course they will always hide behind the argument "well this isn't a court of law, you aren't entitled to due process". As if arbitrarily cutting a student out of their medical school with 300k debt and no job prospects is not equally punitive.

 

[Captain_Falcon]

It is a "learning management system". Depending on the school, they might use Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle, D2L, etc.

Ahhh thanks, my school uses D2L. And the only "Canvas" I know is a site for making flyers for events and things like that lol. This whole thread I was thinking, "So knowing that the school has a Pediatrics Interest Group event helps with the pathophysiology of Reye syndrome?"

 

[Lawpy]

Apparently, it ended with 3 expulsions....

.... is it confirmed those 3 cheated?

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Ahhh thanks, my school uses D2L. And the only "Canvas" I know is a site for making flyers for events and things like that lol. This whole thread I was thinking, "So knowing that the school has a Pediatrics Interest Group event helps with the pathophysiology of Reye syndrome?"

I think that’s canva lol.

 

[Captain_Falcon]

I think that’s canva lol.

 

[efle]

I've sat on quite a few hearings regarding canvas cheating this past year in my college - it is pretty cut and dry. It shows exactly what you opened/looked at/downloaded. Students have the files downloaded, but I've seen a number of cases of them still opening canvas because they didn't realize it was being tracked. No, Jimmy, canvas did not automatically refresh and open two folders and download powerpoint 32.

I imagine if someone had been reviewing slides the night before, and then those slides refreshed automatically during the exam, it would look exactly the same as someone intentionally pulling up last nights' slides? Unless they can distinguish automatic from user-initiated

 

[Goro]

.... is it confirmed those 3 cheated?

University lawyers aren't stupid. To get to an expulsion, the evidence had to be pretty damning.

Or are you asking if they were expelled for some other infraction, say, sexual harassments/assault?

 

[Redpancreas]

While I don’t condone cheating, I do feel that the school is partly at fault for writing crappy exams that would actually reward cheating. Write good questions that integrate the material, require critical thinking, and give a time limit that precludes them looking something up.

Step 1 for instance - I could have carried my First Aid in the exam and it wouldn’t have changed my score at all and might have even made it lower. For all the security, even if a cheater finds a way they’re still going to be spending 2-3x as long per question and will inevitably leave some unanswered, making their cheating a net neutral at best.

My estimate's that approx. 10% of students cheat at some point in medical school. The most common incidents appear to be sharing question banks from cultural groups (MSA, AAPI, ISA were some guilty when I was in school). It's very similar to frats having "resources" in undergrad. There were too specific tidbits about questions someone told me verbatim prior to the exam and then after the exam, there was an email sent about a suspicious distribution encouraging us to report suspicious activity and I anonymously came forward and turned out my suspicions were correct. It turned out there was a very rough document being circulated with specific details of the exam (not exact questions recreated but something along the lines of "EBV question, CD21, Burkitts lymphoma") and there would be like 300 rows of prompts like that. This can significantly tilt the scale in favor of cheaters because it's oftentimes a few questions which separate the excellent students from the average ones. Ultimately no one was punished with expulsion.

In terms of writing the exams, to quote one the most "loved" professors in pre-clinicals at my school at a curriculum committee meeting "it takes a lot of effort to write one really good question". I recommend some of you who're interested in this read how USMLE/resident board exam questions are selected. It is basically using data to figure out what questions discriminate bad from average from good students. There's quite a process and schools try to replicate it the best they can, however, they do not have the staff nor the time to write completely different exam questions every year so there are definitely many that get repeated. Afterwards people have pretty good memories and remember stuff. At my school in particular, our student committee fought and won the right to have students spend ten minutes after exams to separately come in (approx 30 minutes after everyone finished the exam) and review wrong answers in a proctored setting. While extremely helpful, this is an opportune time for people looking to remember correct answers to do their thing.

 

[Lawpy]

University lawyers aren't stupid. To get to an expulsion, the evidence had to be pretty damning.

Or are you asking if they were expelled for some other infraction, say, sexual harassments/assault?

I'm confused because some students were exonerated but these 3 were straight up expelled. I'm actually thinking those 3 probably had something else damning in addition to the cheating

 

[efle]

I'm confused because some students were exonerated but these 3 were straight up expelled. I'm actually thinking those 3 probably had something else damning in addition to the cheating

Or they gave a coerced confession and couldn't afford lawyers...

 

[efle]

My estimate's that approx. 10% of students cheat at some point in medical school. The most common incidents appear to be sharing question banks from cultural groups (MSA, AAPI, ISA were some guilty when I was in school). It's very similar to frats having "resources" in undergrad. There were too specific tidbits about questions someone told me verbatim prior to the exam and then after the exam, there was an email sent about a suspicious distribution encouraging us to report suspicious activity and I anonymously came forward and turned out my suspicions were correct. It turned out there was a very rough document being circulated with specific details of the exam (not exact questions recreated but something along the lines of "EBV question, CD21, Burkitts lymphoma") and there would be like 300 rows of prompts like that. This can significantly tilt the scale in favor of cheaters because it's oftentimes a few questions which separate the excellent students from the average ones. Ultimately no one was punished with expulsion.

In terms of writing the exams, to quote one the most "loved" professors in pre-clinicals at my school at a curriculum committee meeting "it takes a lot of effort to write one really good question". I recommend some of you who're interested in this read how USMLE/resident board exam questions are selected. It is basically using data to figure out what questions discriminate bad from average from good students. There's quite a process and schools try to replicate it the best they can, however, they do not have the staff nor the time to write completely different exam questions every year so there are definitely many that get repeated. Afterwards people have pretty good memories and remember stuff. At my school in particular, our student committee fought and won the right to have students spend ten minutes after exams to separately come in (approx 30 minutes after everyone finished the exam) and review wrong answers in a proctored setting. While extremely helpful, this is an opportune time for people looking to remember correct answers to do their thing.

Stuff like this even happens for specialty boards

https://www.cnn.com/2012/01/13/health/prescription-for-cheating

 

[Lawpy]

Or they gave a coerced confession and couldn't afford lawyers...

... why would Dartmouth force them to confess if they're going to expel them anyways?

 

[efle]

... why would Dartmouth force them to confess if they're going to expel them anyways?

Why do cops try to get suspects to confess even if they've got plenty of evidence to convict in court?

 

[Lawpy]

Why do cops try to get suspects to confess even if they've got plenty of evidence to convict in court?

Idk if that analogy holds because suspects still have constitutional protections so they can't really be forced by cops to do anything

These protections don't really apply to med students because the schools have a lot of legal protections to do whatever they want unfortunately

 

[Lawpy]

This whole story is insane because Dartmouth made trash exams if students can easily cheat and finish on time. And i find it hard to believe Dartmouth's IT is so incompetent and idiotic that they can't figure canvas out

 

[Redpancreas]

This whole story is insane because Dartmouth made trash exams if students can easily cheat and finish on time. And i find it hard to believe Dartmouth's IT is so incompetent and idiotic that they can't figure canvas out

Most schools have some extent of repetition on exams which is why proctoring, etc. is so stringent. Med school material is so specific that it only takes reading a few words like "Atorvastatin, high intensity statin" so when you get a question like:

1.) Which of the following is following statements is true?
Simvastatin has higher risk of rhabdomyolysis than Atorvastatin
Pravastatin has higher risk of transaminitis than Atorvastatin
Simvastatin 20 mg is a high intensity statin
Atorvastatin 40 mg is a high intensity state
None of the above.

One could make the argument that why not change it so that you said which of the following is not true and change answer choices while maintaining the overall topic/concept, but then that throws the whole discriminative nature of the question off since it hasn't been studied.

Ultimately how much of this is affecting clerkship education? Probably not much. Cheaters are still studying their ass of because chances are not all questions are in the documents they read but all it takes is for a few the cheater doesn't know to have shown in the document for it to make a significant difference in his/her performance on the exam.

 

[Banco]

This whole story is insane because Dartmouth made trash exams if students can easily cheat and finish on time. And i find it hard to believe Dartmouth's IT is so incompetent and idiotic that they can't figure canvas out

Well, somewhere there is incompetence, because they exonerated at least 7 students...

 

[Lawpy]

Well, somewhere there is incompetence, because they exonerated at least 7 students...

I haven't checked preallo lately but this story should 100% be posted there and in the Dartmouth school specific thread

 

[bpinyourarea]

Well, somewhere there is incompetence, because they exonerated at least 7 students...

Not just incompetence in the technical investigation, but also the fact that they're warning students against publicly criticizing the administration? From pre-allo school-specific thread, it seems all students have been threatened into keeping their mouths shut.... very suspicious, if not unethical on the school's part

 

[Lawpy]

Not just incompetence in the technical investigation, but also the fact that they're warning students against publicly criticizing the administration? From pre-allo school-specific thread, it seems all students have been threatened into keeping their mouths shut.... very suspicious, if not unethical on the school's part

Oh crap i just linked this thread over there. I guess the Dartmouth admins are after me now

 

[7331poas]

University lawyers aren't stupid. To get to an expulsion, the evidence had to be pretty damning.

Or are you asking if they were expelled for some other infraction, say, sexual harassments/assault?

And yet they falsely accused 14 others. They even admitted as such in the "town hall".

 

[Banco]

And yet they falsely accused 14 others. They even admitted as such in the "town hall".

Is it actually 14? I didn't watch the entire town hall.

According to a current student on reddit 7 were exonerated (so far). I'm surprised that post hasn't been taken down yet considering they have a gag order for social media for their students.

It actually makes me wonder, why go so hard about this with regards to seeking out your students with technical anomalies in canvas data. It's almost as if they assumed guilt, and wanted to sweep it under the rug by dealing with it swiftly, but then the article got published and people came out. But then they hosted the town hall which more or less proved that at least to some extent they were totally off base. Weird stuff.

 

[Goro]

And yet they falsely accused 14 others. They even admitted as such in the "town hall".

My take is that the lawyers weren't involved at that level, just the Faculty and Deans.

 

[ohmanwaddup]

I'm not sure if many professors are aware of this, but I can view the exact time and date any of my students access Canvas and which page they viewed. It's easy to tell if a student is navigating through course content during an exam.

I hate big brother

 

[Lawpy]

Is it actually 14? I didn't watch the entire town hall.

According to a current student on reddit 7 were exonerated (so far). I'm surprised that post hasn't been taken down yet considering they have a gag order for social media for their students.

It actually makes me wonder, why go so hard about this with regards to seeking out your students with technical anomalies in canvas data. It's almost as if they assumed guilt, and wanted to sweep it under the rug by dealing with it swiftly, but then the article got published and people came out. But then they hosted the town hall which more or less proved that at least to some extent they were totally off base. Weird stuff.

But 3 were expelled?

 

[Banco]

But 3 were expelled?

According to that Dartmouth student. The details are up in the air on numbers. But we do know from the town hall that at least some students were given the "you cheated" email and had it reversed.

 

[Lawpy]

According to that Dartmouth student. The details are up in the air on numbers. But we do know from the town hall that at least some students were given the "you cheated" email and had it reversed.

Related question: is there a question on the training licensing form asking about if you were formally accused by the school for cheating? Reddit says this could be a problem but idk if thats true.

 

[7331poas]

Is it actually 14? I didn't watch the entire town hall.

According to a current student on reddit 7 were exonerated (so far). I'm surprised that post hasn't been taken down yet considering they have a gag order for social media for their students.

It actually makes me wonder, why go so hard about this with regards to seeking out your students with technical anomalies in canvas data. It's almost as if they assumed guilt, and wanted to sweep it under the rug by dealing with it swiftly, but then the article got published and people came out. But then they hosted the town hall which more or less proved that at least to some extent they were totally off base. Weird stuff.

Oh yeah, misremembered the numbers in the EFF content. I think it was 7 confirmed exonerated. There are others who I don't know the result of yet.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Idk if that analogy holds because suspects still have constitutional protections so they can't really be forced by cops to do anything

These protections don't really apply to med students because the schools have a lot of legal protections to do whatever they want unfortunately

Right but if they’ve confessed, it is damning if they then try to sue.

 

[Lawpy]

Right but if they’ve confessed, it is damning if they then try to sue.

Which means it's better to not confess especially if the end outcome either way is being expelled?

I'm not sure why 7 were exonerated but 3 were expelled. It doesn't make sense

 

[Gilakend]

Which means it's better to not confess especially if the end outcome either way is being expelled?

I'm not sure why 7 were exonerated but 3 were expelled. It doesn't make sense

My guess is that most of the students accused cheated. Dartmouth probably wanted to get confessions because you could easily exonerate yourself by saying something auto refreshed. Unless the evidence was you continually pulling up the appropriate PowerPoint for 15 questions in a row, they can't prove it for certain. And if they can't prove it for certain they can't expel unless they want a lawsuit.

For the students who cheated by pulling up 1 PowerPoint and didn't confess? Seems like it can't be proven so they wouldn't expel them is my guess.

But that's just a guess, it's impossible to get into the hive mind of a medical school. If there is literally 1 thing that medical school (particularly medical school administrators) has taught me it is that you can't teach common sense and they are under no obligation to ever act logically.

 

[efle]

You can go into your iPhone and see which apps have background refresh activated. That means the app (Canvas) will continue receiving updates (if a new grade is added or you're sent a message), it does not mean that a PowerPoint that was opened is being refreshed...

Not sure why so many are beating around the bush. Those students cheated and they know it. If this thing was so common how come this is the first time we've heard about it since hundreds of medical schools/graduate schools and universities all use Canvas?

These same students wouldn't hesitate to fudge or lie in the future as doctors and that could harm patients, it won't just be failing a test.

I do think the school should either write better tests or do a better job of preventing cheating in the first place. I'm also certain there are more cheaters that are just better at hiding their tracks and weren't caught but that doesn't mean we shouldn't punish those who were exposed.

Pretty weird theyve been dismissing cases if it's that cut and dried

 

[Banco]

Exactly, because Canvas refreshing in the background isn't sufficient to trigger an investigation and Canvas tracks specific data like what files were opened/downloaded and for how long. I have no doubt these students manually opened up Canvas (on a different device thinking they're safe/not being tracked) and navigated to Canvas to cheat.

“No doubt” - lmao. Based on what information? Read some of the details in the Reddit post.

Also, I hope you don’t sit on honor committees in the future...

 

[Med Ed]

Which means it's better to not confess especially if the end outcome either way is being expelled?

I'm not sure why 7 were exonerated but 3 were expelled. It doesn't make sense

The amount of speculation on this thread is truly exceptional. So I'll add mine.

1. Someone notices some unusual Canvas activity during an exam
2. This initiates a broader review, which turns up a sizable cohort of students whose Canvas accounts showed unusual activity during the exam
3. Allegations of malfeasance are made to this sizable cohort of students
4. Further investigation shows the majority of this unusual activity is benign, most allegations are dropped
5. But, the whole episode does uncover a smaller cohort of students who were legit cheating during the exam
6. This smaller cohort is dismissed

 

[Redpancreas]

The amount of speculation on this thread is truly exceptional. So I'll add mine.

1. Someone notices some unusual Canvas activity during an exam
2. This initiates a broader review, which turns up a sizable cohort of students whose Canvas accounts showed unusual activity during the exam
3. Allegations of malfeasance are made to this sizable cohort of students
4. Further investigation shows the majority of this unusual activity is benign, most allegations are dropped
5. But, the whole episode does uncover a smaller cohort of students who were legit cheating during the exam
6. This smaller cohort is dismissed

To add my speculation, I think everyone would agree this is what happened in reality. Always somewhere in the middle.

 

[efle]

Devil's advocate:

School sees a ton of Canvas access. Can't tell if it was user-initiated or automatic, they just see the accounts accessing canvas pages during the exam window.

Accuses them all. Tries to solicit confessions from them all.

Some confess. Some know better and lawyer up.

Lawyers successfully get cases dismissed for their peeps on the grounds that it can't be proven the access was intentional.

The others remain on track for disciplinary action.

The amount of speculation on this thread is truly exceptional. So I'll add mine.

1. Someone notices some unusual Canvas activity during an exam
2. This initiates a broader review, which turns up a sizable cohort of students whose Canvas accounts showed unusual activity during the exam
3. Allegations of malfeasance are made to this sizable cohort of students
4. Further investigation shows the majority of this unusual activity is benign, most allegations are dropped
5. But, the whole episode does uncover a smaller cohort of students who were legit cheating during the exam
6. This smaller cohort is dismissed

The only part that doesn't make sense to me here is benign vs real cheating being initially confused by the school. If they can see a difference between automatic and user initiated, shouldn't it be immediately obvious to them, especially before they start throwing career-ruining accusations around?

I feel like lawyers doing lawyer things is what got some people off the hook, rather than the school investigating after the fact and proving to themselves that most of their accusations were false.

 

[Banco]

The amount of speculation on this thread is truly exceptional. So I'll add mine.

1. Someone notices some unusual Canvas activity during an exam
2. This initiates a broader review, which turns up a sizable cohort of students whose Canvas accounts showed unusual activity during the exam
3. Allegations of malfeasance are made to this sizable cohort of students
4. Further investigation shows the majority of this unusual activity is benign, most allegations are dropped
5. But, the whole episode does uncover a smaller cohort of students who were legit cheating during the exam
6. This smaller cohort is dismissed

Fair enough, but the devil is in the details, and your interpretation gives a lot more leeway to the school.

For me, it's not simply "no big deal because you're exonerated now." I don't see how it's okay to **** around with students lives like this with allegations based on lofty data. The issue is really that points 3 and 4 on your list shouldn't have happened in that order; "further investigation" should have happened before allegations are made - in this way there would literally not be a scandal like it is now.

What made the "further investigation" happen actually doesn't seem to be from the school, but student initiated. Seems like the school actually got caught red-handed a bit and now look incompetent.

 

[Med Ed]

Fair enough, but the devil is in the details, and your interpretation gives a lot more leeway to the school.

For me, it's not simply "no big deal because you're exonerated now." I don't see how it's okay to **** around with students lives like this with allegations based on lofty data. The issue is really that points 3 and 4 on your list shouldn't have happened in that order; "further investigation" should have happened before allegations are made - in this way there would literally not be a scandal like it is now.

What made the "further investigation" happen actually doesn't seem to be from the school, but student initiated. Seems like the school actually got caught red-handed a bit and now look incompetent.

Seems seems seems.

Again, this is all a lot of speculation based on fragmented information of questionable accuracy.

 

[Banco]

Seems seems seems.

Again, this is all a lot of speculation based on fragmented information of questionable accuracy.

Again, that's fair, but you're pretty nonchalant in your interpretation of matters in that point 3 happened, then point 4 happened. That's okay with you?

Even in the balanced and charitable read of the situation you provide, the school is sitting in a less than optimal light.

 

[FindersFee5]

In terms of writing the exams, to quote one the most "loved" professors in pre-clinicals at my school at a curriculum committee meeting "it takes a lot of effort to write one really good question". I recommend some of you who're interested in this read how USMLE/resident board exam questions are selected. It is basically using data to figure out what questions discriminate bad from average from good students. There's quite a process and schools try to replicate it the best they can, however, they do not have the staff nor the time to write completely different exam questions every year so there are definitely many that get repeated. Afterwards people have pretty good memories and remember stuff. At my school in particular, our student committee fought and won the right to have students spend ten minutes after exams to separately come in (approx 30 minutes after everyone finished the exam) and review wrong answers in a proctored setting. While extremely helpful, this is an opportune time for people looking to remember correct answers to do their thing.

I can't agree with this part more. I used to get so annoyed during preclinicals when we weren't allowed to review our exams by ourselves at our own time. But I also know that some of my fellow students would aggregate the resources for future years (it's happened with other tests that we were allowed to self-review). I've been a TA a lot this year and I've written test questions and review questions and it is much harder to write a good question than I thought - even though I have probably read 20000+ questions in my medical career, it still took me at least 15 - 20 minutes per question for anything other than a straight fact recall, and often times more. I no longer begrudge professors who try to keep their question banks secret.

 

[maverickindeed]

My thing is you just dont wake up one day and decide to cheat. I have been saying for a while that GPA should not be a factor for medical school because people cheat in undergrad. You just need an opportunity.

 

[Med Ed]

Some confess. Some know better and lawyer up.

Lawyering up at this stage typically does not have anyone shaking in their shoes. Administrations get sued over this sort of stuff more often than a high risk pregnancy practice on the upper east side. But schools have their own counsel, and as long their is a process that is (1) communicated to students and (2) followed, there are usually no real grounds for legal action. People may be deposed, but if things are done by the book there isn't much to worry about.

I do find the notion of students confessing to crimes they didn't commit rather interesting. In my experience you can't even get students to confess when there is a smoking gun on exhibit at the Louvre.

The only part that doesn't make sense to me here is benign vs real cheating being initially confused by the school. If they can see a difference between automatic and user initiated, shouldn't it be immediately obvious to them, especially before they start throwing career-ruining accusations around?

My speculation is, to me, "best fit" based on the limited information that is available. But I would agree that there are a number of holes to fill in the story.

 

[Med Ed]

Again, that's fair, but you're pretty nonchalant in your interpretation of matters in that point 3 happened, then point 4 happened. That's okay with you?

Yes. Are you okay being hysterical?

Even in the balanced and charitable read of the situation you provide, the school is sitting in a less than optimal light.

God forbid anything sit in a less than optimal light.

 

[efle]

Lawyering up at this stage typically does not have anyone shaking in their shoes. Administrations get sued over this sort of stuff more often than a high risk pregnancy practice on the upper east side. But schools have their own counsel, and as long their is a process that is (1) communicated to students and (2) followed, there are usually no real grounds for legal action. People may be deposed, but if things are done by the book there isn't much to worry about.

I do find the notion of students confessing to crimes they didn't commit rather interesting. In my experience you can't even get students to confess when there is a smoking gun on exhibit at the Louvre.


My speculation is, to me, "best fit" based on the limited information that is available. But I would agree that there are a number of holes to fill in the story.

Interesting! If I got such an email tomorrow, I don't need to spend my hard earned federal loan dollars on a JD? Safe to just go meet w the school sans counsel?

 

[GoPenguinsGo]

My honest take-away from all this is to just print off the powerpoints before exams.

edit: im joking before anyone lectures me

 

[Med Ed]

Interesting! If I got such an email tomorrow, I don't need to spend my hard earned federal loan dollars on a JD? Safe to just go meet w the school sans counsel?

If you haven't done anything wrong, and the student handbook does not permit counsel to attend hearings, what choice would you have?

 

[NYTCOMJB27]

I don't think it is THAT clear cut especially if the only evidence school has is that Canvas was somehow accessed on another device (ex. background refresh is not that farfetched with modern phones and websites)

This actually happens a lot in the actual court system. Same stress hormones so doesn’t surprise me and could definitely be possible in this situation as well. Not sure what the guidelines say for those hearings but I’d still go with reasonable doubt.

 

[efle]

If you haven't done anything wrong, and the student handbook does not permit counsel to attend hearings, what choice would you have?

I guess I'd be scared they'd try to promise me a better outcome if I falsely confess, or that counsel would have told me not to interview with the school until they'd had a chance to talk through the situation with me.

 

[Banco]

Yes. Are you okay being hysterical?


God forbid anything sit in a less than optimal light.

Lol...I guess it's no big deal.

It's actually hilarious your username is "Med Ed" and you have a faculty tag.