A message from "Jane Doe" offering "a little help" popped up in the email accounts of first-year students at Kapiolani Community College’s Radiologic Technology program, the only such program in the state.
Attached was a photo of a multiple-choice test, complete with answers, that looked a lot like the test they were about to face. It was one of a string of similar emails sent during the fall 2012 semester.
The messages came complete with "rules," warning the students to stay mum and to "slightly diminish" their scores so they would not get 100 percent, which could arouse suspicion. It advised them to opt out if they didn’t want any more "help."
Enough people apparently took advantage of the emailed tests that administrators noticed an upward shift in test scores, and one former student eventually blew the whistle during an academic grievance case.
The school has made sweeping changes to the Rad Tech program to stamp out cheating, including revising all exams, proctoring all exams and not allowing students to review completed tests, according to Kimberly Suwa, acting director of Radiologic Technology at KCC.
The competitive, two-year program accepts just 16 students out of about 70 applicants each year, she said. Graduates earn Associate in Science degrees and must take a national certification exam before starting work as radiologic technologists, who position patients and take X-rays.
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser learned of the cheating from the former student who filed a grievance June 5. She provided documentation on condition of anonymity, including emails she had received from "Jane Doe" and "John Doe," as well as her replies asking to opt out and not receive the emailed tests.
"I was very upset by this situation, but I felt that I could not bring it to anyone’s attention without implicating all my classmates," she said. "I decided to try to ignore it, but it was a great source of anguish to me."
KCC’s grievance committee denied her claim that she was improperly graded, saying students are judged on a point system, not a curve, so any cheating might have elevated others’ grades but not lowered hers. But it took seriously the materials she submitted regarding cheating in the program.
"The committee finds that the evidence of cheating in the fall 2012 course appears pervasive and substantial," Susan Jaworowski, academic grievance chairwoman, concluded in a memo dated Nov. 21, 2013.
"The committee is concerned that an atmosphere in which a substantial number of students blatantly cheat creates a chilling effect on all students aware of that cheating, including the grievant, and casts a shadow on the program and the college."
It called on the administration to "ensure that cheating is eradicated in the Rad Tech program."
Suwa told the Star-Advertiser that her program had already taken sweeping measures to do just that. She highlighted the following safeguards, put in place as of May:
» All exams have been extensively revised or completely replaced.
» All examinations are proctored at the KCC Testing Center or in class by an instructor.
» Students may no longer review their answers after completion of an exam, to ensure the security of the questions.
» Student belongings are locked in a separate room during exams.
The program had not received prior official complaints from past or present students about cheating, she said. But instructors had picked up on the problem themselves by January 2013, she said, and were gearing up for changes, well before the student alerted Chancellor Leon Richards on May 22.
"By the start of the spring semester of 2013, the faculty suspected that cheating was occurring through observation of test result patterns from previous semesters," Suwa said.
"Normally there’s a few people who do really well and a few people who don’t do so well, and most of the people are kind of in the middle."
In the fall there were lots of high test scores, and many students were missing the same questions. Traditionally, instructors would change just a handful of questions on tests from year to year, Suwa said. And they often left the room during the testing, according to the student who filed the grievance.
"Previously, we did have more trust in our students," Suwa said. "The procedure of locking belongings in a separate room has always been in place, but because we cannot search our students, it was just on their honor."
The college has a no-cheating policy, as do all the University of Hawaii campuses. Suwa said she recognized some of the emailed tests as photos of previous exams, but she did not try to track down the source of the emails or follow up with students who received them.
"Yes, emails can be sent to a whole bunch of people, but it’s what the recipient does that matters," Suwa said. "There is no way to absolutely prove whether they used it or not. I’m not about to go headhunting or witch hunting. I’m very reluctant to point fingers at anyone without proof."
"We feel that the measures we already undertook (to prevent future cheating) were sufficient," Suwa said. "This is the strictest we possibly could be."
The emails originated from accounts with names such as "Jane Doe" and addresses such as radtechsecrethelper@gmail.com. They were sent to the students’ University of Hawaii email accounts. The former student who filed a grievance believes that previous students disseminated the tests.
Second-year students are in a peer-mentoring role with first-year students in the program. During hands-on lab performance exams, they observe the first-year students and take notes on errors, while instructors provide oversight and determine grades.
The former student who filed a grievance said she was flustered during her final lab performance and had 15 points deducted for swearing. She said she was being observed by a second-year student whom she believed had cheated, because she had seen him looking at exams on his laptop before he took his own final exam.
She fell 4 points short of a C and was cut from the program April 10. She filed her grievance June 5.
"I had been wrestling with wanting to say something all along," she said.
