‘Gross academic fraud' at UTB/TSC rocked Office of Distance Education

BROWNSVILLE — A two-month investigation by University of Texas-Brownsville/Texas Southmost College police 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, which manages Blackboard, confessed to an investigator that they had used the online system to access test answers to help themselves cheat, give the answers to other students, and even to sell.

The employees involved no longer work for the office, according to Michael Blanchard, the school’s attorney.

Police concluded UTB/TSC had not created sufficient safeguards at the time of the 2008 police report to prevent employees from misusing the Blackboard online learning platform.

EXTENSIVE INVESTIGATION

The investigation yielded confessions from six school and student employees, who admitted misusing 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 user name and password to a class 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.

Employee confessions 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 blacked out of the police report.

NO COURT ACTION

In June 2008 university police met with the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office to discuss pressing criminal charges.

Although the investigation was extensive — police conducted 24 polygraph tests and spent most of May and June 2008 investigating — 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 Blanchard, the UTB attorney.

Juliet V. Garcia, the school’s president, explained the decision 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 the university seems 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, not a student, at the time of the investigation — although he formerly had been a student. It is remains unclear if his case should have been handled under the student code of conduct. The investigator in the police report said a third-degree felony charge could have been filed against some people 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 for $60. The student employee and a student middleman each got $30 in the deal. That same student employee agreed to take a test for another student for $40. A different student middleman was involved in that deal, but it’s unclear how much money that person was to receive. The student employee said he never received payment.

“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 police 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 on one monitor, while pulling up the answers to the exam on another.

“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,” the employee 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 university attorney Blanchard said he is “not re-hirable.”

Distance Education employees said they had heard rumors of students misusing the Blackboard system, and even discovered signs of cheating, but were unsure how to safeguard against it.

While the school had rules in place, 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, the Office of Distance Education had given this information to 15 employees, including student workers, 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 at the time of the investigation and told investigators he had no knowledge of any misconduct.

Sainz, who continues to direct the office today, declined to comment for this story.

In contrast to UTB/TSC, officials at the University of Texas-El Paso said their online education office has given such access to seven employees, including one student worker, but that the student employee’s access is monitored.

UTB/TSC student employees with administrator passwords were able to access all course materials for classes that used the program, including tests, as well as professors’ user names and PIN codes.

The police investigation found that protected information, like tests, was misused. Nonetheless, the administration did not change professors’ user names and PINs, the school’s attorney said. Blanchard said the administration did not order user name and PIN changes because there was no specific evidence in the police report that this login information was misused.

Professors surveyed by the Herald said they were not explicitly warned by school administrators that student employees who had misused the system would have had access to their user names and PINs.

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 user names 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,” he said. “If we learn our trust has been breached, we take appropriate action.”

Blanchard also said financial information is not stored in the Blackboard system, but rather in a separate Web-based system.

Professor Mimosa Stephenson said if student employees had wanted to use her user name 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 or other students’ grades, she said.

Blanchard said there was no evidence of that happening.

David Oliveira, chairman of the TSC Board of Trustees, 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 (the TSC Board of Trustees) don’t micromanage,” he said.

Blanchard said other students in classes in which the cheating occurred were not notified by the school’s administration.

DA CONSULTED

At the end 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 is unclear how many people could have been subject to prosecution. However, such violations of the law would constitute a third-degree felony punishable by two to 10 years in prison, according to the district attorney’s office.

Pulido also said Education Code 39.0303, Secure Assessment Instruments, was violated. Such violations constitute a Class C misdemeanor.

The police report shows that Assistant District Attorney Juan Mendiola told Pulido “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, which they did not.

Pulido was on vacation when this story was being reported and written. He did not respond to calls and e-mails from the Herald.

INTERNALLY RESOLVED

In the end it was Marquez, the person who initially suspected academic dishonesty, who was given the task of disciplining those involved. Because student records are private, UTB/TSC declined to provide records of how the student employees were punished.

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 in this case.

Students who are found to have committed academic dishonesty are given a failing grade in the course involved, she said.

Those who are caught in more than one case of academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, cheating and collusion — in which 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 student.

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 said, are likely just skimming the surface of student academic dishonesty at UTB/TSC.

“This is a small fraction (of those who cheat),” said Fuentes-Martin, adding that cheating is common at universities.

The school’s mission is not to shame cheaters, she said, 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 the one that occurred among Distance Education student employees, the officials said the school would not expose students to the campus community as examples of wrongdoing.

The Office of Distance Education has since implemented new policies and limited the number of employees with high levels of administrative access.

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Laura Tillman is a reporter for The Brownsville Herald.