Victory! Dartmouth Ends Unfounded Cheating Investigation After Students, Rights Groups Speak Out

The Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine has ended its months-long dragnet investigation into supposed student cheating, dropping all charges against students and clearing all transcripts of any violations. This affirms what EFF, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), students, and many others have been saying all along: when educators actively seek out technical evidence of students cheating, whether those are through logs, proctoring apps, or other automated or computer-generated techniques, they must also seek out technical expertise, follow due process, and offer concrete routes of appeal. 

The investigation at Dartmouth began when the administration conducted a flawed review of an entire year’s worth of student log data from Canvas, the online learning platform that contains class lectures and other substantive information. After a technical review, EFF determined that the logs easily could have been generated by the automated syncing of course material to devices logged into Canvas but not being used during an exam. It’s simply impossible to know from the logs alone if a student intentionally accessed any of the files, or if the pings exist due to automatic refresh processes that are commonplace in most websites and online services. In this case, many of the logs related to Canvas content that wasn’t even relevant to the tests being taken, raising serious questions about Dartmouth’s allegations.

It’s unclear how many other schools have combed through Canvas logs for evidence of cheating, but the Dartmouth debacle provides clear evidence

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