ChaCha service raises fears of cheating via cell phone

The Philadelphia Inquirer (MCT) - A new cell-phone service that promises to give free answers to virtually any question within minutes has some academics worried that it will be yet another device to help students cheat.

The Indianapolis-based ChaCha began its free service in January, and business has since mushroomed to 300,000 inquiries a day.

Its 25,000 research guides respond via text message to questions on just about anything: the square root of 323 or the plot of "The Great Gatsby," Barack Obama's position on education or directions to the nearest pizza shop.

University of Delaware faculty learned of it recently when a professor heard about it from his college-age son and sent an alert to all of his colleagues. Other schools found out about it through questions from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

"Now that we're aware ChaCha exists, I can assure you that we will begin discussion of a formal policy to prohibit cell-phone use in classes," said Gerard O'Sullivan, vice president for academic affairs at Neumann College in Delaware County, Pa. He said most professors already prohibited cell-phone use in class.

But other schools, including Temple, Drexel and Rowan, say they count on cell phones to send alerts to students in emergency situations _ an outcome of the Virginia Tech killings _ and would not want to ban them.

"We will be using cell phones in a new alert system we will be unveiling soon," said Drexel spokeswoman Niki Gianakaris.

O'Sullivan said Neumann might just ban students from "texting out" in class. "You could have students put phones on vibrate and still have them alerted," he said.

While ChaCha is the latest service to raise classroom integrity issues, academics are becoming increasingly concerned about "digital cheating" methods, including cell-phone use.

The Cherry Hill, N.J., Board of Education is reviewing proposed revisions to its cell-phone policy, partly driven by concerns about cheating and cyber-bullying but also recognizing that there can be legitimate reasons for cell-phone use in classes.

"There is an acknowledgment that the technology is changing rapidly, so we need to be able to address those ... situations," spokeswoman Susan Bastnagel said.

National experts say electronic cheating is on the increase, but still overshadowed by traditional methods such as using cheat sheets or copying from a neighbor. Jason Stephens, an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut, said that on a recent survey he led of 1,000 high school students in Connecticut, 45 percent of students who said they cheated reported using digital methods. That was up from 15 percent three years ago, he said.

"What I imagine will happen is, we'll begin to see parity between digital and conventional forms," Stephens said.

Supporting FREE Catholic Education with Grass-fed Beef

He added that rather than trying to control the technology, schools should work harder on creating a climate of integrity in the classroom.

ChaCha agrees.

"Kids just need to not cheat," said Susan Marshall, vice president of marketing for ChaCha, which touts its service as the first of its kind in the United States.

Cheating was the last thing on the minds of ChaCha when it decided to unveil its service, she said. ChaCha chief executive officer Scott A. Jones, inventor of network-based voice mail, got the idea when he was trying to write a speech and could not find information. So he called a few friends. He thought it would be great to create a network of 25,000 "friends" whom people can call for help.

"It wasn't built to be a homework helper," Marshall said. "Of course, we're recommending that students don't use cell phones in class or use this as a way to replace learning the subject."

The company recently sent out a national public-relations pitch promoting the service for college students, offering them "advice on everything from where to find cheap pizza to fit their starving student budget to ... the most popular coffee shop."

Supported by advertising, the service has not heard complaints from colleges, Marshall said, but did hear from a high school in its home city that students were using the service inappropriately.

"I don't think it's a widespread problem. We would have heard more about it if it was," Marshall said.

Guides take tests to be hired and are trained to find information quickly. They are paid according to their speed and accuracy, up to 20 cents per query for top performers, she said. The company boasts a 93 percent accuracy rate and says it answers questions in up to three minutes.

But a test of the service by Inquirer reporters shows that users may need to be careful before depending on ChaCha. Asked the name of the most populous suburban county in Pennsylvania, the service responded Lancaster County instead of Montgomery.

Of the six questions, ChaCha answered three accurately in under 10 minutes, two incorrectly, and left one without an answer. ChaCha workers should get questions right as long as the information is publicly available, "but they are human and they do the best they can," said Marshall.

Chris Stover, a senior at Temple and editor of the student newspaper, said some students had heard of the service. One student asked it why there was traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, and ChaCha replied with a toll-free number, Stover said.

Secret Archives of the Saints, Subscribe Today

Academics are split on how much of a problem ChaCha could cause. Most universities say they have no policy on cell phones but leave it up to professors to set their own rules. Many say professors ban the use of cell phones during class or require them to be silenced.

"I don't see how this is going to be anything that's going to revolutionize the classroom," said Ed Streb, a communication studies professor at Rowan. "If you really are that desperate to cheat, you could probably have your roommate standing by with the textbook."

He said he was more concerned about the disruption cell phones cause. He bans their use during class and docks students bonus points or requires them to let him answer the phone if it rings.

Others were worried about potential cheating.

"I would imagine in large classes (cell-phone use) would be hard to monitor," said Arthur Hochner, Temple's faculty union president and associate professor of human-resource management.

Jim Burns, adjunct professor of English at the University of Delaware, learned of ChaCha from his son, a junior at Hofstra University on New York's Long Island. An expert in 20th-century American literature, he tested the service by asking questions about alter egos in Jack Kerouac's novels, and all the answers came back correct.

"I was pretty impressed," he said, and at the same time worried.

He emphasized that neither he nor his son was aware of any instances of students' using ChaCha to cheat.

Burns received between 20 and 25 responses from colleagues when he alerted the more than 800 faculty members in an e-mail. Most were not aware of the service. Some said they might change their cell-phone policy or add one as a result.

Burns said he does not allow cell-phone use in class.

"If it goes off in my class," he said, "I ask you to leave and count you absent for the day."

___

© 2008, The Philadelphia Inquirer.