Academic dishonesty among pharmacy students: does portable technology play a role?

ObjectiveTo evaluate the prevalence of academic dishonesty facilitated by portable electronic technology among Doctor of Pharmacy candidates.MethodsA link to a 10-item survey was emailed to student pharmacists at four pharmacy schools. The survey was available from January thru March 2008.ResultsRespondents (n = 397) were evenly distributed among the four classes of pharmacy school; 74.2% were female. Ten percent of all students admitted to cheating; most of whom were enrolled in a public, rather than private, institution (p = 0.007). While only 3.5% of students admitted to technology-facilitated cheating, 9.1% identified specific technologies personally used to aid in cheating. Methods of using portable technology to cheat included: storing notes in programmable calculators or PDAs (77.8%) or sending information to classmates via infrared beams (19.4%), text messages (8.3%), or emails or instant-messages (8.3%). Over 90% of respondents believe classmates cheat; however, 72.2% believe academic dishonesty is not a problem in their school.ConclusionsAt minimum, 10% of student pharmacists cheat, and the majority believes others do as well; however, they do not believe cheating is a problem. Many do not consider various inappropriate acts dishonest. When portable electronic devices are used to cheat, unapproved information is stored for personal use more often than shared with classmates. Faculty members knowledgeable about these new methods of cheating may better identify methods to circumvent such activities.