In order to better apprise them of Brown's rules and standards, incoming first-years were required to complete an online tutorial on academic and non-academic codes as well as general health and safety information before coming to campus time this year.
The new tutorial, which was organized by the Office of the Dean of the College and the Office of Student Life, has 18 questions covering rules on plagiarism, cheating, dormitory conduct and health and safety, and it provides information on rules and campus resources.
For example, one of the questions reads, "Consider the following incident: On a Wednesday night at approximately 2:00 a.m., the Department of Public Safety (DPS) receives a noise complaint from an on-campus student. When DPS responds, they discover eight first-year students in a candle-lit residence hall room drinking bottled beer and listening to loud music. Several of the students are also smoking cigarettes. The officers ask to see the Brown IDs of all of the students. One student refuses to give the officers his ID and states, 'I didn't do anything wrong, so I'm not going to give you my ID.'"
It goes on to provide a multiple choice question asking how many University rules are being broken. (The answer is six.)
Another multiple choice question, which is within a brief on Brown's alcohol policies, asks first-years which is not a campus resource for drug and alcohol issues: the Dean for Issues of Chemical Dependency, Health Education, Residential Peer Leaders or the Bursar's Office. (The answer is the Bursar's Office, which settles student accounts.)
Many of the questions and examples appear to be the same ones covered in previous years' class meetings on these topics. "This is not yet really replacing (that) meeting, but it may change some of the content in that meeting because we know people will have had more exposure to some of these topics," said Interim Assistant Dean of the College Sheilah Coleman, who also served as a coordinator for Orientation.
Students are also compelled to type an electronic "signature," a document acknowledging they have read and understand the academic and non-academic codes. In previous years, incoming first-years were sent forms they signed and returned.
First-years were required to complete the tutorial by Aug. 21 and to verify they completed it by typing their names at the beginning of the tutorial. However, there is no password or SIS number authentication, and The Herald completed the tutorial several times using aliases.
It is also unclear how many students actually completed the survey as well as what, if any, action was taken to compel them to do so. Furthermore, the tutorial does not delay the progress of students who answer questions incorrectly.
Associate Dean of Student Life Kisa Takesue, who oversaw the introduction of the survey, was not available for comment.
All 11 first-years interviewed by The Herald said they had taken the tutorial and could recall at least one question.
"It was fairly self-explanatory, but the different scenarios were interesting," said Julie Pridham '10.
"It was good to learn the consequences of our actions before getting to Brown," said Margot Ettelson '10. She said she is pleased students were not required to take the intensive two-hour online alcohol course that some other colleges have begun requiring.
That six-chapter course, called AlcoholEdu, is now mandatory for incoming students at Colby College, Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley, among dozens of other colleges. According to Princeton's Office of Communications, AlcoholEdu includes an initial assessment, followed by video streams, case studies, questionnaires and a final test.
According to a May 25, 2006 Herald article, Brown's tutorial, which is broader but less in-depth than AlcoholEdu, is one part of the University's response to a recent increase in the number of alcohol-related incidents. However, the tutorial covers more than alcohol policy.
Coleman said the pilot program, which Brown contracted through surveymonkey.com, packs a lot of information into a short tutorial. It is designed to "help students become familiar with some of this material before they arrive on campus," when much of the information is reinforced during a mandatory class meeting, she said.
Orientation is constantly being refined and "will be closely looked at this year. The dean of the College and the deans of student life are interested in looking at what we could do differently," Coleman said.
