Short Message Service (SMS) on cellular phones, widely known as text messaging, has become another popular convenience of our technological age.

Text messaging has also become a way for college students to cheat.

Through Short Message Service, cellular phone users are able to send and receive text messages to and from their cellular phones. Messages are directly delivered to the phone similar to the way e-mail is sent and received.

Messages can usually run 140 to 160 characters long, except for Nextel subscribers, who are able to send messages up to 500 characters long.

Nine students from the University of Maryland have admitted to cheating by using their cell phones to receive text messaged answers during an accounting exam last December, according to University of Maryland’s student newspaper, The Diamondback.

The students are said to have received the answer key in a text message during the exam from their friends outside the class. The answer key had been posted on the Internet by the professor once the exam had started. Suspicious that something like that was going on, the professor set up a ploy to catch the students who were receiving the answers by way of their cell phones.

The answer key posted on the Internet was fake, containing 22 wrong answers to the 30 question exam. The key was then checked against the students’ exams to see which students followed the fake answer key.

In a similar case, Hitotsubashi University in Japan failed 26 students last December for using their cell phones to receive exam answers, according to the Associated Press.

Bethany Schuttinga, ISU assistant dean of students, said no cases regarding text message cheating at Iowa State have been brought up to her to this point.

“That doesn’t mean that [text message cheating] is not going on,” she said. “We might just not be catching it.”

Schuttinga said there is no ban on having text messages or cell phones in the classroom, but faculty members are able to individually enforce the ban in their classes.

Grace Weigel, head of Judicial Affairs, could not be reached for comment.

Curtis Eckerman, lecturer in zoology and genetics, said he has not noticed a problem with text message cheating in his large Zoology 155, Basic Human Physiology and Anatomy, lecture.

“In Zoology 155 I have about 400 students, so I employ three or four lab [teaching assistants] to assist me in proctoring the test,” he said in an e-mail. “This cuts down on the amount of attempted cheating quite a bit.”

Thomas Hill, vice president for Student Affairs, said he was unaware of this new advance in cheating.

“We’ll have to identify it as it surfaces,” he said. “[Students] are using [technology] and using it well.”

Several professors at Iowa State said they think it would be hard not to notice text message cheating in their classrooms.

Cinzia Cervato, assistant professor in geological and atmospheric sciences, said text message cheating would be both time-consuming and noticeable.

“I usually patrol the auditorium together with one or two other TAs and I think that I would see it if somebody would write a message on their cell phone,” she said in an e-mail.

Jackie Blount, associate professor of curriculum and instruction, said she has been aware of this problem and said she does not believe text messaging is always obvious to the instructor. “Text systems are very easy to conceal,” she said. “It would be difficult to catch.”

Blount said she believes the coming technology will increase cheating.

“There are [a few] students who will always look for a way to cheat,” she said.

Anthony Townsend, associate professor of logistics operations and management information systems, said he doesn’t believe cheating is worth the effort.

“Really dedicated cheaters will succeed at beating a test or two,” he said. “But they haven’t learned the material and they’ve wasted their tuition and time.”