¶ … Academic Honesty
Sociologist William Bowers interviewed students on nearly one hundred college campuses while doing his dissertation in the 1960s. He learned that half admitted to cheating (Hamilton, 2003). Davis (1993) found forty to seventy percent of college students surveyed reported cheating at some point during their academic careers. It is probably safe to say that the upward trend indicated by these figures continues in 2012. Learning institutions must develop an action plan designed to discourage academic dishonesty. The purpose of this paper is to outline such a plan.
It is imperative that both faculty and students have clear guidelines regarding academic honesty. Davis (1993) proposes five steps in creating and enforcing an academic dishonesty policy: inform students of standards for academics and conduct; explain the harm of cheating as well as campus sanctions; minimize opportunities for cheating and plagiarism; take visible steps to discourage cheating; and respond quickly if cheating does occur.
As a first step, the institution should prominently display its policy on academic integrity in several locations, including its website, the student handbook, and at various student centers, such as the writing center and office of student affairs. Faculty should incorporate discussions of academic honesty in their introductory material for each course. Hamilton (2003) also notes "There are also honest students whose plagiarism is unintentional, because they do not fully understand how to summarize, paraphrase, and make correct bibliographic citations." Instructors often assume students know how to do this, but many students are never sufficiently taught. Gross (2011) argues that the acceptance of cheating is "the product of a different, post-millenial, value orientation towards what education means…rather than as willful wrongheadedness on the part of students." Learning institutions can mandate instruction, perhaps through collaboration between the English department and the library, to make clear to students the guidelines and importance of academic integrity.
Faculty members can help discourage cheating by approving paper topics in advance. They can also review papers at various stages in the writing process, from outlines to rough drafts. Some instructors require students to...
Stronger relationships among students result in a peer situation where pressure from the peer group encourages more cheating than in an environment where strong relationships are built with faculty. The author provides evidence of the power of peer pressure as opposed to individual factors such as demographics or psychological tendency by means of data from students who live with their peers as opposed to those who live in a relatively
White students will cheat as much as black students (McCabe). Overall, the pressure to perform in a rapid and stressful society is what prompts the majority of the students into academic dishonesty. The Effects of Academic Dishonesty Academic dishonesty may seem innocent in the beginning, but in the long run could cause a lot of problems in one's career. For example, if a student cheats on a test or an assignment,
Very often, fraternity houses maintained extensive files of hundreds of academic papers already submitted for course credit. Those papers enabled students to rewrite papers that had already received high grades and change them just enough to present the same material as new; in larger universities, students sometimes submitted recycled papers to different professors without even bothering to rewrite much more than the title page with their student information and the
(U of D. Office of Judicial Affairs Website " a Quick Reference Guide to Academic Integrity") On the issue of flexibility the policies and procedures of U. Of D. are also much more reasonable, allowing for proper investigation and variable sanctions, depending upon the severity of the infraction. Instructors and the administration are members of the team to assist with investigation and implementation of policies. While West Virginia University clearly exemplifies
The Results of Academic Dishonesty: Academic dishonesty in the form of cheating on exams hurts the students involved because they do not have to learn the class subject matter. Likewise, students who plagiarize material or use professional academic ghostwriters fail to learn how to write in addition to violating the copyrights of original authors (Slobogin 2002). Some of the worst consequences of academic dishonesty include the unfair competition in classes where
It can therefore be concluded that academic integrity and ethical conduct are expected of every learner in all academic procedures. The academic principle represents the honesty in coursework, as well as ethical conduct in clinical, lab, research and homework assignments and should be maintained in all academic communities. Exercise 2- Personal values Personal values Personal values are crucial in both our working and personal lives, in that they help shape own individual systems
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