<p>I write for my school paper and I’d love to know how parents view Academic Integrity.</p>
<p>It would be very helpful if you would share your thoughts or situations where it helped or hurt you.</p>
<p>Thank you very much for your help.</p>
<p>Having integrity does not necessarily mean things are going to be easier. Often it is more difficult to take the high road. I try to conduct my life with integrity, not because I will always stand to benefit, but because I have to live with myself.</p>
<p>Case in point, I took a class in college where every midterm was graded on the curve. Apparently, the professor made no changes to his multiple choice tests from one semester to the next, and past copies were widely circulated among some of the students. Before the test, there were small groups of students huddled around this “contraband”, outside of the exam hall, furiously memorizing the answers. I took the test and made an 88. I really studied for this test, too, and under ordinary circumstances, that grade would have been a good one. But because of the pre-exam “heads up” that so many students had, my 88 was a so-so score (and therefore a C). 
I consider the professor to have been just as much at fault for what happened as the students. I suspect he knew exactly what happened and just stuck it to the entire class because of the actions of a few.</p>
<p>My story:</p>
<p>I was in a situation in college very similar to what doubleplay describes. Nursing students had to go to school during the summer. We had a lazy biology professor who used the book exams - same ones year after year. I attended a small branch campus. Our class was small - only those wanting to major in nursing were even on campus that summer. The students, most of whom were struggling, got ahold of previous years’ tests. I was in a very uncomfortable situation, 18 years old, living in a campus condo with most of the other students (there were a couple commuters who were not involved.) After I refused to participate, they watched me carefully to see if I would rat. (I didn’t.) I honestly don’t know all that happened. It was a horrible time in my life. I was not (am not) good at science naturally, the curve was killing me.</p>
<p>I remember that the biology teacher made lots of sarcastic comments in class, like, “How come the only Presidential Scholar in the class is also the only one failing?” (Some told me later that they bet the teacher was aware. I just know I felt very alone.) One professor (anthropology) stopped me on the streets one day and asked me why I thought I was so much better than everyone else. The English teacher led a class on cheating, during which the whole class asserted that it was terrible, but that students deserved to be treated with trust. I didn’t say a word in the whole class.</p>
<p>Toward the end of the semester, the biology teacher ended up hospitalized with hepatitis and we got a sub. The sub told us he was quarantined (in Mexico) and no one had access to his tests or grade sheets. Therefore, our final exam would be our only grade for the quarter.</p>
<p>I was the only on-campus student who passed the exam and the course.</p>
<p>I would like to say it was satisfying and uplifting to do the right thing. But I have never been so miserable in my whole life as I was that 7 weeks. I did not like being a goody-goody, or being treated like one. I wanted to do the right thing, but I didn’t like knowing that my choice was either hurt myself or hurt others. But once I took a stand, I needed to follow it through. I still wonder if there were something I could have said or done that might have made it easier, without giving in.</p>
<p>On an entirely different note: I have read the rules that each of my kids’ schools have given them, and I think it’s a lot harder and more confusing these days. With the technology - Internet, Google, email, SMSing, etc - there is so much more temptation, and even more grey areas. I get confused over when it’s okay to ask for help - group projects, study groups, tutors, even editors, etc - and when a work has to be done completely solo. Some of the situations I hear about every year seem so inoffensive to me.</p>
<p>Thank you very much, those personal experiences really help.</p>
<p>What would you then consider to be the definition of academic integrity? To resist the temptation of cheating?</p>
<p>I think academic integrity is based on the concept that as a student, you are in school to learn. Everything that you do, from papers to tests, should be a reflection of your development. The idea is to go to school to become a more learned person, not to play a game with grades. Grades are just there to give you feedback on your performance. </p>
<p>Look at it this way… let’s say you CHOSE to take guitar lessons. Totally optional- you are doing this because you really want to play the guitar. And let’s say the teacher has a sort of “evaluation” scheme whereby he lets you know how well you are performing. Would you want to “cheat” just to get a higher grade? Of course not, that would defeat the whole purpose of why you’re taking the lessons to begin with! You would welcome his feedback, good or bad, because you know it will make you a better musician.</p>
<p>Grades serve a useful purpose in education- feedback- but they also cause problems, namely cheating and the milder more acceptable form of “gaming”. Gaming could include avoiding difficult classes, even though they are integral to your end goal. An example of this is a high school student who, in spite of wanting to become an engineer or doctor, avoids taking upper level science and math classes instead opting for easier courses that bump his GPA up. All he is doing is cheating himself, since eventually he needs those skill sets to become an engineer or doctor. </p>
<p>Another form of gaming is the dropping of classes, getting switched out of courses the minute it looks like one is not going to ace the class. A related example of this is a high school student who signs up for 5 AP classes in his senior year, sends his transcripts to a college which include the seemingly difficult senior year planned curriculum, and then promptly drops the AP classes for easier ones after submitting his (early) applications. Technically, he hasn’t done anything wrong, since it’s really up to his high school to correct the situation. However, he really isn’t displaying integrity because he knows he’s playing games to make himself look better on paper to the colleges he applies to.</p>
<p>The root of academic integrity is truly understanding that your education is all about becoming a better person, and letting the chips fall where they will, so to speak. Grades have become the end, rather than the means to education. When this happens, academic integrity breaks down.</p>
<p>I really want to thank doubleplay and binx. You have helped me in many ways.</p>
<p>Thanks again, I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Columbia architecture grad school had no grades. They knew perfectly well that most firms would hire you based on references, experience and your portfolio. It was an interesting experience to me to discover how I reacted to having no grades. They had motivated me more than I like to admit, but I did learn the material well enough and was able to spend more time on the interesting stuff and less time on things I just needed to pass. No need to cheat.</p>
<p>To be honest (no pun intended 
), I’m not sure what “academic integrity” means. To me, it could mean no cheating by students, or unbiased instruction by teachers, or something else. What do you think it means, OP?</p>
<p>I do know that many parents engage in behaviour that could be construed as lacking “academic integrity.” I have seen parents complete their childs’ homework, or construct their childs’ entire science project. In some cases, I have seen teachers ignore the fact that a parent had obviously completed the childs’ assignment, and award that child an “A.” Appalling. In those instances, a lack of “academic integrity” was displayed simlutaneously by all 3 parties: parents, students and teachers.</p>
<p>Re mathmom’s post–the best learning experience son had was a course he took at a pre-college program. There were no grades given for the course, even tho it was taught as a college level course. The pressure to perform for the grade was totally lifted and son learned for the pure joy of it. While it may sound like I am in favor of abolishing grades, I am not totally for this concept. However, son learned more in that course without grades than many of his required courses.</p>
<p>Bay, your point about teachers is interesting… what is the teacher’s role/contribution to academic integrity? If we use the definition of academic integrity as a concept embracing learning for the sake of learning, or achieving the highest degree of success in a chosen discipline (and not grades, class standing, etc.), we eliminate the sort of tacit encouragement for students to cheat- whether by getting their parents or someone else to do their work. If a student (and his parent) truly believes in the concept of self-improvement, he naturally would want to do the work himself.</p>
<p>But what about classroom policy? For example, when a teacher gives kids extra credit in English if they go to the band concert that night, or participate in the Walk for Life, or some such extraneous activity? Or when 50% or more of your Algebra II grade is based on non-skill based evaluation (posters, notebook checks, reports, math poems…). Or even giving extra credit- isn’t that just a gimme designed to help students bump up the grade that is supposed to reflect their honest performance? Teachers have a responsibility as well to keep the focus on preparing students in their subjects. They are not just grade keepers and givers.</p>
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<p>Each of my undergrad classes had its own individual academic honesty policy, which was required to be on the syllabus. They varied quite a bit. There were classes where study groups were both expected and encouraged, and past years’ problem sets, exams, and solutions were posted on the course website as study aids. There were also classes where any consultation of past years’ material would have been considered cheating. And my software engineering class where you were allowed to discuss problem sets with each other, but not allowed to take notes at those discussions, and where nobody except you and the class staff was even allowed to look at more than five lines of your code. I understand that it’s necessary for different classes to have different policies, and wouldn’t want it to be otherwise, but I think it also confuses the morality of the issue - in my experience, students were much more likely to think it was morally okay to violate a class policy if that class policy was unusually strict, because they figured that if most other classes allowed it, it wasn’t an immoral thing to do, just against a rule.</p>
<p>I was on the school Committee on Discipline for a year, and I saw several academic dishonesty cases. Some were clear-cut, but some were very, very gray - is a student academically dishonest for copying another’s formatted empty data table and entering his own data into it, because it saved him the work of creating his own table formatting? Is a student academically dishonest if (in a class that forbids consulting past years’ problem sets) she is discussing class material with someone who took it last year, who suddenly gives her unsolicited advice on how to get more credit on a particular problem based on how the prof graded last year, and she follows through on it? In classes that allow collaboration, how much is too much?</p>
<p>(Disclaimer for the OP: I am not a parent. I am a recent college graduate.)</p>