<p>To me it seems you both care greatly about academic integrity, which is commendable. Perhaps it’s time to retire the discussion? Your call. Easy for me, I can easily skip over the thread…I just see two passionate arguments, both very good, plenty of points made.</p>
<p>How often are people wrongly accused of cheating? My guess is not very.</p>
<p>A friend’s daughter was wrongly accused of plagiarism in HS by a very good teacher. Her writing was so incredible I guess he doubted it was hers. When I was in jr hi my Language Arts teacher said her husband thought my writing must be plagiarized because a 7th grader couldn’t think like that. This does happen.</p>
<p>my D was falsley accused, she and a friend studied for a test together, imagine that, and got similar ones wrong, not that many, but 3-4, so teacher wondered, but he talked to both girls, and realized they did know the material, and had misunderstood the same area</p>
<p>My daughter was also accused of plagerism in high school. The teacher told her that she either copied her paper or else she was a very good writer. I’m happy that she stood up and said, “In fact, I am a very good writer!” And she continued to go on proving it for the rest of the year.</p>
<p>Too bad this college situation is not so easily resolved!</p>
<p>Unfortunately, false accusations of plagiarism for precocious student writers do happen.</p>
<p>Acclaimed writer Madeleine L’Engle still recalls a painful incident from her childhood:</p>
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<p>source: <a href="http://www.frugalfun.com/l’engle.html">http://www.frugalfun.com/l’engle.html</a></p>
<p>I also know a very precocious seven-year-old kid who typed and mailed a very articulate letter of complaint to the parents of a classmate who had been bothering her on the school bus and on the playground. </p>
<p>The syntax, spelling, and punctuation were all very correct and the father was outraged when he received it. He assumed that the girl could not possibly have written the letter herself and that a parent must have typed it. He called the girl’s mother and expressed outrage, threatening to report the parents to the principal for “forging” this letter to him in their child’s name.</p>
<p>It was an awkward situation–the girl had indeed composed and typed the letter entirely by herself, but the father simply could not believe or accept this, since the use of language and writing style was so far beyond what his own child was capable of–and pointing out that the girl was indeed capable of such writing would only further outrage him.</p>
<p>So the mother simply said that the girl had indeed written it and said it was fine with her if he wanted to discuss the letter with the principal.</p>
<p>The mother never heard anything further–the principal was familiar with the girl’s abilities and would likely have realized that she had indeed written it herself, but then again the father might have decided that taking the letter up with the principal wasn’t such a good idea, because the content of the letter didn’t reflect well on his son’s conduct.</p>
<p>But the bottom line is that there are some cases in which an innocent person truly has no way to defend himself from unfair accusations—at least short of a total “Big Brother” existence where everyone is under constant monitoring at all times.</p>
<p>I just wanted to offer another possible way to put a lid on cheating. That is, to have a Honor Code and more importantly, a culture of honesty. At my college exams are not proctored, take-home exams are frequent, and we’re encouraged to work with other students as much as possible. We self-monitor ourselves and our fellow students so that instructors don’t have to worry about cheating. The Honor Committee does a good job of spelling out what constitutes as academic dishonesty before we even attend our first class. We have no excuse. The consequence for cheating (as proven through a thorough investigation) is expulsion. </p>
<p>I’m proud to be a part of my school’s culture of honesty because it works. Students take the responsibility seriously and so our instructors trust us. The Honor Code may seem overly idealistic but, at my school, at least, we couldn’t imagine academic life without it.</p>
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<p>You have hit the nail on the head debryc! I know that there are schools that pride themselves in fostering just such a culture. In such places, do the students turn each other in, as required at the military academies, when they know of cheating by others?</p>
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<p>With all due respect, how can you be so sure that the honor code works? It might just mean that more people get away with cheating.</p>
<p>In my experience, a certain percentage of the population will cheat at anything if they think they can get away with it. In this day and age, where so many students want to go to highly competitive professional schools, I would guess that cheating is pretty common. Even in schools with “honor codes”</p>
<p>JMHO</p>
<p>I have to agree with lskinner here. I doubt that an official honor code prevents, or even reduces, cheating. It probably even conversely make it easier for those who want to cheat. Certainly, most people are not dishonest, but those people adhere to their own personal honor code and they wouldn’t cheat anywhere (like debryc, for example).</p>
<p>Look at how the general population follows traffic laws. If the light is yellow, they might go through it…unless there is a police car behind them. </p>
<p>In my opinion, knowing that cheaters are being sought is a deterrent.</p>
<p>My son was a freshman this year at the same school as debryc(I’m just guessing at this but it does sound like the same school). The honor code is taken very seriously. I’m sure from time to time cheating does occur. But its also a school where if a student leaves his or her laptop out it will be there when they return. I’ve heard of students even leaving cash on a table in a common room of a dorm and it was there when they returned hours later. Students are given keys to building on campus that they need access to after hours. My son proudly showed me the keys he was given to several buildings so he could turn in homework and exams at any hour. Faculty trusts the students. Students trust faculty & staff and each other. According to my son, students don’t compete against each other for grades. There is in fact very little talk of grades and the emphasis is on learning the material in depth. The depth of understanding required for the course may also be a factor as to why the honor code is adheared to. Problem sets require proof not just a simple answer. My son had get an extension over the summer for one class he was not able to complete last term. He has a paper to write for the class that he couldn’t get done during the school year. I am amazed to watch the process as he works on his paper over the summer. He works and works on it and then he emails it to the prof. The prof then edits and makes comments. My son then spends several more weeks editing and correcting and writing more. Then it goes back to the prof. My son is waiting to get the paper back from the prof again and fully expecting he’ll have more work to do. This kind of attention from professors helps to make the honor code work. I believe at his school the student/prof ratio is aout 3:1. Its not just about getting a grade, its about learning the material and in terms of my son’s paper, its about really learning how to write a research paper in mathematics. There’s not much need to cheat even if you do over load yourself, get stressed by the amount of work if the faculty and staff are willing to provide the support to really learn the material. I guess what I wanted to say is its not just about having an honor code. Its about an entire community that supports learning and understanding in depth. Its a community where even if you’re running late there’s no need to run the yellow light because someone will help you catch up.</p>
<p>Gee, our son has a prof who allows his students to rewrite papers any time after the class has ended. He will read them, grade them and attempt to change the transcript grade.</p>
<p>Of course he also teached a class titled Anarchism and Democracy.</p>
<p>There was a thread on here last year (i can’t find it) about a TA at a school out in CA. who talked about how she looked for and caught “cheaters.” It was absolutely frightening that she went on so little and that she had so much power to ruin lives. Maybe someone else can find it. It was like “is cheating worth it” or something. Anyway, I went out of my way to show this to both my college students and warn them about people like this.</p>
<p>How do they grade in this school where students don’t compete against eachother and students can turn their work in after the semester is over? Will late work be graded the same as work that was submitted on time? That doesn’t seem fair to people who could have done a better job with several extra months, but did the best they could in the time allotted. I assume there could be no curve with no competition? Approximately what is the average gpa with this system? Just curious…</p>
<p>I admit, it does sound like an ideal learning situation. But OTOH, it doesn’t sound like the real world where there is competition, there are deadlines and people are not always honest.</p>
<p>At school Oaklandmom is referring to, extensions are discussed with Dean &/or asst. dean, then needs to be approved by the professor. Its not abused.</p>
<p>The Honors committee takes its work seriously. The student representatives are alerted to a future meeting, but not time or place. That info comes shortly before. The meeting may be after midnight, to protect confidentiality.</p>
<p>Donald McCabe, a professor of Ethics at Rutgers, has conducted extensive research on colleges with and without honor codes. His conclusions are striking, so I’ve excerpted key passages from one of his articles below.</p>
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<p>However, Prof. McCabe did not believe that the honor code itself was responsible for that difference. He went on to write (emphasis mine):</p>
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<p>So it appears that the key to reducing cheating is not the honor code itself, but rather creating an environment where academic dishonesty is socially unacceptable. An honor code will work relatively well in such environments, but may not be necessary or sufficient to create such an environment.</p>
<p>Not all honor codes require students to turn others in, however. I think that particular provision of the code is unrealistic in many cases and can create cynicism about the honor code.</p>
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This is a faulty assumption. Just because students do not compete directly with each other does not mean that a curve cannot exist. The students simply have a different mindset. My school has almost no competition between students for grades, but some classes are still graded on a curve. The two are not mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>That’s an interesting study, but I don’t see how self-reporting can be used to accurately measure the extent of cheating. </p>
<p>Here’s a way to measure cheating that doesn’t rely on self reporting: In a class that has multiple sections, give the final exam to half of the sections on day 1. Give the exact same final exam to the other half on day 2. Compare the average raw scores between the 2 days. (Don’t tell anyone that you are measuring cheating or dishonesty!)</p>
<p>My prediction is that there will be a significant increase in average raw score from day 1 to day 2. And that the increase will be about the same whether or not there is an honor code in place.</p>
<p>Re: curve and competition
Even if the students may not feel competitive with each other, that is how a curve works. Students are being compared to each other. You don’t have to know it all, you simply have to be better than everybody else to get that ‘A’. To me, that’s competition.</p>
<p>Ugh. Enough already…</p>