You're looking at someone who might not be a straight-A student, but I'm surely not a dishonest and lazy one. While I'm glad my school is brushing up all the students on the ways of academic honesty and dishonesty, it's almost a bit of an insult. Are people REALLY trying to get an education by cheating? A class assignment for my General Info class at Axia/Phoenix sparked the following set of opinions.
We were all brought into this world with a different set of morals. Myself, I was raised around church-going teachers and blue-collar workers. Bills had to be paid, food needed to be put on the table. Who had time to be dishonest? Who had time to cheat and steal and lie? Why would one try and take the easy way out by academic honesty, anyway? I must be the nerdy prude in the room, because the thought of copying and pasting someone's work just isn't in my blood. Being dishonest and not giving them credit just feels wrong.
When I attended Vanderpoel Magnet School, I can remember my 3rd grade teacher giving us an assingment for a project on the different kinds of climates in the world. I think I chose Artic climates. One of the many things she taught us was how to create our Bibliography. These were the sources of our report's bulk and where we got the pictures. From then on, it was the same thing. If I wrote a report, I needed to cite my sources. There was no questioning it--if I didn't write it, someone else was supposed to get the credit.
So how is it that so many students are being accused of doing the very thing most of us have been taught not to do? How is it that colleges have to set guidelines and rules, and some people feel as if they are exempt from the rules? Why is it that some of us are slaving over a hot processor and .pdf files and the rest of us are wearing out mice trying to get done in time for the Box Social? It's bad enough that people are robbing themselves of this new knowledge through research. It's a huge slap in the face of your classmates.
An opinion was expressed in one of the articles I chose to use for my checkpoint entry on academic honesty. In one of the papers, a researched claimed that online students were more than likely going to cheat and be academically dishonest than their physical classroom counterparts. With raised eyebrows as I read, I knew this could not be any further (farther...*facepalm* -___-) from the truth. In my classroom, there is no room whatsoever for anyone to plagiarize. Why? Simple reasons. One--our papers are all turned in using Microsoft Works. Therefore, there is no paper. It's all digital. This leads me to the second reason--a little program called "TurnItIn". If you think about plagiarism, you're cold busted in Axia College.
My Gen105 teacher had us try this plagiarism check application by copying and pasting an entire article about chem. studies in Texas by some guy who's at the top of his game. The TurnItIn checker searches a variety of Internet databases to see if any of your content matches up with whatever is out there in the digital world. When that thing told me that things were 100% plagiarized, I felt as if it was pretty obvious to say that any online college student thinking about being academically honest truly WAS royally screwed.
A student attending a physical college wouldn't be safe, either. While the majority of my papers were set up in the same format of turning things in online, I STILL had to turn in papers physically. If a teacher suspected a line was plagiarized, he or she had the power to check up on you. It was no shock to me when the article for my class reached the same conclusion that online and offline students pretty much meet cheek to cheek when it comes to academic honesty. While some schools are completely no-nonsense on it like my two schools were, there are so many who don't check up on it.
The protocol for explaining the consequence of academic dishonesty is very necessary. If people don't understand the rules and the guidelines, you can't expect them to follow rules they know nothing about. You can't just imply that they're going to be honest. If there is an easy way out, some people are going to try it. It's different for me, personally, because school has always been a bit of a struggle for me. I am quite terrible at Mathematics, can't really stand research papers, and always feel like my insides are melting whenever I have to give a report. Of course I have a good head on my shoulders and a decent level of intelligence, but I am no genius. I work hard is all. I suppose that for some, it does not pay off to work hard. We can't all cruise down easy street constantly, however.
We were all brought into this world with a different set of morals. Myself, I was raised around church-going teachers and blue-collar workers. Bills had to be paid, food needed to be put on the table. Who had time to be dishonest? Who had time to cheat and steal and lie? Why would one try and take the easy way out by academic honesty, anyway? I must be the nerdy prude in the room, because the thought of copying and pasting someone's work just isn't in my blood. Being dishonest and not giving them credit just feels wrong.
When I attended Vanderpoel Magnet School, I can remember my 3rd grade teacher giving us an assingment for a project on the different kinds of climates in the world. I think I chose Artic climates. One of the many things she taught us was how to create our Bibliography. These were the sources of our report's bulk and where we got the pictures. From then on, it was the same thing. If I wrote a report, I needed to cite my sources. There was no questioning it--if I didn't write it, someone else was supposed to get the credit.
So how is it that so many students are being accused of doing the very thing most of us have been taught not to do? How is it that colleges have to set guidelines and rules, and some people feel as if they are exempt from the rules? Why is it that some of us are slaving over a hot processor and .pdf files and the rest of us are wearing out mice trying to get done in time for the Box Social? It's bad enough that people are robbing themselves of this new knowledge through research. It's a huge slap in the face of your classmates.
An opinion was expressed in one of the articles I chose to use for my checkpoint entry on academic honesty. In one of the papers, a researched claimed that online students were more than likely going to cheat and be academically dishonest than their physical classroom counterparts. With raised eyebrows as I read, I knew this could not be any further (farther...*facepalm* -___-) from the truth. In my classroom, there is no room whatsoever for anyone to plagiarize. Why? Simple reasons. One--our papers are all turned in using Microsoft Works. Therefore, there is no paper. It's all digital. This leads me to the second reason--a little program called "TurnItIn". If you think about plagiarism, you're cold busted in Axia College.
My Gen105 teacher had us try this plagiarism check application by copying and pasting an entire article about chem. studies in Texas by some guy who's at the top of his game. The TurnItIn checker searches a variety of Internet databases to see if any of your content matches up with whatever is out there in the digital world. When that thing told me that things were 100% plagiarized, I felt as if it was pretty obvious to say that any online college student thinking about being academically honest truly WAS royally screwed.
A student attending a physical college wouldn't be safe, either. While the majority of my papers were set up in the same format of turning things in online, I STILL had to turn in papers physically. If a teacher suspected a line was plagiarized, he or she had the power to check up on you. It was no shock to me when the article for my class reached the same conclusion that online and offline students pretty much meet cheek to cheek when it comes to academic honesty. While some schools are completely no-nonsense on it like my two schools were, there are so many who don't check up on it.
The protocol for explaining the consequence of academic dishonesty is very necessary. If people don't understand the rules and the guidelines, you can't expect them to follow rules they know nothing about. You can't just imply that they're going to be honest. If there is an easy way out, some people are going to try it. It's different for me, personally, because school has always been a bit of a struggle for me. I am quite terrible at Mathematics, can't really stand research papers, and always feel like my insides are melting whenever I have to give a report. Of course I have a good head on my shoulders and a decent level of intelligence, but I am no genius. I work hard is all. I suppose that for some, it does not pay off to work hard. We can't all cruise down easy street constantly, however.