<p>Your student has encountered cheating. What do you teach them to do about it? Do you encourage them to keep quiet (don't be a snitch). Do you encourage them to turn in the cheaters? Do you practice situational ethics (turn in cheaters when there's a direct impact on your own student, like a curve situation)?</p>
<p>I'm working on an academic honesty exercise for a college freshman experience course,mid you're wondering what prompted the question.</p>
<p>If you never turn in cheaters, that’s fine (ethical rule : no snitching). If you always turn in cheaters, that is also fine (ethical rule: no cheating). Picking and choosing who to turn in (your situational ethics as noted above) means that you are only turning in the cheater because you are going to benefit from it. Is that honesty?</p>
<p>I think int depends on the level and severity of the cheating. Frequent, blatant cheating - turn them in. Someone copies homework once because he had an insanely busy night? Let it slide.</p>
<p>So, none of the above.</p>
<p>(of course, this does not apply if your school requires you to turn in cheaters. In that case, turn them all in.)</p>
<p>No, I’d call that situational with the criteria for being turned in being the severity of the situation.</p>
<p>And a school’s honor code requirements are a good point. This school does not have a code that would require a student to turn in another student.</p>
<p>During my undergrad (engineering), most assignments allowed collaboration, so short of somehow stealing the test/answer key, cheating was somewhat difficult.</p>
<p>You might take a look at the West Point honor code: I will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate those who do.</p>
<p>I do not know that I would ever encourage a child to turn someone in. Though my husband is a West Point grad, neither of my children went that way. I have always felt as though cheaters do not win and it will eventually catch up with them. </p>
<p>And yesterday, I turned in my 15 th report for plagiarism this year at my college. Cheating is tough to deal with. Good luck with your project.</p>
<p>This course will be required of all incoming freshmen. I’ll have a range of majors, from undecided to chemistry/premed. Some majors are less cheat-able than others, but in general, what are you teaching your kids about dealing with cheaters?</p>
<p>
But real life is full of grey areas. Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone…</p>
<p>Is a first-year experience course? </p>
<p>I think it depends on your school’s policy. I do not ever ask other students to turn in their classmates. I have never had a student come to me about anyone else cheating either. There seems to be a them against us attitude about cheating at the CC where I work.</p>
<p>There’s no assumption that situational is bad or wrong. The term does cover those grey areas. You determine the rightness or wrongness of your course of action based on the situation. In the case above, the seriousness of the situation determined the action. Again, nothing about sin and casting stones</p>
<p>In fact, if I were posting about my own feelings, I’d have something pretty similar. Copy homework? Eh. I’d rather you didn’t, but it’s usually worth very little, and if you don’t know your stuff, the test will bite you in the butt anyway. I have very different feelings about cheating on tests, projects, and other major assignments. </p>
<p>I am,though, very interested in how we think students should respond to the cheating they will encounter.</p>
<p>Those colleges with an active academic honor code do require students to report cheaters in order to protect and uphold the academic integrity of their degrees. When you cheat, you not only cheat yourself; you cheat your fellow students. </p>
<p>Academic cheating is contagious. It’s easy to dismiss as a venial sin. If students don’t take it seriously, it will flourish. </p>
<p>We actively encouraged our D to investigate colleges with a strong honor code culture for that reason. I work at a college that does not have an honor code (only judicial punishments for proven cheating), but I went to a college with a strong student-administered honor code. I can see the difference.</p>
<p>Some students might do option (#4): try to talk the cheater out of doing it, revisiting options 1 - 3 if unsuccessful.</p>
<p>D’s school has a military-style honor code identical to the westpoint code.</p>
<p>I think it would be more relevant as part of a philosophy or ethics course, unless you simply want to insure they know the steps to take, but isn’t most cheating sloppy plagiarism?
I guess it didn’t occur to me dealing with other students academic errors was common enough to be up for discussion.
I did inquire a little to satisfy myself she could cite sources correctly, but frankly its low on my worry list.
If I had said something & she asked me what to do, I would say , "turn in the blatant ones, for those who were mostly clumsy or impulsive, encourage them to turn themselves in and throw themselves on the mercy of the honor court</p>
<p>I wish is was just a matter of sloppy citations or errors, but I’m afraid cheating has become more common as electronic do-dads make it easier to do. At the freshman level, academic dishonesty needs to be defined. They’re aware of the obvious, copying papers, texting each other answers during a test, photographing test with a phone for someone in another section. They’re fuzzy on some other issues, and then, yes, what does one do about it when it is discovered? Because cheaters hurt others as well as themselves. When grades are curves, when programs have limited spots, when campus jobs go to students with the best GPAs, honest students can suffer. </p>
<p>What I’ve encountered in the past - student takes a take-home test to her tutor. Student has signed a document for professor stating she will work on her own. Tutor discovers the pledge paper at end of session. Should the tutor turn in the student?</p>
<p>Online tests/quizzes are often very grey areas for students. Test is online outside of class. Are you allowed to take it as a group if not expressly forbidden to do so? There’s no group option for turning in the test. Each person has to sign in to the account and submit his or her own answers. </p>
<p>Another study group has procured a test from last semester. THe test is not identical, but darn close. The prof does not return tests for students to keep, and students in the group know this. Is this cheating? Should someone tell the prof that a test has escaped?</p>
<p>Here’s one for you:</p>
<p>Group of kids all in the same school of study. They all receive the same review material. One student uses the review material to make flash cards for himself. His friends see the flash cards and LOVE THEM. The group drills together using the flash cards made from the review material.</p>
<p>These kids got reprimanded for collaboration.</p>
<p>One has to be careful.</p>
<p>The admonition from the professor: I want you to do your work ALONE. ALONE - not in groups.</p>
<p>I think you do have to take the severity into consideration. I think I would feel differently about my ethical duty to report if I witnessed a murder as opposed to witnessing somebody failing to come to a full stop at a stop sign.</p>
<p>I think this is an interesting question only if there isn’t an honor code that requires you to report. I think considerations would include how serious the offense is, how likely it is to harm other people, etc. Thus, for example, you might want to report somebody who was cheating in order to get a specific prize that only one person can get, but not somebody who is cheating on one homework assignment in a class with 200 other students.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Holy cow. I would not consider that cheating. It wouldn’t even occur to me that it might be. (And I guess that reinforces why the term has to be defined for freshman.)</p>
<p>ordinarylives - I don’t think it occurred to the students either. They certainly were not attempting to do anything unethical. For the record, it was only a VERBAL reprimand, which has since been strictly followed. I think she could see that the kids did not have bad intentions…they were just studying together. Not for that class anymore!</p>
<p>AND the kids have learned to ask for clarification at the beginning of new profs classes within that field of study.</p>