According to "Harvard to adopt student honesty pledge", Harvard decided to asked their students for promising not to cheat in during the study program by using Honour code. It's created for making integrity culture in many US universities.
When I studied in high school, I've seen many cheatings in my classroom. It seems normally happened in every high school, but I don't think that will make the students getting more knowledge and using more effort in the future. It's getting worse for some cases such as spoiled students who never joined the class but always got a great score by copying the answer from their classmate.
Recently, My friend just called me and asked to write a paragraph for her final examination. I was stunted because it's final exam and she should do it herself, I asked her if her teacher was in the class and she said a teacher didn't notice the students at all. I can't believe that this thing could happen in university. Luckily, it doesn't exist in my campus. Anyway, if she had enough conscience, it won't happen for sure. The worst thing is how did they allowed students to turn on their phones in the examination room? That shows its incredibly ignorance.
I won't judge that cheating happened because unqualified system in the campus, it happened because students did it, Although you're in the most famous school in the world but you study like a gambler, that won't make you a qualified student. It's up to what kind of student and which kind of profile you want to create; good student or a tricky one? Good grades and first class honors won't make you feel proud at all. As a student, I didn't study well because of many activities and my sickness, my grades are unable to reach a first class honors or even second class honors that required more than 3.25 GPA. But to be straightforward, I don't care if my grades will be terrible. What I really care is how did I get every score, it must all up to my effort not who did I copied during the test. I want to be qualified graduate more than good grade cheater.
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I also saw this article on the BBC News and emailed it to myself so that I could blog it, but now that Vann has responded to it, I don't need to.
ReplyDeleteAnd Vann's blog post, her introduction, her summary and her response, bring out the points that I would have discussed.
I'm sure others will also find lots of things to respond to here.
One thing that caught my eye in the article is that Harvard University made sure there was evidence that asking students to sign a pledge actually works. The best evidence I know of is from behavioural economics, where studies show that being reminded of the morality, or the immorality, of cheating does reduce this form of dishonesty. Dan Ariely, an economist at Duke University, has done some solid research on this (2008, pp. 194 - 230).
And of course, every good university in the world takes such cheating very seriously. If students cheat on an exam, or use other people's ideas, for example by copying and pasting without saying that's what they've done, good universities throw that student out. If they discover the dishonest copying and pasting later, they cancel the degree. If a university is not strict about cheating and stealing other people's ideas, it's pretty much a garbage university and cannot have a good reputation.
But as Ariely's work shows, Harvard University students are like everyone else, and inclined to cheat a little, even though they think of themselves as honest. Ariely did some of his research on this at Harvard using Harvard University students.
Reference
Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably irrational. London: Harper.
Your blog post reminds me. As everyone knows that high school students have to do many tests for entering university and they did GAT & PAT last month, my friend asked me that she wanted me to do an english test for her sister. It disappoint me because instead of discouraging sister, my friend supported her to cheat this important examination. Then, I told that it was illegal and wrong to do like this but my friend argued me that many friends of us did it and they could enter to the majors they wanted. I extremely shocked and doubted until now.
ReplyDeleteFrom my story and yours, they let me to think about what happen with our society, why many students cheat their test without conscience. And you are right that the most important factor of this problem isn't unqualified system, it is what they do. If they know what they shouldn't do and avoid it, the problem won't happen!
I hope that the rules will be stronger than today. Someone who breaks the rules must be punished.
And every good university in the world takes cheating very seriously. They also take using other people's ideas in your work and not citing them seriously: a famous recent case was that of a German man from an anciently noble family, who was a very successful politician and Minister of Defence in the current German government, until it was discovered he had copied and pasted in his Ph.D. thesis and not cited the source!
ReplyDeleteFor academics, this is crime worse than murder. His university would not have cared had he merely killed a few people, but they could not accept the use of uncited sources in his Ph.D. In February 2011, Bayreuth University, having "decided that Mr Guttenberg had 'violated scientific duties to a considerable extent'" cancelled Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg's doctoral degree ("German Minister Loses Doctorate," 2011, para. 4), and he was subsequently forced to resign his powerful positions in German politics.
Reference
German minister loses doctorate after plagiarism row. (2011, February, 24). BBC News Europe. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-12566502