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Lesson 13 -
Cheating (and Solutions)
In the last lesson (Lesson 13) we looked at the Big
Pictures. The concept was to “THINK”. Be a problem solver, be able to take the
technology and other innovations of the future and adopt them into new and
meaningful actions.
We are going to look at another way to be stupid today -
Cheating – and solutions to this type of stupidity
For some reason – ‘too busy’; ‘too much partying’; ‘totally
forgot’ – you didn’t get an assignment done.
You have three hours until it is due.
The stupid thing to do is cheat.
Scenario: You are majoring in business. You have to take a general education class in
a science and you are taking a biology course.
The assignment is to write a two page paper on some biological
concept. This course is not all that
important to you – you might not even like having to take courses outside of
your major. So, you go to the internet
and search and you find a paper that meets your criteria. You might even have to pay for it and you
download the paper. You add your name to
the paper, check the paper for spelling and grammar errors, maybe (or maybe
not) make a few changes (maybe even spelling something wrong so it looks like
your paper) and you submit the paper.
Yeah – you did it!!! You turned
the paper in on time and didn’t even have to work very hard. Good for you – right? WRONG!!!
To be a person that employers will want to hire, you want to
have ethical values. And … cheating is
not one of those values.
You will cheapen yourself.
You will know “down deep” that you took the easy way out.
You also are hoping that your professor isn’t using one of
the scanning programs like “Turnitin” – that can check your paper against
others to check for plagiarism. If your
professor does find that you plagiarized it, you may end up with a zero on the
assignment and you may also get a “F” in the class and taken before an academic
integrity committee with the potential of expulsion from college.
Even if that biology class assignment doesn’t relate to your
major and to your life as you know it now, it still has the underlying concept of
having you THINK. By downloading and
putting your name on a paper really short-cut the learning and thinking process.
Solutions:
One solution is to go to the professor tell him/her that you
forgot about it, didn’t get it done – no real excuse – and ask for either an
extension or accept a zero on the assignment.
Professors are very human as well – and we (as a professor for over 38
years) have missed deadlines in our life as well. Being honest and not cheating is a better way
out than plagiarism. This author would
most likely give the student some extra time to complete the assignment for
fewer points. Thinking and learning
still will occur.
A second solution is to put this assignment into the big
picture of the course. Will failing this
assignment cause me to fail the course?
Probably not. In my courses,
homework assignments are a small percentage of the overall course activities. The major grading opportunities are tests and
major team projects in my classes.
Missing an assignment might be less than 1% of the overall course. Still talk to the professor, but put the
assignment into perspective. But, even
with this solution, do communicate to your professor that you blew it on this
assignment and promise to work harder in the future.
Depending on the assignment and the professor, you may be
able to do some assignments as group assignments – or just study together. Maybe for an academic paper a small study
group can work together on ideas for the paper, review each other’s papers and
help each of you learn and think.
The best solution is to plan ahead. Keep an assignment planner. Keep a schedule. Work backward from a due date. For example, this paper is due a week from Friday. It will take me two hours to research a
topic; four hours to research materials; four hours to write and edit the
document to get it into a final version.
Of related value: All
(or almost all) campuses have great academic support groups. There are ‘writing labs’ where a student can
take a paper for others to read and make suggestions. When this author went to college, he was not
a great writer. He worked on it, had
others review his papers and took constructive criticism to improve his writing. You can learn how to effectively cite other
papers and incorporate them into your paper.
Like the new chicken recipes, they are built on other previous recipes
but incorporating some new ingredients or techniques. In learning and thinking, finding good
reliable sources as a foundation is important and then building upon those
concepts (and … appropriate cite and use those sources correct).
There are math labs, science tutors and more. Some
classes have teaching assistants – utilize the resources available to you. A quote we have used before is “Failing to
plan is planning to fail” – plan your papers and your homework – and your learning
and thinking. Map out and plan your work
for maximum learning for you.
(By-the-way, assignments are NOT for the professors – they are for
YOU!!)
Assignment:
- Unfortunately, cheating is epidemic. Research college (and high school) cheating and write two or more paragraphs on why it happens and why it is a stupid thing to do.
- Research modern cheating detection methods – like Turnitin mentioned before. There are others. How can a professor detect cheating and plagiarism? Write two paragraphs on how you might get caught cheating.
- Many colleges have an academic ethics policy. Research such policies for some of the colleges you are considering (or already enrolled in).
Today’s quote – Cheaters
never win.
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