Posts Tagged 'cheating'

Sullivan: Honor code, communication cultivates culture of honor, integrity

August 10, 2012·Comments closed

Honor codes within the education system can instill a long-lasting culture of honor and integrity.

Teresa A. Sullivan, president of the University of Virginia, framed Friday’s morning lecture in the Amphitheater around how communities can maintain a culture of those traits to end Week Seven, themed “The Ethics of Cheating.”

The millennial generation, which includes anyone born since 1980, can be characterized by several key traits, Sullivan said. Those individuals are more confident, more team- and peer-oriented, more inclined to rely on peers for reinforcement and approval, face increased pressure to succeed, and focused on the future and long-term career success.

Lecturer Guest Columns

Sullivan: Creating a culture of honor and integrity

August 10, 2012·Comments closed

Leaders of the United States’ colleges and universities continually ask ourselves, “How can we create a culture of honor and integrity?” As a sociologist, teacher and university president, I take a special interest in that topic. I will explore the topic further today as the Chautauqua Institution lecture series continues to address the theme “The Ethics of Cheating.”

The sheer numbers of college students who cheat alarms me, and it should alarm their future employers. In a 1964 study, sociologist William Bowers surveyed more than 5,000 students on 99 campuses and found that three-fourths of the students had engaged in some form of academic dishonesty. Follow-up studies in subsequent decades showed similar results. In a meta-analysis of 107 cheating studies conducted between 1970 and 1996, researchers found that 70 percent of students on average had engaged in various cheating behaviors, including 43 percent who admitted to cheating on exams and 47 percent who admitted to plagiarism.

Lecturer Guest Columns

Davis: Wanted: Professional skepticism — and persistent hope — to overcome school cheating crisis

August 9, 2012·Comments closed

In organizations across all sectors, demands for transparency and scrutiny of internal operations have reached new heights. As a result, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts a positive job outlook for auditors and other specialists charged with rooting out fraud and protecting organizational integrity. One recent job profile listed “professional skepticism” as a qualification for becoming an internal auditor.

While I am not an internal auditor by training or practice, professional skepticism is certainly a trait that has served me well as the new superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools (APS). However, persistent hope has served me even better. During my lecture today, I wish to tell the story of what happened when special investigators determined that Atlanta educators cheated on state tests. More importantly, I want to share our community’s collective work to ensure that cheating never happens again in Atlanta’s schools.

Interfaith Lecture Recaps

Bemporad: Religion must reclaim sense of the holy, speak for the future

August 7, 2012·Comments closed

“I do not think that one can claim that human beings are by nature either wholly good or wholly evil. We have the potential for both. We can either be good, or we can be not so good, and the culture and education that we’re exposed to can elicit one or the other,” Rabbi Jack Bemporad said Monday in the Hall of Philosophy.

In the first Interfaith Lecture on the Week Seven theme, “Creating Cultures of Honor and Integrity,” Bemporad discussed whether there are universal standards that define acceptable behavior for societies and individuals, what standards are “healthfully human,” how those standards can be emphasized, and the role of religion in encouraging those standards. The title of his lecture was “The Challenge of Creating Cultures of Honor and Integrity.”

Morning Lecture Previews

Psychiatrists compare views on ethics of the bedroom

August 6, 2012·Comments closed

Hold onto your bench — sex is the topic of Tuesday’s 10:45 a.m. lecture.

“It’s hard to be boring about this subject. You’d have to really try to be boring,”
Dr. Paul McHugh said of his morning lecture in the Amphitheater with Dr. Julia Heiman.

Heiman and McHugh will discuss the ethics of cheating in sexual relationships, and whether cheating on a partner deserves its widely accepted negative reputation.

McHugh, University Distinguished Service Professor of psychiatry at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, previously served as director of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. He also served on President George W. Bush’s council on bioethics.

Heiman serves as director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana State University, and her work focuses on understanding patterns of sexuality from an integrated psychosocial-biomedical perspective. She is broadly published in the area of sex research on male and female sexual function and dysfunction.

Lecturer Guest Columns

Dan Ariely: Plagiarism and essay mills

August 6, 2012·Comments closed

Sometimes as I decide what kind of papers to assign to my students, I can’t help but think about their potential to use essay mills.

Essay mills are companies whose sole purpose is to generate essays for high school and college students (in exchange for a fee, of course). Sure, essay mills claim that the papers are meant just to help the students write their own original papers, but with names such as echeat.com, it’s pretty clear what their real purpose is.

Professors in general are very worried about essay mills and their impact on learning, but not knowing exactly what essay mills are or the quality of their output, it is hard to know how worried we should be. So together with Aline Grüneisen, I decided to check it out. We ordered a typical college term paper from four different essay mills, and as the topic of the paper we chose… (surprise!) Cheating.