Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Harvard and Student Cheating

Read an article this morning that Dean Hammonds at Harvard has stepped down from her position (http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/28/us/massachusetts-harvard-dean/index.html?hpt=hp_t2).  If you remember, the cheating problem at Harvard was headline news a few months ago.  Cheating in a course on the introduction to Congress resulted in over 100 students to be dismissed from the college and others disciplined.

Cheating involved plagiarism and collaboration on take-home exams.  The topic of cheating has surfaced at our University too.  In an attempt to assist students to develop values that support honesty, I encourage them to use plagiarism detection software.  We have a site license for Turnitin.  Turnitin is also a feature that can be activated with Desire 2 Learn course management system.

My assessment is that part of the plagiarism problem (mostly not giving credit for the words and thoughts of others and citing the credit) is partly due to inexperience with scholarly scientific writing.  To impart my beliefs about values of not collaborating on individual work, I usually ask students to complete a statement agreeing to not collaborate on work designed to assess individual performance.  I also encourage students to collaborate (peer review writing of their classmates) on writing certain activities.

In the Harvard situation, email was searched to identify who had leaked information, although according to the article, the content of email was not searched.  The lesson reinforced with what happened at Harvard is one needs to have more than one email address.  School business email should be used only for business.  Of course, even if you have more than one email account, confidential information should be not be shared.  If information is  confidential and there is a need to share with those who need to know, a secure email system must be used.


5 comments :

  1. There is the some info about this. But I need to know more info about this topic. This is so interesting topic for me. Even I'm enjoying this post when i was reading. Overall good post and Now I will find about this more in google.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm visit this site for the first time. This post you write is so well by you. and the topic is really effective for this time. So you are the best at this position. Really good for your site.

    ReplyDelete
  3. how its happened? is it possible to Harvard and Student Cheating ? I am confused to read it. how they will get right concept to drive the society in future?. I got a concept in: https://www.comprehensiveexam.org/you-must-know-the-best-way-how-to-pass-the-exam/. I hope will help for you.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This specific article anyone produce can be so effectively by simply anyone. plus the theme is website basically powerful just for this occasion. Therefore you include the ideal with this situation.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This excellent document everyone make is usually and so correctly by just everyone more https://www.nursingpaper.com/our-services/nursing-dissertation-writing-service/. as well the topic is usually web page in essence strong just by that special occasion. Thus people add some suitable on this circumstances.

    ReplyDelete