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For any learning community to succeed, members must trust each other
and the teacher, and all community/class members must act ethically at
all times. Students should be encouraged to collaborate on group projects
or even research for individual projects, but assignments made to
individuals must be independently completed. Everyone must understand
that original work is of paramount importance and that any use of outside
sources must be clearly and thoroughly documented.
A thorny problem in all educational programs is honesty. The common focus
is plagiarism, although other forms of academic honesty should be spelled
out in a syllabus and other institutional literature, like the course catalog.
Ethics and honesty are often labeled “academic integrity.”
Many academic institutions state their academic honesty, integrity, or
ethics statements at a central location on the university’s or college’s Web
site. The statement then might be copied into each individual course site.
A good ethics statement should deal with plagiarism.
Summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting texts or graphics, both online and
hardcopy, should be explained. This task may fall to individual teachers,
because lengthy examples and instruction are beyond the scope of an ethics
or academic honesty statement. In addition to reviewing the mechanics of
citing sources appropriately and using a specific citation style, such as
Modern Language Association (MLA) or American Psychological Association
(APA), teachers may need to explain the rationale behind the process
of citing reference information. That plagiarism is cheating by stealing
others’ ideas and claiming them as one’s own should be explained as the
serious offence it is. The institutional policies for dealing with plagiarism
need to be detailed, and the consequences for plagiarizing information must
be spelled out and enforced. As a deterrent, you may encourage or require
learners to use plagiarism-checking software before they submit assignments
to you for evaluation. The software must be used by learners and
monitored by teachers for the system to work effectively.
Honesty is another ethical concern. Dealing with class members and the
teacher honestly and fairly should be expected of all learners. Doing one’s
own work is imperative. Written communication that does not mislead
others, by omission of information or deliberately misstating data, should
be discouraged, and penalties enforced. “Fairness” also should reflect
unbiased dealings with everyone. Discrimination should not be tolerated.
These elements of an academic ethics or integrity statement must be defined
and explained effectively. Some examples of good policies can be found in
the table of academic institutions’ Web sites. The titles of the information
indicate the focus of the policy. Although a majority use Academic Honesty,
some emphasize the problem of plagiarism and others focus on appropriate
conduct.
You can also learn a lot about the institution’s emphasis on the policy by
how many times a site search for “academic honesty,” for example, reveals
several Web pages. Some institutions place their statements on the home
page, but others link users to student handbooks, groups of policies, and
the library (presumably for research policies). As new elements need to be
added to academic policies, the statements are updated in the institutional
Web pages as well at individual course sites.
Educational concerns about honesty take many forms. The following four
issues highlight educators’ concerns about online education:
1. Learners must do their own work.
Whether it is an assignment or a test, learners need to do their
own work, without an unreasonable amount of assistance
from the teacher, other learners, and people outside the class
(e.g., tutors, family members, employers, purchased papers
from the Web).
2. Learners must document the sources of information they use
in assignments.
Most institutions suggest a reference style for learners to use
in documenting their research, such as MLA or APA style.
Learners must be able to document their work accurately and
adequately, and they should be penalized for plagiarizing
information.
3. Learners must complete all course requirements fairly, from
class participation and attendance to academic activities.
Learners have to participate in the class themselves, even if
the activity requires attending an on-site lecture or reviewing
materials on a Web site. Although this requirement is
difficult to enforce, you can make the use of stand-ins less
likely if the course site requires a password. You may not be
able to verify identity without being able to see class
members face to face, but you can monitor consistency in
the way learners express themselves in all formats for written
communication.
4. Learners have to abide by confidentiality agreements.
Some information must remain confidential, whether it is
the content of a test for the class or a corporate trade secret.
Learners are expected, and sometimes legally bound, to keep
confidential information private.
You should assume that your learners are honest, ethical people. They may
be unaware of ways to document sources, for example, but they basically
want to do their work fairly and correctly. Academic dishonesty is often
hard to prove, whether you teach on site or online. How can you be sure
that each learner wrote a paper on his or her own? How can you tell if each
source in a research assignment is accurately documented or simply made
up? How do you know if learners interviewed experts as they said they did,
or that the information they provide from their company is OK for anyone
to know? These types of questions are difficult to answer in all courses, not
just those online.
Of course, online education probably comes under closer scrutiny because
most teachers cannot see their learners at all. They rely on printouts in a
common font, without the possibility of individual handwriting. Even in
a chat room, there is no sure way of telling whether the real John Doe is
making an insightful comment, or if it is another learner or someone else.
Those teachers who see and hear learners during two-way conversations
still cannot watch while learners complete every assignment. The responsibility
for honesty is the individual learner’s, and teachers should assume
the best about their learners.
Nevertheless, there are some spot checks you can make to satisfy any
requirements about tests for academic honesty in your classroom. Let us
look at the four areas of concern mentioned previously and ways to show
that learners are, indeed, being scrupulously honest in your course.
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