USD Magazine, Winter 2000

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punitive. USD needs to consider these issues before going down that road." Hartwell recently spoke about his con– cerns before an academic integrity panel discussion organized by Associated Students for the university community. As one of the few voices of dissent, the law professor urged the panel to carefully consider each element they place in any proposed code. Another key issue is the student's intent. Accidental plagiarism occurs frequently, and such cases are not considered as serious under USD 's policy. Students remain mindful that a USD honor code fit with the university's values-based mission and the Catholic tradition of forgiveness. It's doubtful that USD would become a "single-sanction" school, where students are expelled for one violation. "We could eventually have a strong honor code," says Apolinario, "but the real goal is to help students take fair advantage of their studies and do what is right. " INTEGRITY FOR LIFE As arguments about how to solve the problem of cheating continue in higher education circles, data show that schools with honor codes have fewer instances of academic dishonesty. One in five students on campuses without honor codes admitted they cheated on exams more than three rimes, according to surveys conducted by McCabe, but at honor code schools, only one in 16 students reported the same level of cheating. "You can achieve lower incidences of cheating by scaring students with severe penalties, but an honor code has a better long-term effect on the students," says McCabe. "They have more integrity in their studies, their jobs and their lives." And chat integrity, to those who favor honor codes, is the most important element. W ith an honor code or without, a crucial mission of USD is to produce students who at least have considered what integrity means to them. "Students know that any system based on dishonesty will collapse, because they see examples of that in their courses all the rime," says Apolinario. "More important than the university's policies on academic integrity are their own personal policies on integrity in general. Bringing these issues out will help each student decide what integrity means to them." +

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8:1 PROFESSOR LR~IRENCE HINF:RN. OEP PHILOSOPH:I AND DIRECTOR OF THE USO

"Download your workload," one term paper site advertises. Across the Internet, dozens of sites have sprung up that allow students - usually for afee ranging from $20 to $100 - to download papers and book reports from existing databases. Other sites offer customized services, offering to write book reviews, term papers and even theses for graduate students on specific topics. Still other sites provide financial incentives for students to sell their work online, in effect allowing online auctioning of existing term papers. These sites represent the tip of a virtual iceberg, an iceberg that is on a collision course with traditional methods of teaching . The Internet is forcing us to re-think our understanding of academic integrity and even to re-think the goals of education itself. The Internet makes plagiarism easier than ever before, and this poses the most visible threat to academic integrity. Not only are numerous sites selling papers on the Web, but countless more are inadvertently offering them for free . Professors often post their own work on the Internet, and it is increasingly common for students to do so as well. Coupled with sophisticated search engines, all of this makes avirtual cornucopia of material available to anyone who wants to plagiarize. There are two responses to this chal– lenge - external and internal. External approaches try to block access to sites, to police student behavior on the Web in various ways. Internal approaches seek to develop the skills and motivation in students so that they will restrain them– selves, even when no one iswatching, from plagiarizing. The larger threat to academic integrity, however, lies below the surface. The Internet is transforming how we teach . This is most evident in distance education , where traditional teacher-student interaction is often supplanted by computer-based instruction. The Internet is quickly transforming what happens - and doesn't happen -

in the traditional classroom, and this presents amuch greater challenge. It is not uncommon for professors, myself included, to put lecture notes on a course Web site. In fact, two years ago UCLA man– dated that every undergraduate course have aWeb site. Some professors, including many who are less technologically inclined, have barely met the letter of the law, but the overall direction is clear: The Internet increasingly is becoming an integral part of regular courses. As this happens, many students feel that they hardly need to go to class. Everything they need is available on the course Web site. Classroom education has always had adual element. On the one hand, information gets transmitted. On the other hand , there is an engagement that occurs between teacher and students. It is in this process that student academic integrity is formed , not just in some minimalist sense of academic honesty, but also in amuch fuller sense of integrity. Students develop an intellectual identity, to see themselves as thinkers who take responsibility for themselves and their ideas. They develop responsibility fo r their own intellectual quest. This is academic integrity in its most fundamental sense. As the Internet plays an increasingly prominent role in traditional undergraduate education, two paths are open to us. We can move in adirection that will make classrooms increasingly irrelevant. Insofar as we see education simply as the transmission of information, wewill move naturally in this direction. Or the Internet can be used to free classroom time for moreeffective interaction among professor, students and the ideas being considered in the course - an interac– tion that cannot happen on the Web. The momentum of the technology, the apparent economic benefits won by cost– conscious administrators and the lack of appreciation for the central formative process of liberal education all conspire to push us toward the first path. To follow this path to its inevitable destination would be the ultimate violation of academic integrity. This article originally appeared as an editorial in the Los Angeles Times.

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