Comments on: Integrity or Dishonesty?

By: Melanie

Melanie — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:33:03 +0000

“Today’s “cheating” is tomorrow’s collaboration.”

How we negotiate this requires that we teach kids about the social contract. Namely the nature of collaboration itself — and free riding v. contributing. In fact, we ought to teach teachers while we’re at it … and everybody else. This is a political subject though as notions of sharing are often misunderstood as counter to “self interest” and lead to free-riding and, ultimately, tragedy of the commons (all incorrect if not accompanied by a strong social contract). There’s a great TED talk by Howard Rheingold that helps to illuminate a new way to look at sharing, the commons and cooperation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5s3Z0iesRM

Again, the ability to take part in a modern cooperative economy and healthy commons is absolutely contingent on a clear and shared agreements about the social contracts required.

By: Ashley Coughlin

Ashley Coughlin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:59:31 +0000

In no way would I consider this cheating. We constantly share resources with one another through collegiate writing. Why should we discourage that type of learning in our classrooms? My take on it is, as long as they cite and show knowledge they have read the research, they are in no way violating their “academic integrity”. This is a new way of researching and teachers need to hop on board and see the benefits of it. Student A may have found information student B would have never located. Should they be punished for teaching each other something new? I don’t think so.

By: Amanda Jones

Amanda Jones — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:42:37 +0000

The purpose of the bookmarking being social would lend the students to believe that it could be discussed. I believe issues like these will continue to arise as teachers learn to navigate a new way of teaching and research. What the teacher has to remember is that this is a whole new way of learning and collaboration. This will require him or her to be open to looking at things in a different way and to remember that the most important thing is what the students take away from using the resource. I do not feel that the scenarios discussed above are cheating and I would encourage my students to share the resources they have gathered, knowing the purpose of the assignment was to formulate learning and an assignment from using those resources. If anything, I would want them to share so that they have a plethora of information to sift through.

By: Carrye DeCrane

Carrye DeCrane — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:36:29 +0000

This actually made me laugh out loud. Would this not be a case where a student is being resourceful? I can’t imagine this scenario being considered dishonest. Don’t we want to teach students how and where answers may be found? Of course resource evaluation is still an essential part of the decision to include or not include the information in the final product. I agree with Mrs. Duff. These are the kind of strategies I would share with my students, just like checking the bibliography at the end of a journal article. I consider it along the lines of sharing a library book. “Hey, Johnny, when you’re done with that can I use it?” We would never think of limiting access to information in print, would we?

And no, tom, nothing says we can’t make the other team drill for their own information. We don’t have to share all the time. The beauty is that we CAN. Was your debate team successful?

By: tom

tom — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 03:05:51 +0000

I agree that this is not cheating, but students learning to use delicious should also learn that they can keep bookmarks private if they want to. While it may seem to be anti-social bookmarking, it was a tactic used by our debate team to make sure they could share research among themselves but without showing their hand to the opposing team. Was that wrong?

By: Kris Jacobson

Kris Jacobson — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:53:34 +0000

Wow. Do a lot of teachers actually consider this cheating? I mean, I guess it *would* be cheating if there was a specific requirement not to use the social bookmarks or something, or, as the previous poster noted, the student didn’t cite the site(s) where s/he got the information, but assuming that neither of these things were issues, why would anyone think that it was cheating? How is this fundamentally any different from going to a list of sites picked by librarians (e.g. the Librarians’ Internet Index) or pathfinders/links put up on a school library or a university’s website? Or a bibliography (as noted above)?

By: Steve Ransom

Steve Ransom — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:10:06 +0000

Until these teachers in question experience the power of learning within virtual (heck, and even physical) social contexts for themselves, they will remain skeptical and even in opposition to such new learning environments and learning frameworks. And, do they really think that professionals don’t cherish like gold the bibliographies of other professional papers, scanning them for resources that they need for their own research or writing? Often, that’s the first thing that I do – check out the reference list to see what I haven’t and should be reading. That’s just plain smart. The term “reinventing the wheel” is appropriate here, I think. There is no doubt that an apprentice wheelmaker needs to practice making wheels, but it is just silly to not share with him the actual “trade secrets” of the craft.

By: Louise McGregor

Louise McGregor — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:03:34 +0000

This makes no sense whatsoever.

Examine any item of academic research and you’ll see a long long list of references at the end, of all the articles used in the research.

Surely the grade is based on what the students DO with the information. If the copy and paste it – that’s cheating. If they use the resources to formulate coherent arguments for and against stem cell research then you can grade their skills at research and reporting.

If the teacher asked the class to compile a list of resources then I might think of this as cheating – but that’s not a particularly interesting or testing assignment.

By: Cathy Nelson

Cathy Nelson — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:04:33 +0000

I know you don’t read me (which is okay–we interact in different circles that occasionally overlap) I wrote something similar to this in March after having one of those ah-ha moments. if time or interest permits, come on over and read it! It sparked some very interesting comments and discussion. http://bit.ly/KDcIS

This is a huge problem everywhere. I don’t think many typical educators teach as if they are preparing students for a very different future–they teach like they were taught. A better assignment for these three would be to “collaboratively” evaluate the websites bookmarked on Delicious, and then perhaps change their essential question to something related to misinformation online about Stem Cell Research. End Product? why a delicious file and perhaps a tag for inaccuracies or misinformation about stem cell reseach…maybe “#stemcellfail?”

By: mrsdurff

mrsdurff — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:32:53 +0000

Of course it is collaboration. As in ‘duh’ ! I would demo how to do this, not outlaw it. We need to be teaching kids to make tags, make appropriate use of tags, and how to collaborate through tagging. It’s just a given that the ‘kids’ are getting.