Fall 2007 Office of Student Conduct/Department of Philosophy Seminar in Academic Integrity
Homework Assignments
Assignment 1: Questionnaire on Perceptions of Academic and Personal Integrity
Using a scale of 1-5, where 5 is the most serious/bad and 1 is the least serious, please indicate, for each of the following, what you think of them as instances of academic dishonesty or violations of academic or personal integrity. If you think that something is not academically dishonest or not a violation of academic or personal integrity, use “0”. You can use each number more than once.
_____1. You are taking an exam and the professor said that no one is to talk to anyone else during the exam. But your pen ran out of ink, so you asked the person next to you if you could borrow his extra pen. The faculty member sees you lean close to the person next to you and sees that you are talking to him. The faculty member accuses you of academic dishonesty.
_____2. You write this in your paper on Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream that someday, people would be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.” You heard the speech on a History Channel documentary, but you did not say in your paper that this is the source of the quotation. That is, you have no in-text reference, no footnote or endnote to indicate the source from which you obtained the quotation.
_____3. You go to the web site, “schoolsucks.com,” and download a paper on academic dishonesty. You then put your name on the top, print the paper, and hand it in as your term paper for an ethics course, thinking to yourself that it is your paper because you bought it.
_____4. You allow your roommate to read your paper for a composition class. Your roommate is also taking a composition class, but a different section with a different instructor. Your roommate was having trouble writing the first paragraph of her paper, so she paraphrased yours. Unknown to you and your roommate, a graduate student graded all the papers from 4 different composition classes (two of which were your section and that of your roommate) and found similarities between yours and your roommate’s. You are both accused of academic dishonesty/plagiarism.
_____5. You are taking a test and notice that the person sitting next to you forgot to put his name on the top of his test. You know that he always gets high grades in this class, and you are just scraping by and have not studied for the test. You have an idea. When he gets up to turn in his test, you will go right behind him. When he sets it down and walks away, you will write your name on his test, and you will write his name on your test.
_____6. You are engaged in a course in which there is a collaborative project due with a group of 5 other students. The collaborative project counts as 30% of the final grade for each individual in the group. You have been sick lately (you had bronchitis and broke your foot), so you offer to pay one of the people in your collaborative group to write your part of the collaborative project so that you don’t have to do it.
_____7. You go to a web site and buy notes from your calculus class. The notes contain the answers to review questions for a major exam in the course. The review questions were actual exam questions from the previous semester.
_____8. You pay someone to pretend to be you in order for the person you pay to take your economics test. The test is held in a big auditorium and you know that the professor does not check IDs of students who are taking the exam. And since it is such a big class, and the professor doesn’t know you, you know that you will not be caught/found out.
_____9. You and another person in your American History course are assigned to do a presentation on the Civil War. Your research partner, however, is not very bright (or at least you don’t think he is). So instead of taking a chance on having him “mess up” your grade for the course, you tell him that you will do all the research and the presentation, but that you will tell the professor that both of you agreed to split up the work so that he would do the research and you would do the presentation. The professor does not know any different, and never finds out the truth. You and your research partner each get a “C.”
_____10. You are completely prepared for a major test in your Political Science class. Unfortunately, you misunderstood the syllabus and studied the wrong chapters. When you sit down to take the test and realize that you read and studied all the wrong things, you become agitated, throw the test down in front of the professor, and refer to him by an ugly name, yelling as you leave that he is an incompetent boob for not writing a clearer syllabus.
_____11. You have been drinking on a Saturday night at a bar across the street from campus. You live on campus. You decide to drive your car back to the parking lot at your apartment on campus, thinking that because it’s only across the street, it’s no big deal. You are arrested for DUI.
_____12. You have a serious migraine headache, but have run out of the prescription medication that you normally take for it. Your roommate has a similar prescription medication, so you take one from the medicine cabinet that you share. Your headache is gone in a few hours.
_____13. Your roommate has a stash of some kind of illicit drug in his room in the apartment that you share. In fact, his stash of the stuff is huge. But it’s not yours, and you don’t take drugs. You figure it is none of your business. You and your roommate are arrested for possession.
_____14. A girl/guy that you just met at a party is rip-roaring drunk. You have had a few, but are not impaired. You ask your new friend whether she/he would like to party a bit in your room. Your new friend says yes. The next morning, your new friend accuses you of sexual assault, claiming that she/he could not have knowingly consented to sexual activity and you took advantage of her/him.
_____15. Your professor refuses to change your grade on an exam even though you have proof that it was graded improperly by the machine that does scantrons. Even after pleading with the professor, she continues to refuse to change the grade. You call her a *(*^%@, and storm out of her office.
The two main characters in the video are involved in a very clear instance of academic cheating. Incorporate into a brief essay (1-2 pages) your considered view regarding the way in which the actions, character, or attitudes of some person in the video are related to one of the following elements of the academic integrity diagram discussed during the seminar: a) conduct representing either oneself or a community to which one belongs or b) obligations either to oneself or the community to which one belongs.
Assignment 3: on Academic Research
Go to the following Web sites:
Assignment 4: Seminar Evaluation
Go to http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~stanlick/AcadIntegEvalForm.doc , download and fill out the evaluation. Send it as a separate file with your other assignments with the following document name: YourLastNameEvalForm.
You will have two attachments in the e-mail you send with your assignments. One of them will have the questionnaire, the essay on a video, and a short assignment on academic research. The second one will be the seminar evaluation form.