#15 Abstract and Bibliography

Abstract:
In today’s depressed economy, more and more people decide to go to school and to get a nursing degree because it is one of the few careers that are still in demand. Yet, because it is a demanding career and many students want to have a degree and find a job, academic dishonesty cases among nursing students has raised significantly. Nursing, as the same as other health professions, is heavily based on skills and knowledge. Some people propose that in order to deliver quality care, nursing students should have a more strict academic dishonesty policy to force students learn what they need to know. Specifically, the nursing schools should set up an honor code since it is the most effective program against academic dishonesty so far. The paper explores two different kinds of honor code systems and their effectiveness to determine if they are useful for nursing school to reduce cheating cases.

Bibliography

• Arhin, Afua O. "A Pilot Study of Nursing Student's Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty: A Generation Y Perspective." ABNF Journal 20.1 (2009): 17-21. Print.
  
• Fleischmann, Shirley T. "Teaching Ethics: More than an Honor Code." Science & Engineering Ethics 12.2 (2006): 381-9. Print.
  
• Giddens, Jean, et al. "A New Curriculum for a NEW ERA of Nursing Education. (Cover Story)." Nursing Education Perspectives 29.4 (2008): 200-4. Print.
  
• Kolanko, Kathrine M., et al. "Academic Dishonesty, Bullying, Incivility, and Violence: Difficult Challenges Facing Nurse Educators." Nursing Education Perspectives 27.1 (2006): 34-43. Print.
  
• McCabe, Don, and Daniel Katz. "Curbing Cheating." Education Digest 75.1 (2009): 16-9. Print.
  
• McCabe, Donald, and Linda Klebe Trevino. "Honesty and Honor Codes." Academe 88.1 (2002): 37. Print.
  
• McCabe, Donald L., Kenneth D. Butterfield, and Linda Klebe Treviño. "Faculty and Academic Integrity: The Influence of Current Honor Codes and Past Honor Code Experiences." Research in Higher Education 44.3 (2003): 367. Print.
  
• McCabe, Donald L., Linda Klebe Treviño, and Kenneth D. Butterfield. "HONOR CODES AND OTHER CONTEXTUAL INFLUENCES ON ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: A Replication and Extension to Modified Honor Code Settings." Research in Higher Education 43.3 (2002): 357-78. Print.
  
• Academic Integrity Survey, 2010.
  
• Joel, L. (2006) The Nursing Experience, 5th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.

blog #14

Every time I make a change in my project, my project become more focus and logical. I had an idea about what I was going to write at the beginning of the class. But during the process, I made some changes to make my paper focus. Now I believe what professor Goeller said about people usually do not get the right question at first, at least I did not. I am really glad that the professor and my tutor help me get through this process, inspire me with new ideas, and help me polish my paper to make my position on the argument more clear. Writing this paper help me learn more about the pros and cons of an honor code, which I have only head its name and know little about it. During the process, I gain some level of confidence with writing a research paper.

blog #13

http://lowery.tamu.edu/common/cheating.htm
This cartoon shows Neutralization theory. The boy wrote the answers on his body and did not think his action was cheating, because in his mind, cheating behavior is “Peeking at someone else’s test”

http://researchguides.clcillinois.edu/content.php?pid=91211&sid=724148
I think this will be a good picture for showing the counter point of an honor code. In this picture, Bart Simpson is making a commitment not to plagiarize a work, which is the point of the honor codes. But the look on his face shows that it is very likely that he is going to plagiarize. Therefore, signing an honor code alone does not help students to control their behavior.

#12. Outline

I: The causes of cheating (why students cheat?)

II: How and honor code works (why it can manage students’ behaviors?)

III: how honor code changed (problems with “traditional honor code” ; information and advantages about “modified honor code”. )

IV: Any other problems with honors code? (Counterpoint)
1): students have their own judgments about which courses are important and they think it is OK to cheat on non – nursing course because it does not matter to what they will do.
2): honor codes provide a standard set of value; however, students in this generation do not simply obey values. Therefore, just signing an honor code may not help students stop cheating.

V: Possibilities of better policies (are there something better?)

#11. The Case

One particular case that I want to use in my paper is "A Pilot Study of Nursing Student's Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty: A Generation Y Perspective", where the author did a survey on nursing students and talked about why students cheat and normalize cheating behavior. This case provides a positive support to McCabe’s honor code theory; because it specifically says that honor codes will help students manage their behaviors at the end of the article. McCabe’s theories give me a good direction in searching for cases. One thing that he says about why students cheat is because they think some of the courses are not important to their major. Is this statement true? I can find that out by doing surveys and interview nursing school teachers, which gives me a chance to gather some primary sources. Also, the counterpart to the argument is whether honor code alone is enough to stop cheating or if we need something more. I thought I would find the academic dishonesty policy for Rutgers nursing students online, but it seems there isn’t one. The online catalog for Rutgers College of Nursing is: http://catalogs.rutgers.edu/generated/nwk-ug_current/pg6.html. The site that talks about academic performance is: http://catalogs.rutgers.edu/generated/nwk-ug_current/pg60.html.

#10 The Debate

Argument: How does honor code reduces cheating among nursing students and creates better nurses?
Positive components: by signing the honors code, students develop a commitment to honesty (McCabe).
Counter argument: since the pressure to succeed in nursing school is so high, signing a paper does not help nursing student manage their behavior. Especially, for required, non – nursing related electives, students think it is not realistic to learn the materials. (McCabe)

#9 Qestions and Problems

I am still having the problem of finding enough counter point arguments towards McCabe’s honor code theory. Also, I need more information on the relationship between heavy class work and the effectiveness of honor codes, since it is my main complication towards this research paper. The organization of the paper is kind of clear. I want to use McCabe’s theory of honor code as a frame and apply cases from primary resources or scholarly resources to find out how honor codes will help nursing students reduce cheating and perform better in hospitals.

#8. Put questions with articles

In today’s depressing economy, more and more people decided to go to school and get a nursing degree, because it is the only few careers that are still in demand. However, because this occupation is so popular right now, people want to graduate from nursing school sooner to get a job. As a result, the number of cases of nursing students cheat on their exams have rise up. Some people have concern that the act of nursing students cheat on exams is more serious than students in another major cheat on exams, because, nurses’ practices are heavily based on specific skills and knowledge. If they cheat on exams when they are in school, they probably do not have the knowledge in their mind, and when they go to clinical, they do not know what to do with the patients. Therefore, they are putting the patients’ lives at risk. As a result of this fear, some people propose that schools should set up a more strict academic integrity policy towards nursing students. Specifically, they nursing schools should set up an honors code, since it is the most effective program against academic dishonesty so far. Yet, does setting up honors codes really eliminate cheating? Also, does it work on nursing students? Don McCabe, the promoter of honors code, and the authority figure of academic integrity, writes two articles: “Curbing Cheating” and “Honesty and Honor Codes”, explaining the positive effect of honors code in reducing cheating. He uses data and real life examples to show that honors code programs do set clear standards for students to follow and lower the number of cheating cases. A big supporter of McCabe’s theory in the nursing field is Atua O. Arhiii, a registered nurse and a nursing educator in a university. She does a survey on nursing student in term of their attitudes towards cheating behaviors and finds out that students are normalizing cheating behaviors and not consider some behavior that used to be cheating as non – cheating. In her article “A Pilot Study of Nursing Student's Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty: A Generation Y Perspective”, she expresses the concern that normalizing cheating behavior is the biggest problem among generation Y students and it is one of the reasons why the number of cheating cases have raised. Yet, there are some counter point that against McCabe’s view and says that setting up honors code does not solve the problem of cheating. Whether or not setting up honors code will help nursing school reduce the number of cheating cases and help nursing students have a better academic behavior is the main focus of this research paper.

#7. Annotated Bibliography

McCabe, Don, and Daniel Katz. "Curbing Cheating." Education Digest 75.1 (2009): 16-9. Print. He discusses the phenomena of more and more students cheat in school exams. Although the article is primarily focus on high school students, it provides expert’s view on why students cheat, how students cheat, and how to prevent student from cheating, which gives a fundamental background on the research project of this paper. In his article, he suggests that adding honors code to the school academic dishonesty policy would decrease the number of cheating cases in school. This gives me a direction on searching possible solutions for solving cheating cases among nursing students.

McCabe, Donald, and Linda Klebe Trevino. "Honesty and Honor Codes." Academe 88.1 (2002): 37. Print. In this article, McCabe brings up the easiness of students cheating in exams with the technologies and the difficulty and concerns regarding of how students and educators view academic dishonesty. But most importantly, he uses data to explain the difference between schools that have honors code and schools that do not have honors code in relationship to the number of academic integrity cases that the school has and concludes that setting up honors code in universities and colleges will significantly reduce the chance of students cheating on exams. This article provides me with more specific and evident – based information on honors code, which might be something that I can use in my research paper.

#6. Research Question

00Ok, on my last post, I did get a little bit random. I will probably rewrite blog #5 with my bibliography rough draft.

When I search the resources, one article that caught my eye is "A Pilot Study of Nursing Student's Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty: A Generation Y Perspective." Because I have heard some cases of medical school students cheating on their exams. I think this is not only against the university policies, but also very scary, because, doctors’ and nurses’ practices are heavily based on specific skills and knowledge. If they cheat on exams when they are in school, they probably do not have the knowledge in their mind, and when they go to clinical, they do not know what to do with the patients. Therefore, they are putting the patients’ lives at risk.

Now “academic dishonesty in the health professions” is my main interest. I will try to find more sources to make this topic work (if there is not much resources, I might have to change a topic). The one question that I can think of now is “whether a more strict academic dishonesty policy should be made and apply to nursing student?” (Maybe it will cause big problems when they enter the clinical, or it does not matter because when they enter the hospitals, they will learn what they need to know from the beginning by practices)

References: Arhin, Afua O. "A Pilot Study of Nursing Student's Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty: A Generation Y Perspective." ABNF Journal 20.1 (2009): 17-21. Print.

#5. Scholarly Sources

I choose the “Academic Search Premier” as my search database. I typed in “academic dishonesty” as my keywords, and choose the “full text” option. I also limited the publication time to the recent 10 years. So here are some articles that I found interesting:

Aluede, Oyaziwo, Eunice O. Omoregie, and Gloria I. Osa- Edoh. "Academic Dishonesty as a Contemporary Problem in Higher Education: How Academic Advisers can Help." Reading Improvement 43.2 (2006): 97-106.

Arhin, Afua O. "A Pilot Study of Nursing Student's Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty: A Generation Y Perspective." ABNF Journal 20.1 (2009): 17-21.

Levy, Elliott S., and Carter C. Rakovski. "ACADEMIC DISHONESTY: A Zero Tolerance Professor and Student Registration Choices." Research in Higher Education 47.6 (2006): 735-54.

Schmelkin, Liora Pedhazur, et al. "A Multidimensional Scaling of College Students' Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty." Journal of Higher Education 79.5 (2008): 587-607.

Sileo, Jane M., and Thomas W. Sileo. "Academic Dishonesty and Online Classes: A Rural Education Perspective." Rural Special Education Quarterly 27.1 (2008): 55-60.

Wowra, Scott A. "INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE: Academic Dishonesty." Ethics & Behavior 17.3 (2007): 211-4.

#4 Rutgers RIOT

This is the first time that I have use Rutgers RIOT. I have to say that it is an interesting and useful tool or my literacy training. It teaches me the research skills not only by talking, but also by let me engage in the learning process. I went through all the modules and had fun with them. I also finished some quizzes that they provide (and I did well on them ^_^). I have a main problem of citing sources, so I started form Module 4”Identiy Citations”. It has helped me a lot. I learned the difference between the citation of a book and a journal. There are some main differences: the citation of a book has the publisher name and the date of publication. The citation of a journal has volume number and page numbers. I also went though Module 5 carefully and learned that not all the resources can be used in a research paper. I wish that they can provide more information on some of the main research tools and do a tutorial on them, because I still have a problem with using refwork to cite my resources.

#3. Questions for Librarians

- What kinds of research resources do we have

- Which databases are most useful for this course

- How long does it take for the required article deliver to me

- Are there any media resources that we can rent

- Is there a fee for article delivery

- What kinds of help can we get from the library

- What kinds of research support can we get from the library

#2. Further research

I think I still want to do my research on academic cheating, and focus on the causes of it. Luckily, when I search on the internet, there is a lot of information on this topic. First I search Google and use the term “college cheating”, it went back with a lot of results that relates to academics. In Google Scholar, some of the full articles are only open to subscribers. So that is a little annoying that I found a good article but I can not view the whole text. Also, YouTube gives me some good clips about college cheating, but the key term that I type in must be “college academic cheating”, if not, the results will include some unrelated topic. Such as, “college cheats on students” or “college students cheating on relationships”. They are interesting but unrelated to my project. I would like to start from researching and analyzing some cases of academic cheating and find what common aspects they have. Two of the useful sources that I found are “Academic Honesty: Cheating and Plagiarism” (http://depts.washington.edu/grading/issue1/honesty.htm), and “Academic dishonesty” from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_dishonesty). Both resources provide an overview on college cheating (more formally, Academic dishonesty). I think they will be a good starting point, but I doubt that can use them as a reference in my research paper. An interesting clip that I find on YouTube is “College Cheating Story” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpPnjWP59MU). As the clips mentioned, there are many causes that leads to academic dishonesty. So, now I am thinking about the option of presenting some major causes parallel to each other or focus on one cause and do the research.

#1. Initial thoughts on the project

This is an interesting course. What interest me to sign up for the course is that there are many things that people can talk about college. Therefore, there are many research topics to choose from. Also, during the process of developing this research paper, I hope to learn more about colleges in different dimensions.

My initial thought on my research project is that I want to focus on the topic of “academic integrity”, including cheating and plagiarism. Although every instructor mentions “academic integrity” on his/her first lectures and the policy of plagiarism is printed on every syllabus, some people still cheat on tests. Through my research, I want to find out why people choose to cheat on test and I believe there are more reasons than people think there are. I think there are many factors that influence people’s decisions. So, through the research I want to find common characteristics from the cheaters and find out the factors that make them decide to cheat. I think cheating is not a just a personal problem but a result of social issues.