Wednesday, January 20, 2010

#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.

1 comment:

  1. This is a great topic. And there is lots of material -- you will eventually have to define your topic more narrowly to make it work. Don McCabe of the Rutgers Newark business school (I think) may well be the world's expert on the subject, and you should definitely start by looking at some one the work he has done. You should also look at the Rutgers policy and what specific departments do.

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