#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.