Essay Example on There are situations that should not be considered as cheating like using old Exams

Another key thing to remember is that Clonerud 2009 claims that there are situations that should not be considered as cheating like using old exams in order to prepare for actual exams because this process includes work and effort Also summarizing for instance summarizing a book to a friend rather than reading the whole book involves work and effort Clonerud calls this process improving measures However educational system considers these acts as academic dishonesty On the other hand students do not find as cheating the reuse of an old examined paper or referring to a source that they have not read They think that if the previous paper is produced by them it means they put effort and learning on it and it deserves to be used more than once They think that if a student breaks the rules but however learns most of the expected knowledge it is better than not breaking the norms of academic dishonesty by not working at all because in this way he she has learned nothing Clonerud points out that if the degree of effort and work by student is low then the degree of learning is expected to be low in this case the degree of academic dishonesty will be high In order to reduce the level of academic dishonesty the academic institution should foster academic integrity 

This includes developing an academic dishonesty policy and campus wide programs Every college and university must develop their academic integrity policy that fits its principles as well as its student and faculty and that is the reason why we do not have a model policy However the essential step to have an effective policy is representation of all groups affected by faculty s academic integrity policy students staff It is important to involve students in the development process because they are the group that will be the target of any penalties also this involvement will establish the idea that procedures and penalties imposed by academic policy are fair Furthermore to have an effective policy the behaviors of dishonesty and responsibilities of students faculty members and administrators must be clear and specific The responsibilities are describing by Whitely 2001 Students responsibilities are to avoid acts of academic dishonesty Also the fact that they be should be able to report other students dishonesty when they become aware of it and to tell them how they can make a report It would be good if report is anonymous by telephone or unsigned notes in an instructor s box Faculty members basic responsibility is to organize their courses in ways that bring up academic integrity and prevent academic dishonesty Administrators are responsible for encouraging an atmosphere of integrity in their institutions This includes taking appropriate actions on integrity violations by faculty students and staff even if those actions result in embarrassment to the institution Taking action at some cost to oneself shows commitment An academic integrity policy must specify the penalties for infractions against the policy 

The maximum punishment allowed should be a grade F or 5 in University of Prishtina on the assignment or test also department should records students who have tried to or been found guilty of academic dishonesty in this way they would not be able to do the same in different classes This student's records should be destroyed after a period of time or after the student graduate The communication of the academic integrity policy and its implementation to students and faculty will lead in creating an integrity program This communication can be done in many ways for instance with Documents Academic policy and the procedures of punishment should be printed in handbooks university catalog or posting in university s web site in this way these information would be accessible not only by currently students but also by parents and general public Discussions Students do not always read handbooks and catalogs so in order to help them to become aware of what academic policy includes it would be good if there will be discussions in classroom residence halls and also in student organizations The student press The newspaper of the institution and other student run publications can promote information of the academic integrity policy by publishing articles about it sometimes 

A prominent step of developing academic policy is training that would contain methods how to prevent control and confront academic dishonesty Training should be a combination of written materials and explanation of institutional policies and procedures This step would be beneficial for all newly hired graduate teaching assistants and faculty members Providing these training not only educate instructors about the dishonesty problem and how to deal with it but indicate that the university is concerned and it is doing its best to solve the problem of dishonesty by preserving high educational standards In conclusion academic dishonesty is a problem that we encounter every day in educational system Cheating copying assignments defending colleagues when they are dishonest and plagiarism are considered as wrong acts against Integrity Policy Even though there are different factors that affect students academic dishonesty the solution for reducing this phenomenon is developing of the academic integrity policy and training