Danielle Grieco

ED 685 Survey Summary and Reflection

19 March, 2017

Survey Summary
The survey questions given provided an ample foundation for discussion and debate
amongst my colleagues to whom I dispersed them. I sent the questions to six of my colleagues
(one college professor, four lower school teachers, and one high school teacher) in electronic
format, and many of the six stopped and discussed their answers in the following days.
It appears that all six unanimously agreed that Adam did cheat in copying the four last
math homework problems from Amy. There was a bit of dissension, however, when it came to the
question of whether or not Amy cheated also. Most agreed that she did also cheat in allowing
Adam to take her work, but some questioned whether or not she knew that Adam was directly
taking her work and answers.
Across the board, all surveyed participants thought that Meredith did not cheat in
submitting the same paper for two classes. Reasons included the fact that both are still her work,
there is no problem with the same thoughts applying to two classes, and the teacher should have
specified that other original compositions of students could not be applied to his work, even if
the ideas correlated. This universal response surprised me a bit: I personally would not have
thought that this constituted cheating, except for the fact that a friend of mine who attends a
public university told me not long ago that this was indeed an instance of cheating, referred to in
academic circles as self-plagiarism. Although I have never found anything to substantiate this
idea in my own syllabi, I have operated under the impression that what is described in Scenario 2
is indeed cheating.
All participants agreed that Kari was indeed plagiarizing by neglecting to reference the
author and location of the information taken on heart disease. Participants also all communicated
that Jolene did plagiarize in taking ideas and exact phrasing from Bobs paper. However, there
was disagreement in analysis of whether or not Bob cheated. Some thought he did cheat in
allowing his work to be taken. Others thought he could not be responsible for cheating if he did
not know that Jolene was going to take his work without citing. Others wondered how he could
have known or been a participatory member of the plagiarism if Jolene had requested to look at
his paper under the auspices of seeing examples of good work.
None of the participants surveyed thought Liz or John had cheated in discussing the test
after completing it, and most did not think that Danny had cheated in overhearing their
discussion. Rationale included the fact that the teacher should have specified that students were
not to discuss test material, the teacher should be intelligent enough to anticipate that students
would discuss tests they had taken, the tests for the two periods should have varied, and Danny
should not be held responsible for overhearing assessment material in a public place, especially
if he wasnt trying to listen to their conversation. Some participants thought that Danny should
have announced his presence or gotten up to leave once he realized that the conversation he
was overhearing centered on a test he had yet to take. One thought that he should be held
responsible for overhearing test material and refusing to remove himself from that position. I feel
as though Danny cannot honestly take the test, knowing in advance what is on it, contrary to the
designs of the teacher. What he should have done is gone and told the teacher what he
overheard, and the teacher could have modified that portion of the test in order to maintain the
integrity of the assessment.
Reflection
Cheating and plagiarism are certainly issues of concern in education. I have had some
examples of classic cheating occur in my classrooms, such as one student allowing another to
copy his homework, and a girl writing paragraphs straight out of the textbook in answer to
questions. The boys were forthright in confirming that they had cheated, when I pulled them
aside and asked them. Im not sure what exactly I would have done if they hadnt admitted
fortunately they did! They received zeroes for that assignment, and the principal was notified.
For the girl who copied the textbook paragraphs onto her paper and turned them in as answers
to the questions, I realized how good the writing was, in contrast to her normally disjointed
grammar. I pulled her aside and showed her what she had written and the exact matching
paragraph in the textbook. Honestly, I am not sure she realized she was cheating. I explained
plagiarism to her, then had her confirm that she understood, then asked her to re-do the
assignment, using her own synthesized answers. Recently a girl was walking down the row
during a test to ask me a question, but saw another girls answer. In self-imposed honesty, she
left that question blank when she turned in her test, suffering the point deduction and telling me
later of the situation.
Teachers need to remember how easy it is to cheat and plagiarize if the conditions are
present, and should work to make it as difficult as possible for students to steal information,
either from other students or available resources. Something I do believe is that most students
would not desire to actively seek out instances where they can cheat or plagiarize, but many find
it difficult to avoid if the cheating is a byproduct of normal circumstances, as in the 5 th Scenario
of the survey.