Integrity

Integrity is one thing you have that only you can give away. Each semester, I have two or three students who do just that. I teach computers. I give the students my integrity speech each semester on the first day of class. Undoubtedly though, there are always those who think they can't get caught. Some misguided students think that they can submit each other's work as their own and I will not know the difference.

A few years ago when this would happen, I would get furious. Now, knowing that each semester two or three will try to get one by me, I just become disappointed.

When this occurs, most students will swear they didn't cheat, until I show them all of their identical work. Finally, one of them will admit their misdeed. Most often, the faster student, gets finished early, and being a friend, they want to help their classmate out, so they give their work away. The recipient of this well-intended friend's work may change the font size, the color of their work, etc., but they never recognize the "telling" errors; i.e, forgetting to change reference initials, using the same graphic, when they would have had a choice of many pictures, the typographical errors., etc. The end result is the same, everyone gets a grade of "0" for each item submitted. But more importantly, they lose a bit of their integrity.

The latest occurrence happened just last week. When I confronted the three young men (away from their classmates), one of them just laughed out loud and shook his head. The one who gave the work denied his involvement, and the third guy said, "I changed the font." The one with the laugh explained that he was laughing because he couldn't believe teachers looked at student work that carefully. The one changing the font, said he got the work from the guy denying the involvement, and went on to explain how the other one gave him his work on a disk and he transferred it to his computer. The young man giving the work away was in shock, I think, and remained silent. I told him he was "too good of a friend." After giving them the integrity speech again, I told them I was not angry, just disappointed, and that they would now have to work harder to earn back the integrity they lost.

My goal each semester is to make it though without someone trying to outsmart me, not because I am smart, but because I still believe in students, and I want student integrity to stay in tact. Maybe, I am dreaming, but one can hope.