Paul Cote
Professor Goeller
Research In Disciplines: College 201
10/8/13
Research
Proposal
Topic/Overview:
The topic I am choosing
for my paper is academic dishonesty in universities. I want to investigate the
motivations behind student’s behavior and how prevalent cheating is in
college’s today compared to that of the past. I would also like to look at how
social and economic pressures affect student’s decisions in college
specifically towards cheating. The cheating culture in college seems so
extensive today and I would like to see how it is viewed by professors and
students as well as the general public. The debate that seems to be looming
over this topic is the morality in question and if each student really is to
blame for cheating. How far could we have pushed them to make this decision, or
is it solely on their own shoulders.
Research
Question:
In what ways are
students motivated to cheat and how prevalent is it within universities? Also,
how are people affected by outside factors?
Theoretical
Frame:
My theories that I have
are that academic dishonesty is more prevalent today than it was 30 years ago.
I also think that socio-economic positions as well as other individual effects
have an impact on why and how often students would participate in academic
dishonesty. These theories are applicable towards my study.
Research
Plan:
Some additional
questions that suggest themselves are how often to do students cheat? How do
they cheat? Do they just cheat in lower level courses? How old are they? What
are the university punishments for cheating? Is cheating more prevalent in
online courses? I am definitely going to look at the work of Donald Mccabe from
Rutgers and some other online sources. The case study that I would be looking
for is one that found out why students cheated when they did, and what
background did they come from.
I expected you to discuss the research you have done so far. What specific aspect of cheating do you want to focus on?
ReplyDeleteI would want to know what motivates students to cheat? What sort of thinking influences them? The Cheating Culture is a good source for that. And I really recommend Dave Tomar's book "Shadow Scholar" as it is a very honest admission of the sort of disaffection that might lead to cheating. In fact, after reading Tomar you might ask if privatization encourages cheating by breaking the pact between colleges and their students. It offers something of a counter-argument to McCabe's "honor code" argument, since most cheaters may feel so disaffected from the college community that honor codes have no effect on them. Tomar definitely suggests that argument and gives you a very detailed portrait of the thinking that motivates a disaffected student.