Evidence suggests that academic honor codes, which call for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated, are far more successful than are other methods at deterring cheating among students at colleges and universities. Several years ago, Groveton College adopted such a code and discontinued its old-fashioned system in which teachers closely monitored students. Under the old system, teachers reported an average of thirty cases of cheating per year. In the first year the honor code was in place, students reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen. Moreover, in a recent survey, a majority of Groveton students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without.
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
Honor codes are suggested to be the most successful method to prevent students from cheating. The author suggests that the students monitoring themselves have reported less cases of cheating than when teachers were responsible for this task, which suggests that this method is working at preventing cheating. However, the author fails to consider the context of the issue of cheating which could be explained by three different plausible scenarios.
The author first suggests that this case study at Groveton College can be applied to all other colleges and universities. This is not likely to be the case; perhaps Groveton College is vastly different from the average university and all the students take their exams in cubicles so the potential for cheating is much lower than elsewhere. Or perhaps “cheating” is defined differently; maybe at Groveton it refers to asking a question about the material, which is acceptable at most colleges and not a common definition of cheating. For these reasons, the Groveton findings should not be blindly attributed to all other colleges and universities as the structure and makeup could be vastly different.
Groveton states that their old system involved teachers closely monitoring students, but now they have students report cheating. An explanation for the number of cases going down from the old system to the new involves the fundamental change in the system. First, many teachers might be more capable at determining and knowing what cheating looks like and therefore they would be able to report more than what an average student sees. Second, students are already busy trying to learn, read, and write new material that they might not have time or the capability to recognize cheating around them especially during a timed exam. These two examples illustrate why students might not be the most reliable sources for reporting cheating cases as they might not be properly trained in what cheating looks like and they might not simply have the time or opportunity to seek out cheating.
Lastly, perhaps the comradery at Groveton is strong and students are less likely to report on their peers than a teacher would report on a student. Maybe their closeness has prevented some cheating cases from being reported, as they do not want to get their friends in trouble or expelled. In this case, the new system might not be as effective and might not actually be reducing the number of cases of cheating. The effectiveness of the transition to the new system remains to be seen as the author has not presented hard evidence explaining direct causes for the lower number of cheating cases.
The author has concluded that having students report cheating cases is more effective than teachers reporting cheating cases as they have seen a lower number of reports under this new system. However, the three previously stated alternatives highlight the logical fallacies committed by the author in an attempt to link lower cheating cases to a new honor code system. In conclusion, Groveton College could be very different from the average university and thus not able to be compared; the students could be underqualified and lack time and training to notice cheating around them; and students could simply be less willing to report cheating cases on their peers due to comradery. There are many alternatives that can explain the fewer cheating reports while questioning the effectiveness of the new honor code system.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 564 350
No. of Characters: 2847 1500
No. of Different Words: 230 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.873 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.048 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.574 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 213 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 162 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 126 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 57 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 28.2 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.334 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.55 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.37 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.569 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.135 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 169, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun cases is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...nts monitoring themselves have reported less cases of cheating than when teachers we...
^^^^
Line 17, column 552, Rule ID: ALLOW_TO[1]
Message: Did you mean 'noticing'? Or maybe you should add a pronoun? In active voice, 'train' + 'to' takes an object, usually a pronoun.
Suggestion: noticing
...derqualified and lack time and training to notice cheating around them; and students coul...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, first, however, if, lastly, look, may, second, so, therefore, thus, while, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 31.0 19.6327345309 158% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 20.0 11.1786427146 179% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 32.0 28.8173652695 111% => OK
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => OK
Nominalization: 5.0 16.3942115768 30% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2924.0 2260.96107784 129% => OK
No of words: 564.0 441.139720559 128% => OK
Chars per words: 5.18439716312 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.87326216964 4.56307096286 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.70555233826 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 235.0 204.123752495 115% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.416666666667 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 887.4 705.55239521 126% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 28.0 22.8473053892 123% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 50.657156454 57.8364921388 88% => OK
Chars per sentence: 146.2 119.503703932 122% => OK
Words per sentence: 28.2 23.324526521 121% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.15 5.70786347227 90% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.200779125444 0.218282227539 92% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0805998169246 0.0743258471296 108% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0432442483823 0.0701772020484 62% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.138640101764 0.128457276422 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0346730673888 0.0628817314937 55% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.1 14.3799401198 119% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.06 48.3550499002 89% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.197005988 116% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.06 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.36 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 119.0 98.500998004 121% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.2 11.1389221557 119% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.