Announcement:
[Forwarded Webmail]
As we grow our school, we will have growth opportunities that we all will all learn from. It has been brought up that there is a concern about students not doing their own work. I want to make sure that each student, and their supportive caretakers, understand the importance of students completing assignments on their own with their own unique learning curves. The online platform gives opportunities for students to copy and paste work from other places as well as have parents or other individuals completing work for the student. As teachers, we adjust our lessons based on the authentic learning of the students. If the work that is presented to us is copied and pasted or is done for the child, we don't have an accurate view of the student's academic growth.
It is also important to note that these acts are a violation of our honor code to be enrolled with our program. Please see below for the verbage from our Honor Code. Teachers are aware that they now need to be more attentive to these incidents and to put forth consequences for those behaviors. There are many reasons why these behaviors occur and we are not here to shame you for those. We need to get at the heart of authentic learning and we do that by having students provide work that is their own. If you have concerns or need help supporting this with your student, please reach out to the homeroom teachers for support. If you are not sure if this is something that your student is engaging with, please take a moment to check in with them about this very important topic.
Much respect,
Miranda
Honor Code Violations
ORCA requires the original work of all students and in so doing, prohibits plagiarism of the work of others. Students shall be expected to properly cite the origin of work that is not the student’s own. If work content, excluding commonly known facts, is not properly cited, attributed, or credited, the work may be determined to be an honor code violation.
Students may not plagiarize others in written, oral, or creative work. In general, plagiarism occurs when a student uses another person’s words, products, or ideas without proper acknowledgement of the original work or documentation of its source with the intention of passing it off as their own. Plagiarism may occur deliberately (with the intention to deceive) or accidentally (due to poor referencing). It includes copying material from a book, copying and pasting information from the Internet, and getting family or friends to help with coursework.
First Offense
First (1st) instance of an honor code violation in a class can result in a grade of zero (0) for the assignment. Documentation of this incident is made in the student’s Discipline Data View. Communication is made by the teacher to the Learning Coach, Caretaker, and the student. The student’s teacher will contact the student to explain to the student the specific reason(s) why the work submitted is considered an honor code violation and will discuss with the student how to avoid such violations in the future.
Second Offense
Second (2nd) instances of a violation of the honor code in a class results in the student being placed on Academic Probation and may be locked out of Pearson Online Classroom for up to two full school days. A grade of "zero" (0) may be given for the assignment. Documentation of this incident is made in the student’s discipline data view. A telephone call is made by the teacher to the Learning Coach, Caretaker, and the student.
Third Offense
Third (3rd) instance of an honor code violation in a class may result in the student being locked out of Pearson Online Classroom for up to three (3) full school days and may result in the student being removed by administration from the class and a grade of Zero (0) being issued for that class. Documentation of this incident is made. Students who have had an incident of honor code violations in two or more classes, may be locked out of Pearson Online Classroom for a minimum of two (2) full school days.
Repeated violation of ORCA’s academic honesty policies may be grounds for dismissal from the school.
[End Webmail]
So anyone who is cheating should be more careful in plagiarism. Just saying.
about time ...
@Anonymous 2,
Pardon my choice of words. TurnItIn, as well as CheckMyWork (linked in the Links page), are available for students, and I meant to be more careful as a way to re-word anything you write as well as quote it. Not to be "smart" about cheating and getting away with it.
And oobleck, I certainly agree.
Thank you so much Announcement-Maker for responding. As you can see this cheating business is difficult for both ends; i.e., the schools that want to curb the cheating as well as those of us who want to help students (I guess it's in our blood). Most of us who help on Jiskha are retired teachers/professors and none of us condone cheating. During my career I lectured to students who were real students in a classroom setting and when it came exam time I was there to monitor the exam. My eagle eye caught those trying to cheat and I dealt with them individually. In some few advanced classes I gave take home tests with the clear understanding that they were allowed to get information from ANY source. But we didn't have the internet, there were no places to get help, no professionals were available, and I NEVER allowed my old exams to infiltrate the community. As you point out today is different and difficult. Certain web sites have become the Shangri-La for cheaters. At one time Jiskha had a dedicated supervisor who deleted all of those blatant cheating questions. Unfortunately she left the board and we no longer have a monitor with that capability. In a society where the dollar sign drives decisions the ethical decision is often placed on the back burner. Most of these site we're discussing rely on advertising for their sustainability and potential advertisers want to put their advertising dollars on sites with the most traffic and cheating sites get more traffic. 'nough said. Thanks for listening.
Thank you!
@ Miranda. Well said, however, my experience tells me that we have more than one school involved with this blatant cheating. Also, the type of cheating comes in three flavors; i.e., one is the posting of questions of unit x, portofolio y, questions 1-20, the exact reverse of that which are answers to unit x, portfolio y, questions 1-20, and the third is the single question that may be a legitimate one, a question on a test, or a completely different
type. I don't have a problem with ignoring the first and second type although at times I point out that cheating is not very nice. Single questions, however, present a problem. How much detail do I give on those? How do I distinguish between those that are legitimate and those that are test questions. In some cases it is obvious; other cases it is not. Finally, although your post is enlightening I have no idea what platform you're talking about. Connexus? Connections Academy? UPchieve? or any of a host of others too long to list? Have you thought of monitoring some of the "help" boards as a way of quenching some of this blatant cheating? THANKS FOR SHARING.
No offense but saying all of that isn't going to stop students from coming on here. Again, no offense.
"be more careful in plagiarism."
What? "be more careful" so you don't get caught?
This should read, "Don't plagiarize!"
Ever heard of turnitin.com ?? Teachers sure know about this website!
Mhm!
DrBob222,
I do want to mention that though I was talking about Connections Academy (Details I forgot to say, sorry), and that Miranda was the principal who sent the WebMail, that is not the person posting on Jiskha (i.e, Announcement-Maker).
Unfortunately, most online-platform schools seem to be having this problem. Especially in Brainly, I see many students posting single questions that are from tests, quizzes, and short-answer assessments. This not only is ignoring the Honor Code in Brainly and Connections Academy but is also dodging punishment (For lack of a better word) for cheating.
There are so many "Help" boards and other websites created daily that it would be quite hard to eliminate cheating on sites like this one. I see so many test answers on Jiskha, for example. My school's resources are already stretched quite thin due to the influx of students coming from public schools (public and virtual), so they will have to find different ways of monitoring websites.
Hope this helps slightly, even if I have no power over my school's teaching and monitoring strategies.