Team Dynamics

Ethics are behaviors guided by moral judgment and standards of conduct. Academic ethics are essential to gaining the maximum advantages from educational environments. An established standard must be implemented in the academic arena. Standards must begin early in a student's educational career and continues throughout all learning experiences. In order to determine why students do not maximize the academic experience one must first look at the behaviors that need to be changed. A student's ability to maximize the academic experience can be hindered by sexism, plagiarism and racism.

Sexism

Among many of the issues faced regarding ethics in an academic environment is sexism. In a study conducted by Myra and David Sadker over a period of six years, teachers were studied in the classrooms of elementary, secondary and higher education institutions. The research showed, that not only were teachers displaying sexism, they were equally unaware of it. The study shows that the male students were more involved, but also demanded more attention. If they called out an answer, they were acknowledged; whereas, if a female called out an answer, she was more likely to be corrected for speaking out and asked to raise her hand. So, it became competition for the attention of the teacher. This encourages males to be more assertive and females to be more passive. Again, this can have affects later in life as well.

All of the teachers, and even professors, were observed on a voluntary basis. These teachers didn't think that they displayed sexism, until they watched the footage from their classrooms. When the instructors were given statistics of the study alone (without video footage), they stated that they believed that the problem should be addressed and corrected, but did not think that they were apart of it. One teacher, who did acknowledge that sexism existed within their class, did not think it to be a problem, simply because girl made higher grades. Myra and David Sadker wanted to hold these teachers accountable for their actions and help them to improve.

In order to offer some solutions and skills that the teachers could take into their classrooms, a workshop was offered to those open to displaying more equality in the classroom. The main keys of solution are accountability, changed behaviors, feedback and practice. The instructors are forced to be more self aware. In addition to examining the teacher/peer relationship, it is also important to look at the relationships of the peers to one another. Does one sex bully the other? Is this behavior learned from home, school, or society as a whole? Peers must treat each other with equality, regardless of gender. This must be practiced and enforced by the teachers. If those in authority display gender bias, then one cannot expect the pupils to act any different. (Sadker, 1986).

Plagiarism

A student must have a conscience of morality in order to obtain success in the collegiate arena. Most individuals understand that cheating in colleges is immoral and unfair. Cheating on test and plagiarism are the very common violations of the academic code. So why do so many students on the collegiate level cheat? Researchers discuss several reasons why these occurrences take place. A competitive environment and ignorance are mostly the main causes. Universities tend to set a very competitive domain. Many students believe that they need to cheat to gain an advantage to obtain a high G.P.A. They will do whatever is necessary to achieve the best grades in there class. Julia Christian Hughes, and partner professor at Guelph University and an expert in cheating developments at post secondary schools, believes that the motto" a cheating to win culture" is to blame. A study was released stating that the consequences and knowledge of academic honor were not warnings, and several students surveyed peer behavior and competition in the workforce as influences. She balanced to release results of a comprehensive study examining cheating patterns at 20 Canadian universities, including Alerta. (Tetly, 2006, p. A.1)

With colleges and universities in motion, many campus officials are competing to stay ahead of the new technology that is taking place now. Text messaging is used instead of the traditional peak on the next desk for answers. In one instance, dealing with text messaging, there was team of students from Korea that organized a text coding scam for the national entrance examination to make sure everything went accordingly. Another occurrence in Beijing, students using microscopic earphones and wireless devices to communicate with each other to gain advantage over 9.5 million students competing over 2.6 million spots. Even modern tactics of cheating were used where a website suggested to bring a dark colored soft drink bottle during the test with the answers sealed behind the label. Another mentioned to place tracing paper inside chewing gum wrappers and later eat the evidence. Universities deans and their staff are competing to stay with hi tech experts enrolled at highly prestigious institutions. (Tetly, 2006, p. A.1)

Not only cheating on test, but students turning in false term papers. Plagiarism is another problem with the academic code of honor. Coventry university officials used a program called Turnitin, which examines a student paper for any evidence leading to plagiarism. This program can locate bits of articles where a student have copied and pasted into his/her term paper for. Over 200 students in one university were found guilty of plagiarism when the computer software recognized material from the Internet. Several students were shortly expelled while others cases were pending. (Tetly, 2006, p. A.1) Professors decided that Turnitin is a necessary tool to enforce the integrity and honesty when writing college papers. Students from the SAIT organization disagreed with the use of Turnitin. It is not worth is said president Jessica Powless," There are going to be cheats that can not be stopped but it should be left up to the instructors to catch these people because no students wants their words to end up in a database." (Tetly, 2006, p. A.1)

Every professor will not necessarily give the student recognition that he/she are capable of upheld the academic code of honor. At Princeton University, Professor Donald McCabe establish an honor code suggesting that students will not need an invigilator to oversee the activity and sign a document vowing that they promise not to cheat. Some students even take it to a whole level by purchasing papers from a variety of websites. Papers and