Blog2: Academic Honesty Concerns

Through this class, I am becoming more convinced that online education, if done well, is not necessarily inferior to a face to face class. However, the anonymity of the internet still plagues me as a potential problem for academic honesty. I worry regularly in my face to face classes about plagiarism, and implement strategies to avoid it such as modifying paper prompts so they are not easily copied and pasted from a source. I can imagine many such similar strategies for an online class. Obviously I want to avoid any quizzes of facts—information that can be quickly provided by a google search instead of reading the assignment—and ask questions instead of synthesis and analysis. In an online class, though, there is the additional question of who is completing the work. I cannot physically see the student in class, hear their voice, and get to know their tone in order to compare it to their writing. I’ve caught plagiarism in the past because the writing simply didn’t sound like that student’s. 

I know this seems like an awfully suspicious attitude, and perhaps the solution is simply a certain amount of trust that people are in general honest. Then I read articles, though, about people like the “Shadow Scholar” who custom write essays for money, and I wonder if the same type of person doesn’t exist for completing online classes. Is there any way to know that the students enrolled in the class are the ones gaining the knowledge they seem to be? Or is this uncertainty something I just have to accept?

Blog1: Content vs. Context Discussion

Discussions in general have been useful. It usually takes me a minute to formulate my thoughts to speak up in a f2f class, so often I miss my opportunity to add a point because others are faster than I am. The online discussions mean that I can take my time to read the initial post and draft and revise a response without worrying about being talked over. In particular, I appreciated the context vs. content discussion. This debate highlights one of the major differences between online and f2f learning, and the points raised in the discussion helped me to identify issues that need to be considered when teaching online.

On the other hand, I felt the discussion was somewhat weakened by the competing need to participate in the discussion about engagement theory. While both discussions were useful, splitting attention between them was difficult and seemed to detract from each. The two are very different topics, which seems like it should lead to easier separation of them, but for me it led to a need to completely change course when thinking about each discussion, making the transition between responses difficult.

I think having only one discussion topic would allow for greater depth of conversation and perhaps even more synthesis of ideas. Being able to focus on one topic at a time means that more nuances of the topic can be explored, and perhaps more concepts from the readings could be brought in. If there was only one discussion topic, I think it would be expected that students participated at a greater level, but the conversation could potentially be more fruitful.