What I've learned from Rewriting our Academic Honesty Policy (part 1)

I have given up on #28daysofwriting.  It isn't that I haven't been writing.  It is just that I haven't been writing here.  I have been trying to rewrite the school academic honesty policy while at Gladstone's Library in Flintshire.  I am quite amazed that I have spent at least 2 hours a day on it.  Sometimes much more.  I suppose I shouldn't beat myself up for not writing here then.  However, what I haven't done is reflect, as I promised, on my teaching of key words nor on anything to do with the Human Library project.

So here I go with what I've learned from re-writing the academic honesty policy!

I had thought that it would turn out to be much simpler to rewrite than it has.  The parts that needed to be removed since they weren't really policy were really easy to spot.  Why do we need to describe what Wikipedia is and how it can be used in research and how it shouldn't.  This isn't really policy.  And there is a lot more like that, relating to citation creators and library online databases.  So I have put lots of crosses through pages of the present document.

However, I then looked for a workable, easy to understand definition of academic honesty within our present documents.  There wasn't one.  In the high school document, I got to page 7 before I found a list of different types of plagiarism: the ghost writer, the photocopier, the potluck paper writer, the poor disguiser.  You know the sort of thing, or at least you will if you are a teacher or librarian these days.  If I were a student, I would never have gotten to page 7 to read this.  I would have given up somewhere around the discussion of the IB Position Paper October 2012, on page 3.  The MYP document wasn't much better.  Furthermore, neither were written for their largest audience - the students.  They especially weren't written for students for whom English is another language.

Thus, a project which I thought would be more copy and paste with a few adjustments, has turned into a major rethink.  I had hoped to have this finished by the end of February but I now think that it will take all the allotted time given to it and I may be lucky to have it finished by the end of April.

I started by reading a number of similar documents from other schools and decided to write the definition in a way that students could easily understand it.  I described what academic honesty and  dishonesty would look like, giving examples.  I have to thank The Canadian International School in Hong Kong (or was it Singapore) for the structure and ideas.

Academic Honesty is demonstrated when:

• You create authentic work, based on your own ideas and words
• You respect the intellectual property rights of others by giving accurate credit to the sources used in your work
• You show that you understand the difference between collaboration and collusion
• You adhere to the designated rules for all assessments, including external exams

Academic Dishonesty occurs when:

• You intentionally or unintentionally, represent the ideas, words or work of another person as your own by not giving proper acknowledgment through correct referencing.  You might also use translated materials which are not acknowledged.   Both of these instances are known as plagiarism.
• You collude with another student or students in committing academic misconduct.  An example of this occurs when you allow your work to be copied or submitted for assessment by another person.
• You collaborate in a group, the work is not shared equitably but equal credit is given to all group members. 
• Your conduct in an assessment is dishonest, including during external exams.  This may involve taking unauthorised materials into an exam; behaviour that disrupts the exam or may distract other students; communicating with another student during the exam; and any other specified activities set down by the exam board or school.
• You present your own work to be assessed when it has already been submitted by you for another assignment.

I moved on next to the expectations and responsibilities of each of the stakeholders.  I used the order in our present document and then decided as I wrote this post that it was wrong since it put the students and parents as the last of the groups.  It seems to me that the students should be first and that their section should be written in student friendly language.  So this was/is my attempt at that:

Students will:

• Go through the academic honesty policy with their parents/guardians and teachers.  If they are unsure of any part of the policy, they will ask someone to explain it to them.  This could be a parent/guardian, a teacher, or the librarian.
• Make sure that they understand the rules for all assessments, including tests, quizzes, and exams (e.g. semester, end of year, MAP, GCSEs, MYP and DP).
• Make sure that they know how to reference (cite) their sources and make every effort to do so correctly.  If they are unsure, they will ask for help from someone who does know, such as a teacher, librarian, or parent.
• Use the school’s referencing style (e.g. MLA until grade 11) and the school’s online referencing tool (Noodletools).  If they are unsure of any aspect, they will ask for help from a teacher, or librarian.
• Use online digital and print resources ethically, legally and responsibly.  If they are unsure they will ask for help or advice from a teacher, librarian or parent/guardian.
• Make sure they understand what the teacher expects of them when they are working with a partner or in a group and ask the teacher to explain again if they don’t.

Human Library: Search Terms

(To start with I feel a failure for having started a challenge to write every day for 28 days and for having fallen at the first hurdle!  I wrote one entry and then nothing after that till today.  I could just give up.  Instead, I will redouble my efforts and write during the day when I'm not tired!)

I have struggled for a number of years to work out how to teach students to research effectively.  Yesterday's class with the grade 9s was about developing search terms.  I don't really think that the class was all that effective.  It followed on from a class activity the previous week where we used Mindmup to create mind maps of googleable questions for our topics.  That activity went fairly well, though I think that many of the students wondered why we didn't jump straight into a google search of the topic. 

This week, I wanted them to start developing search terms based on their questions.  Here is what the activity looked like:

1. Using my topic of pop up books, I went through my googleable questions and came up with a list of search terms in various categories.  I broke them down into these categories so that the students could see how a list of search terms could be enhanced.

• (Obvious) key word/s - pop ups
• Synonyms - mechanical books (I found this by using the search terms: "pop up books other names", rather then simply "pop up books synonyms" - which hadn't produced the results I wanted)
• Modifiers - (words which modify the search) history, culture, specific countries (such as Japan), construction, children's, adult
• Context terms - pdf (may give me books, pamphlets, articles); images; videos; illustrations; how to.

We have talked about the different types of search terms in other classes when students have come to the library for research lessons.  It seems to have little effect on their searches but I keep working at it.

2. I didn't but should have shown them the results of each of my searches - perhaps next time!

3. Students then were given sheets on which to come up with their initial list of search terms.

4. Next class, we will start to research using those terms and then they will further develop their lists.

It is my hope to show them how to develop and modify a list of search terms over the course of their research and how this will improve their results.

For a Future Class

I need to work out a way to show how a search for information develops over time in a graphic and easily understood manner.  Home work for my holiday!

Post Script

I went home last night and mulled over the class and one of the conclusions I came to was perhaps a bit of a cop out:  well, they are only 14 year-olds!  Yes, it is a cop out but at the same time, when I think about how and what I researched at 14, I realise that I didn't learn to research in a day, a month or a year.  It took me a very long time to mature as a researcher.  Perhaps that is still the case.

Human Library Revisited (28 Days of Writing)

Here we are in February and I am back into the Human Library project with my grade 9s.  We introduced it two weeks ago and followed that up with some activities to help students identify their "passion" or if not passion, at least some of their interests.  As with last year, the students will be a "human" book on their passions or interest.

I was not surprised that a number of the boys in my group had decided to be a book about a sport, either basketball or football.  It will be my challenge to help them find some aspect of their topic beyond their favorite team.  One boy wants his book to be on the rules of basketball.  I can't help but wonder how he will make that interesting to the readers.  We shall see.

Last week we started work on googleable and non-googleable questions with a Ted talk on a Japanese nursery school.  When I started to show it, I think I had a number of puzzled students.  What did this have to do with the Human Library?  Below is the lesson plan I created for the three classes and teachers.

1. Play your class our TED Talk.  It will hopefully lead to a provocative discussion and questions.
2. Give students plenty of post-it notes to write one question per post-it in a short period of time - maybe 10-20 minutes.
3. Ask students to post their questions onto a window or wall, under two headings: Googleable and Non-Googleable
4. Discuss what might constitute  googleable and non-googleable questions.  Ensure they understand the difference.  
5. Once they have their questions posted, share the googleable questions out for them to find the answers;
6. Give some time for students to present some or all of their answers;
7. Should there be sufficient time, examine the non-googleable questions and decide which might be most interesting to examine further (in another class)