[edrantunn]

As an educator how will you deal with a student who submits another's work for academic credit?

[NurseyBaby'05]

That student has got to go! Acedemic dishonesty . . . . . .no, way! The rest of us have all worked too long and too hard to get where we're at. Not only that, how honest do you think he/she'll be in his/her charting, med administration, report, etc? Also, he/she will probably want to be carried on the floor by another nurse too! I don't think a tiger will change his/her stripes in this case. By the way, what about the other person involved? Did the person who's work it actually is, give it to the person turning it in? If that's the case, I would get rid of that person who's work it was too. I don't know the whole story, BUT it doesn't sound like somebody copied a few sentences he/she forgot on a homework assignment.

[earle58]

(1) fail them for that course, followed by in writing;
(2) any further acts of plagiarism is grounds for immediate expulsion from the nursing program.

leslie

[elkpark]

Your school should have a policy on cheating, which would apply to the nursing students as well as everyone else, and which you must follow as a faculty member of the college. When I was a nursing faculty member and caught a student cheating the first time, I was SHOCKED to find that we couldn't just kick her out -- the college had a "first bite is free" policy that stated that, the first time you got caught cheating, you got a zero for that test or assignment and counseled that you couldn't do that again (like people don't know that they're not allowed to turn in other people's work or cheat on tests?????) Amazingly enough, the student was cocky enough to think that she could cheat again and get away with it, with the same instructor (ME!!!), and we kicked her out the second time. Ironically, if she'd put as much effort into just doing the work in the first place as she did into cheating, she would have been a fine student -- but that wasn't her style ...

The next time a student turned in someone else's work as her own, I met with her to confront her about it and do the "counseling" required by the school policy. In that case, it turned out that she was driven to cheating by a sense of desperation, many things were going wrong in her life and she felt completely overwhelmed, and she decided on her own that it would be best to withdraw from the nursing program until she had the rest of her life straightened out and could give school the attention and energy it required.

In my state, at least, part of qualifying to write the NCLEX-RN is that the director of your school must personally certify to the BON that you are "morally and ethically fit" to be a nurse -- we had no problem explaining to students who were caught cheating (more than once) that, given their dishonesty in school, our director would be unable to make that statement to the Board -- people who will cheat in school will cheat and cut corners out in the "real world," when people's lives are depending on them ...

[purplemania]

are you talking about using another STUDENT's work, or plagerism? Both are dishonest, but the first indicates complicity and the two students should receive discipline. I hope your mission statement and course objectives/syllabus mention integrity and the risk of being dismissed from the program. Otherwise, it makes it hard to administer discipline objectively. This problem seems to be on the increase because the attitude of some students is that it is ok to be dishonest as you are using your resources. I personally believe it is fallout from the Internet culture, since information is so available. Your staff needs to present a unified front, in order not to be labeled as biased towards the individual. What a dilemma!

[elkpark]

I had one situation where the cheating student photocopied another student's case study, made minor modifications to it, and turned it in as her own work. The other student truly was not aware that this student had swiped her paper, copied it, and returned it to her bag.

In another case, the student had "borrowed" a research paper from a colleague who had written it for a nursing program at another college. It's too long and complicated to explain how I was able to figure this out, but I did, and faculty at the other school recognized the paper when I shared it with them. The other student had already graduated from her program and taken boards, so there was no way to penalize the other student.

I agree that schools need to be v. clear up front that academic dishonesty in any form will not be tolerated!

[VickyRN]

Originally Posted by edrantunn

As an educator how will you deal with a student who submits another's work for academic credit?

If this is a clear-cut case (cheating and/ or plagiarism sometimes can be very difficult to prove), then the student will be dismissed from our ADN program per our policy.

[Yellow Rose RN]

Originally Posted by edrantunn

As an educator how will you deal with a student who submits another's work for academic credit?

I think that plagerism probably is grounds for expulsion from the school. Probably in the college handbook. Also, this student cannot possibly be learning by submitting another person's work. This is dishonest and not the character that is needed in nursing. She/He has got to go!

Good Luck

[edrantunn]

There is need to have a unified front by nursing organizations to eradicate this problem of academic dishonesty before nursing diplomas and degrees are not worth the paper they are printed on. Petitions must be made to federal and state departments to deal with this problem with a case of urgency as patients' lives are in jepordy. It has come to my knowledge of an individual who has graduated as an advanced practice nurse with the authority to prescribe medication. While in school, all the written assignments that individual submitted for credits were written by another person. I am sure this practice has occured before with other disiplines but the potential risk in the nursing profession is beyond immagination.

[rollingstone]

Can you spell expulsion?