communicating for
LEARNERS
FALL #
2
2009
featured in this issue
Academic Integrity
Did You Know?
Hot 5: The Backstory
Hot 5
Visionary Status
Workshops
Academic Integrity BGSU educators now have a new tool in the war against plagiarism—SafeAssign, a Blackboard plagiarism detection system. As far as it goes, SafeAssign is a good application, easy to use, and reasonably accurate. But these very qualities may lead some users astray—after all, the real task is to teach academic integrity, not merely to catch malefactors.
character development, of growing up, of becoming who you will be for the rest of your life. Will you be staunch, sturdy, sound? Or will you bend with the winds? Again, as part of BGSU’s Learning Outcomes, students are expected to learn personal and social responsibility, and developing integrity is a very large part of this process.
How do we address the issue of integrity with today’s students? Ironically, it may actually be easier to teach the subject now in the wake of high-profile Wall Street scandals than it would have been in the flush years that preceded the recent recession. Vivid examples of the consequences of compromising one’s integrity are not hard to come by.
Educators who want to take a step beyond plagiarism prevention to teach academic integrity should note that Colleen Boff and Gwen Evans of BGSU’s Jerome Library have created a LibGuide on academic integrity for BGSU 1000. This guide is designed to get students to think deeply about questions of honesty and integrity through the use of case studies, “ripped from the headlines.” The guide can be accessed at http://libguides.bgsu.edu/bgsu1000academicintegrity
While students may easily see that it is wrong to abscond with the life savings of a fellow human being, they may be less clear about why it is equally bad to steal words. There are, after all, so many of them, spilling off the pages of the World Wide Web by the bushel, ripe for the picking. So then there is the task of teaching students the value of words, and in particular, to quote literary critic J. Hillis Miller, the value of “just these words in just this order.” Words are words, but when someone has struggled to put them together in an elegant sequence that is “just right” and expresses precisely his or her meaning, the writer has done real work, work of real value. No writer worth his or her salt will smile upon the student who steals those words. And as part of the University Learning Outcomes, of course, all BGSU students need to learn not only to communicate well themselves but to value communication.
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The word “integrity” comes to us via Middle English through Latin. Its original meaning is related to the word “integer,” meaning a whole number. Integrity refers to wholeness or soundness. Thus a building possessing structural integrity is sound, whole, and built in such a way that it will resist a variety of kinds of stressors. Integrity, when used to describe a quality of character, also implies a kind of wholeness and the ability to resist compromising one’s moral or ethical standards. Those who are lacking integrity can be pushed and pulled hither and yon; they are scattered and fragmented. Thus students need to learn that integrity is a crucial part of
Which brings us back to SafeAssign. Although it can be used to detect plagiarism, it can also be used as part of a unit on academic integrity in which students may be asked to submit their own papers for review. It is probably not a bad idea for students to know that SafeAssign is part of the faculty arsenal, but perhaps the best use of the tool is prevention. BGSU Faculty members can learn more about SafeAssign at http://www.bgsu.edu/downloads/cio/file24033.pdf. To continue the larger discussion about Academic Integrity, please join us at the Center for Teaching and Learning for an upcoming workshop (see box for details).
Continue the Discussion Join us at the Center for
Promoting Academic Integrity: A Guide for Best Practices
December 3, 2:00pm-3:30pm December 4, 2:00pm-3:30pm To register call 419.372.6898 or email ctl@bgsu.edu.
Did You Know
?
The Center has a new assistant director. The Center staff is very pleased to welcome Karen Meyers. Karen was chosen as our assistant director after a regional search that garnered over one hundred applicants. Karen did her undergraduate work at Michigan State University and UCLA and her master’s and doctorate in literature at BGSU. She worked in industry as a trainer and director of training for many years and has experience in the financial, industrial, and engineering sectors. She also headed her own management consulting company from 1986 to 1993. From 1993 to 2002, she was director of the Maumee branch of Heidelberg University, a campus for adult students modeled on Regis University in Denver. She joined Bowling Green State University as Assistant Director of Adult Learner Services in 2005. She has taught writing and literature at Michigan State University, BGSU, the University of Toledo, and Heidelberg University. Since Karen started in mid-October, she has very quickly gotten up to speed with all of the Center’s activities. She has presented her first workshop to a graduate class, introduced herself to the Center’s advisory board, and has scheduled individual meetings with our learning community facilitators. As assistant director Karen is responsible for the internal management of the Center and will be working closely with our student faculty consultants: researching and writing newsletter articles, developing workshops and discussions, collaborating with our learning communities, and consulting with faculty, staff, and graduate students. When you visit the Center, please take a moment to meet our newest staff member, Assistant Director Karen Meyers.
Hot 5: The Backstory In each edition of this newsletter, we feature the Hot 5, a listing of websites we recommend to the BGSU community. The list may include anything from a software application that allows you to email large files, to a collection of digitized books, to a site for Web conferencing—and we include links so you can check out the sites right from the newsletter page. So how does a Website get awarded the coveted HOT designation? The process starts about a month before the newsletter is published. All the members of the Center staff are charged with submitting suggested sites to one of our Faculty Consultants, Eric Bower, who compiles a list of the nominations. Then the staff checks out each site and votes for their favorites. The winners appear in the next issue of the newsletter. Faculty Consultant Kristen Morman notes that she always tries to nominate at least one site that will be of interest to students as well as faculty and staff. Since the feature began in Spring 2006, we’ve come up with so many great sites—more than 80—that we have decided to put them all together in one place so our readers can access them easily. Go to, http://bgsu.edu/ctl/page74277.html, where you will find the sites organized by subject. And don’t forget to check out this month’s picks.
HOT 5 (click the link to visit) 1 2 3
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IJTLHE isetl.org/ijtlhe
Forum Network forum-network.org
Flat World Knowledge flatworldknowledge.com
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Federal Resources free.ed.gov
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coverage of higher education pedagogy aross diverse content areas of instructional expertise
free lecture videos from PBS and NPR
remixable textbooks by expert authors, free online and afforable offline
free teaching resources including animations, documents, photos and videos
database of more than 5,000 speeches with full text, audio, and visual versions
American Rhetoric americanrhetoric.com
meet the
VISIONARY
Lawrence Lessig
Wednesday, Dec. 2nd, 7:00pm
educator, speaker, author
Bowen-Thompson Student Union Theatre
In Fall Semester of 2007 we introduced Lawrence Lessig as a visionary because of his work in founding Creative Commons (a nonprofit organization that enables content creators to license their creative works and find works). On the Creative Commons website, there is a list of licenses that any content creator can apply to creative work, thus allowing people to exercise copyright while keeping the ability to freely create and build on completed creativity. Lessig’s latest work focuses attention on political corruption. After the launch of the “Change Congress” website, Lessig expressed hope that it would help provide technological tools that voters could use to hold their representatives accountable and reduce the influence of money on politics. Lessig is also a board member of MAPLight.org, a research group that tracks connections between politics and money. In this newsletter, we are pleased to announce that Lawrence Lessig is coming to Bowling Green State University. On Wednesday, December 2, Lessig will be touring our campus and will speak at the event “Public Financing of Elections and the Quest to Change Congress.” Lessig’s speech is part of the Tech Trends Series, an exploration of issues and trends affecting information technology in the university environment. Lawrence Lessig is also known for his unique presentation style that includes rapid transitions between short phrases. This presentation style is recognized as the “Lessig Method.” To experience the “Lessig Method,” view one of Lessig’s speeches delivered to the TED conference in March 2007. <http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity. html> Lessig’s website http://www.lessig.org/
MAPLight.org http://maplight.org
Creative Commons Website http://creativecommons.org
Discussions and Workshops How to Conduct a Literature Review Tuesday, December 1, 2:30pm-4:30pm Extending the Classroom Experience with Podcasting Wednesday, December 2, 12:00pm-1:00pm Principles for Good Practice Thursday, December 3, 11:00am-12:00pm Pragmatic Practices for Teaching Assistants Friday, December 4, 10:00m-11:00am
For more information on our workshops or to register, contact the Center at: ctl@bgsu.edu, 419.372.6898, or www.bgsu.edu/ctl/page11755.html
Click here for this workshop series flyer.
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This newsletter is a publication of the Center for Teaching and Learning. Visit us online at www.bgsu.edu/ctl/ or in 201University Hall.