Effects of Academic Cheating In “The Whistleblower Effect” Article Review

In the article The Whistleblower Effect   Mihran Aroian and Raymond Brown investigate the effect of reporting  of student’s cheating. The authors give detailed analysis of different effects of academic cheating and investigate how teachers’ reporting of this cheating influences a study process.  The authors use credible sources in order to get information about the theme investigated. They combine their research with deep analysis and this way create a detailed research which contains a lot of useful information. In addition, in the end of the article they give practical recommendations aiming to help teachers deal with the problem of academic cheating.

The authors investigate an important theme, because academic cheating creates a serious problem not only for educational institutions, but also for the entire society. According to the results of the reports, presented by the authors of the article, academic cheating is a behavioral pattern, which is more likely to be applied in further life.  Students, who cheat during their studying, are more likely to cheat when they start building their career. Aroian and Brown attract public attention to the serious problem and show how academic cheating influences other social spheres.

The article is well-structured and easy to comprehend.  It  is divided  into several parts which have subheadings. This division of the text makes comprehension easier. The authors investigate a serious problem, which also creates  a moral dilemma for teachers. Introduction of  the article is lively and catching. The authors  use a real-life example in order to describe the problem.  The next part of the article discusses students’ evaluation of teaching. This information is very interesting, because it gives an insight into students’ perception and can be useful for teachers and education workers.  Analysis of the literature performed by the authors shows that  academic misconduct reduces students’ course evaluation scores. In the cases when cheating is reported,  teachers usually put lower grades and this naturally has negative effect on general grades.  Students in their turn give worse evaluation scores to those teachers who put them lower grades. In addition, administration of the educational institutions feels  that reporting academic misconduct has negative effect on student’s courses evaluation. That is the reason some faculties try to reduce the  reporting of academic misconduct.  The next part of the article investigates how reports on cheating influence students’ perception of their teachers and how these reports influence teachers’ ratings among student.  The author describe their own research performed in   UT. The results of their investigation helped to study the effect of student’s cheating reporting.  The last part of the article contains recommendations, which aim to help teachers find balance in the situations when they meet students’ cheating.

The correlation between reporting of academic cheating and teachers’ ratings hasn’t been studied in great detail yet. That is the reason research performed by Mihran Aroian and Raymond Brown is definitely interesting and useful. The authors not only attract public attention to serious problem, but also give practical advices aiming to help teachers.  Detailed and well-structured research  helps    obtain interesting data concerning the theme investigated. According to the results of the research,  teachers who report cheating have lower rating among students. As the authors state, “The results indicate a statistically significant negative effect for reporting students. The estimated mean rating for classes in which students were not reported for academic dishonesty was 3.95. The estimated mean for classes in which students were reported was 3.75, which is 0.20 points, or one-fifth of a standard deviation, lower” (Aroian & Brown).  These results  become a very vivid illustration of the effect caused by the reporting of students’ cheating. This information gives  important food for thought and  can become  a starting point for developing different approaches of dealing with the problem of student cheating.

Research illustrates that reporting cheating is not an effective way to deal with the problem. In the end of the article, the authors give recommendations which aim to help   deal with the problem of students’ cheating.  The list of recommendations can be changed and transformed, but information from the report gives  important ideas about the problem of students’ cheating and helps   pay attention to important peculiarities of this problem.

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