According to a recent report, cheating among college and university students is on the rise. However, Groveton College has successfully reduced student cheating by adopting an honor code, which calls for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated. Groveton's honor code replaced a system in which teachers closely monitored students; under that system, teachers reported an average of thirty cases of cheating per year. In the first year the honor code was in place, students reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen. Moreover, in a recent survey, a majority of Groveton students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without. Thus, all colleges and universities should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's in order to decrease cheating among students.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
According to the author, Groveton college has successfully reduced incidences of cheating among its students by adopting an honor code. The honor code calls for students to agree not to cheat during their exams and also to notify a faculty member if they suspect anyone else.This honor code is supposed to replace an earlier system where teachers closely monitored students and reported cases of cheating.The author also urges other universities and colleges to adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's to reduce cheating among students.This argument is rife with holes and assumptions and does not make a cogent case.
Firstly, the author states that when the primitive system was in place, an average of thirty cases of cheating were recorded per year. After the implementation of the honor code, the average dropped down to 21 in the first year, and to 14 in the next 5 years.The author associates the honor code with the drop in the average cases per year, however he fails to provide context and reasons why.The average number of cheating cases may have gone down due to numerous reasons. It is possible that the students cheated and decided not to report it to the faculty members, hence bringing down the numbers of the average cases.Therefore there is no possible way to assert that the above given statistics are totally accurate.If the honor code was actually working, then why are there still cases being reported after 6 years of its implementation? Also, why is the drop of cases of cheating in the later five years less the than the drop in the first year? Hence more proof is required to strengthen the author's argument .
The author also cites a survey of students, which states that the majority of students are less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without. The scope and validity of this survey is unclear. The author can bolster his argument by stating the percentage of total students that took the survey, number of questions in the survey. The author also has to consider the possibility that the students may lie in the survey to get rid of faculty supervision during their exams.Thus the validity and reliability of this survey is uncertain.
The author concludes by saying that since the honor code has worked in the Groveton model,it should also be imposed in other colleges and universities. He fails to provide adequate reasons to support his argument. A lot a research and survey's need to be conducted upon the validity of the honor code, both in the Groveton model, as well as for other colleges.In conclusion the recommendations made by the author may be valid.Nevertheless the premises of his recommendations are not sound. He needs more proof to make it a cogent case.
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- not OK
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 472 350
No. of Characters: 2216 1500
No. of Different Words: 206 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.661 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.695 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.496 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 147 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 111 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 75 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 27 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.455 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.538 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.727 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.323 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.494 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.108 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5