Read the Fine Print

Effective Methods of Training Biology Laboratory Teaching Assistants IV: The Use of Skits, A Teaching Plan, and Dealing With Plagiarism and Grading

Abstract:: Each year since 1999 ABLE has provided a forum for presentation, discussion, and sharing of ideas concerning the use of undergraduates and graduate students to run labs and teach in the Departments of Biological Science. There have been lively films, games, examples, and discussions of the many university training sessions and/or workshops to Train Graduate Teaching Assistants to handle students, labs, and even teaching assignments. This year we will offer four other areas of discussion for you. Ethics in the classroom; a powerful subject in most colleges and universities, we will offer a skit to lead into a discussion on ethics and how easy it is for faculty to cross the line with students concerning ethics. Also we will offer a skit on the first day of class or the first day teaching. Each of you can certainly add a suggestion or warning to this topic and we welcome your experiences with the first day teaching also. And then we will move to an exercise on performing investigative labs and how to develop and set up these labs for your teaching assistants. And we will address plagiarism and grading to follow up on last year's workshop.

University Honor Code Orientation

Abstract:: In the summer of 2006, the University of Notre Dame initiated a program under which all new undergraduates had to pass an online honor code orientation prior to finalizing their class registration. Students were presented with eight fictional cases and asked to choose among four responses indicating whether a violation of our honor code had occurred and why (or why not). Only one of the four responses was correct. To pass the orientation, students needed to get at least six of the eight correct responses. The impetus for this program came from our recognition that too many of our students were arriving on campus having given little or no thought either to the standards of honesty they should be upholding or to the way those standards are manifested in our honor code. A new pamphlet, The Student Guide to the Academic Code of Honor, which presents the information students most need to know concerning our honor code, is now distributed to all students. Students are instructed to attempt this orientation only after they have read the Student Guide. This orientation was designed so that students who had not looked at the Student Guide were unlikely to succeed. Hence, our hope is that the online orientation will ensure that our new students have both thought about issues related to academic integrity and familiarized themselves with the most significant particulars of our honor code.