Module Introduction

This module provides all the tools for practicing decision making in the area of academic integrity. Four cases, Treasures from Troy, The Free Rider?, A Different Kind of Recycling, and Teachers Fight Back, raise issues common in academic integrity and invite you to make and justify decisions in this area. Following each scenario is a list of possible solutions. Your job is to evaluate each solution and then rank it in terms of the ethics and feasibility tests that are listed at the bottom of the page. On the page that follows each scenario, you will find a "Solution Evaluation Matrix." Here each solution is repeated in rows that intersect with columns headed by the ethics and feasibility tests. Complete the table with the results of your evaluation of the alternatives using the ethics and feasibility tests. For each alternative you will reach an overall, global decision that seeks to capture its sum total of ethical and feasibility characteristics. On the basis of this table, you should be able to reach and justify a solution to the problem raised in the scenario.

The tests provide you with tools to evaluate and rank solution alternatives. They also deliver the means of justifying your decision to others. The best solution is the one that comes closest to integrating the ethics and feasibility tests without trading any of them off. In this way, making decisions with implications for academic integrity resembles designing in business or engineering. In design problems, you seek to integrate and balance client specifications over background constraints. In solving ethical problems, your goal is to integrate the ethical specifications (the ethics tests) and then integrate them over background constraints such as time, cost, competing individual and organizational interests, and so forth.

EAC Toolkit Metaknowledge