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Go"Academic Dishonesty is out of control"
If you are serious about your education and want to learn, then Capella is a good school. If you are a loafer and want to cheat your way through the learning process by stealing other students work, then Capella is a GREAT school! The first thing you should discuss with the online school that you are interested in attending is: whether or not the discussion board where you submit your coursework is open to students who have not submitted their work. The ideal courseroom discussion board where you submit your coursework, blocks students from logging in and reading other students work if they have not submitted theirs i.e., the submission of their work would basically unlock the courseroom, but until they submitted thier work they would be locked out The learning process of an online school is greatly dependent on the students willingness to learn from other students with the additional input and direction from the instructor. So at some point it is necessary for students to have to read other students work. However, this should not be allowed until the student who wants to read other students work has submitted their own. Capella's coursework submission board is open to everyone in the course. The problem is, it has become seriously out of control how many students are copying the work of other students and submitting it as theirs. Due to student confidientiality it is difficult to say how many students have been caught, but my work has been stolen several times. I reported it and noticed the students had been allowed to complete the course. Basically there appears to be no consequences for this type of academic dishonesty. In a most recent incident where I reported my work being copied, I had also received several emails from other students in the course who noticed it and wanted me to know. Although I had already reported it, they shared with me their experiences of having their work stolen, and their disappointment in feeling like there were no reprocussions to students who were doing this. Not only should this not be happening, it should not be tolerated. For degree programs that especially involve professions for helping others; if a student does not have the integrity to honestly acquire the knowledge for the degree. What does that say about their ability to help others? Remember once you finish so many courses it will be a waste of money to try and transfer or to quit. So the key to making it at Capella is Cheating OR being TOLERANT of the cheating, reporting it does not change anything. The cheater gets to carry on as if nothing happened just so Capella can either: Keep the attendance rate up; or collect tuition. Academic honesty is the key to making this virtual format successful and if the school is not prepared to protect it students from dishonesty then what kinds of professionals are they turning out. Employers are already questioning the stability and credibility of online schools and the degrees. So if you consider that stealing another students work would be a lot more difficult in a campus classroom you are right. If you consider that no one could successfully complete a course by openly cheating in a campus classroom, you are right; that an on campus instructor woulkd scrutinize students work sufficiently to curtail cheating you are right! But if you are like me and need this online format, you too are not going to appreciate the school allowing the integrity of such a format to be ruined because of their inability to stop academic dishonesty. By the way I have made this suggestion several times to Capella and encouraged those students who wrote to me to do the same. What I received back was an email response that told me, in so many words that it needed to remain as it is for the sake of students, however, they were working on ways to encourage students not to cheat.
