I’m currently on a committee that’s investigating whether to switch to an honor code system for academic honesty issues, and possibly social violations as well. This is about as much fun as it sounds like.
For those not up on the internal practices of academia, schools with honor codes require students to sign a pledge promising to behave in accordance with community standards, and are expected to hold to that on their own honor. This is a popular system among snooty private colleges– Williams has an academic honor code, which is part of why I was tapped for this committee– and a few larger universities, most notably the University of Virginia.
It’s an interesting system. Exams at Williams were frequently unproctored– on one memorable occasion, the professor came in, handed out the papers, and left for the day, leaving us to take the test in a room without a clock. In upper-level classes, most of the final exams I took were either 24-hour take-home exams or “self-scheduled” exams where you picked the test up at the Dean’s office at any time of your choosing, and had three hours to complete it.
Out of a combination of idle curiosity and due dilligence, I’d be interested to hear opinions from my readers on the subject of honor codes. I’d be particularly interested in hearing anything you have to say about honor codes that failed.
(The reason for the negative bias is that we have a wealth of information about successful codes, provided by the Center for Academic Integrity, which is basically an honor code advocacy group. As such, they’re very cagey about schools who tried to implement honor codes and failed, or schools that had honor codes and abandoned them.
(I don’t know that the readership of this blog will have all that much relevant experience to offer, but at least I wouldn’t exepct a strong bias one way or the other…)