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CHEATING CAN KILL GUIDE
Susan H. Crawford, Chavez High School

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Students need to be actively involved in learning. The cliché, “You can lead a horse to water, but cannot make it drink,” is only too true when teaching high school students. My goal is to make my students want to drink once I’ve led them to the watering hole while combining Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills with small learning community- and project-based learning theory. The unit begins with advanced health science technology students reviewing medical legalities, ethics, and the scientific method. They will then be divided into groups and travel back in time to research human rights violations in historical research studies. Creating their own PowerPoint presentation, each group will present its study. We will then leap forward to investigate alleged violations currently occurring in medical studies and discuss the causes and consequences of these violations. At this time, “student” is their profession and, as a class, we will discuss the most common ethical violation, cheating. Following scientific methodology and using Surveymonkey.com, the class will create a survey and seek permission for its administration. The resulting data will refute or support our hypothesis, leading to an Internet search for other high schools’ methods to deter cheating. Finally, the class will compose an honor code and follow appropriate steps to seek its adoption by our high school.