CUE Debates Ethics of UC Study Tool

Administrators and student representatives debated the practical and ethical implications of the Undergraduate Council’s proposed online study guide tool at the Committee on Undergraduate Education meeting yesterday afternoon.

The issue was raised in the context of a discussion about whether the College should consider implementing an academic honor code.

While some committee members thought implementing an honor code policy was an undeniably positive step, one student said an honor code might be more symbolic than effective.

The committee discussed an article about breaches of academic integrity at schools with and without honor codes, which showed that the symbolic agreements tended to have concrete effects.

Discussion moved to the UC’s proposed study guide tool, which UC President John F. Bowman ’11 pitched to the committee as a way to mitigate a perceived inequality.

“A significant percentage of Harvard students use study guides that they themselves did not author and so the question that myself and the UC is trying to solve is how to diminish the gap between those who have access to the study guides and those who don’t,” Bowman said after the meeting.

He also said that study guides are useful to students who engage in a lot of extracurricular activities and have time-pressed schedules.

This prompted a discussion of how classes are largely scheduled between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., which enables students to maximize extracurricular commitments.

Many committee members voiced concern that access to study guides could discourage investment in course reading or detract from a student’s growth in a course.

For example, some committee members said that while the tool could promote collaborative learning in the sciences, it could become a shortcut for learning in the humanities if students split up reading assignments and read one another’s notes.

Bowman said he was receptive to any faculty input, including the idea of streamlining the focus of the project to be more of an interactive wiki where students and faculty worked together to craft a learning tool.

“I feel like there are very useful guides out there that don’t necessarily compromise academic integrity that will if anything give students a better perspective on the course as a whole,” Bowman said after the meeting.

The committee also discussed “Crimson Commons,” a UC project that Chair of the UC Education Committee Joseph Kim ’12 said he hopes will become a student-run advising forum.

Committee members debated whether such a forum could start to compete with other advising systems that dispense similar information, an issue which Kim said he intended to address in future discourse related to the project.

—Staff writer Julie R. Barzilay can be reached at jbarzilay13@college.harvard.edu.