If all the world's a stage and we think of each assignment, each task, each project, and each new challenge as a performance, we would forge a world of greater honesty.
I think of academic honesty in broad terms: maintaining an attitude of honest respect for the work we do, for those with whom we work, and toward the discipline in which we do our work. If we carry this attitude of respect, we will almost guarantee success in any project. I offer theatre as a paradigm to prove my point of view toward academic honesty.
Working in the theatre, we presume honesty as a given in every aspect of producing a play. We expect every member of a production to make deadlines, meet commitments, and offer honest feedback to the process. Since we create a performance that is different from any other performance of that play, and since most often we have never seen the play performed, we rely our on own responses to the play itself to inform us as we stage our interpretation. "Experience guided by intelligence and informed by imagination" is my mantra during a show. And these qualities by their very nature demand honesty of the participants. We learn from experience and it enriches us. We bring our unique intelligence to bear in everything we work on during the show. Our imagination is unique to each of us, and it serves as a great and useful source of inspiration during the performance. With this rich blend of our personal qualities involved in the entire production, we strive for excellence. I can count on one hand the times I have observed, for example, an actor who is not trying to do a good job on stage. Even in cases where I do not like the performance, or where I do not like the actor, I still can see an honest effort at work. 999 times out of 1,000 an actor will try his honest best onstage. If nothing else gets an actor honest, usually the ego will prevail: even if the performer doesn't care about the play, the other players, or the theatre in general, suddenly being in front of an audience can humble him [or at least scare him]. The terror of being out there on stage can make an actor aware of his responsibility to the production if nothing else prior to opening night has rattled an honest bone in his body.
Cheating on a performance is quite difficult - if not impossible. When an actor enters, he must know his lines, he must know where to go and what to do. If the actor has not prepared, his dishonesty will become apparent immediately. A number of checks [pseudo exams?] help the actor in his work. He must have a familiarity with the script which comes from reading to decide if he wants to be in the play, reading to prepare for auditions, from work in rehearsals, from memorization of the lines he must say, and from working with the director and the other actors. If the actor has not had an honest respect for the play, the cast, and crew he works with, as well as toward the entire theatre event, he will immediately reveal this to the audience. The audience will not like him. He will suffer. That's where we got the term the "actor's nightmare." In this bad dream, an actor arrives at the theatre to find himself in a play he doesn't know, in a role he has not learned, with people he does not know. The result is a horror show. The "actor's nightmare" keeps an actor honest.
I think there might be another version of this night time terror: "the student's nightmare."
Students will know what to do in an academic situation if they ever experience the nightmare.
An actor cannot "copy" another performance. Sure, all of us might aspire to the greatness of Olivier but who of us could present his work as our own? Here, again, the ego clicks in: an actor trying to emulate Olivier's Hamlet might ultimately decide he could, in fact, do better than Olivier - and why not try?
As in acting, in all the other areas of production original work comes with the territory. Stage settings are original, as are posters, fliers, tickets, props, costumes, lighting, audio, and virtual reality [plugging our own work-shamelessly]. A stage manager who supervises the show must have a detailed and original performance plan; a master carpenter must engineer how the set goes onto the stage and create solutions when problems arise; and every other person on the show constantly solves problems and creates unique solutions which strengthen the entire performance. Many students at WPI decide to do project work, particularly the Sufficiency, in performance. Their projects are usually creative, inspired, intelligent and imaginative. Their work is always their own: they have no choice but to be in the honest moment when their work goes before the public. When the show opens and the audience appreciates the work and signals approval with applause, all those involved have pride in their work. They own the work, they have created it, it has been appreciated. They honestly tried to do their best. The results were acknowledged and, honest to goodness, the applause felt wonderful.
All projects can function successfully when perceived as a performance: the IQP, the MQP, and the Sufficiency all contain the same elements which I have described in this paper. And every honest effort will be appreciated.
A theatre performance gives everyone an equal chance at originality and excellence. So I suggest that theatre can expand our understanding of academic honesty: think performance!