Sub-Badge 4: Ethical, Legal, and Political Implications of Design

Challenge: Comply with organizational and professional codes of ethics.

Criteria for successful completion of this challenge: Evidence of following a professional code of ethics.  Reflection must address: How following a code of ethics affects your decision-making process in instructional design or other aspects of your work.

Examples: Completed plagiarism certificate, signed LDT honor code, signed workplace code of ethics, other (design, performance, workplace, or educational) code of ethics.  

Reflection

This competency is very important because it involves the ethical, legal, and political implications of design, and it asks that one knows and follows a code of ethics. The artifact I am using is the Plagiarism Certificate I earned when I joined the Purdue MSEd LDT program, which was from an online test from Indiana University. This artifact is important in establishing my competency in following a code of ethics with regard to identifying and avoiding plagiarism. Plagiarism is an ethical violation of academic honesty standards at all institutions of learning, and this certificate helps validate that I do, in fact, know how to identify and avoid plagiarism.

In the majority of my professional life, I have taught university-level English courses, and I have had countless lessons and discussions about avoiding plagiarism. It is a topic that is well known to me and to everyone else who teaches, no matter the grade level. In instructional design, it is even more important because as designers, we must be very aware of what we are creating and making sure full attribution is given, and permission is requested, anytime we are including elements written by or created by others. In some cases, without proper permission to use something, we will not be able to use it at all, even with full attribution, so knowing this is an important component of ethical instructional design. The artifact demonstrates the competency because I had to take a test that required me to fully understand and identify plagiarism scenarios. I successfully completed this and earned the certificate. My extensive background in this area helps bolster my competency in this topics associated with plagiarism and will always keep me on the right side of fair use.

In my time directing a university writing center, I taught workshops on avoiding plagiarism, and I trained my staff to identify and ethically assist students if any plagiarism was present. I have caught a lot of plagiarism, both from just reading on my own and noticing use of outside knowledge without attribution, or using software like Turnitin.com, to process students’ work. All of this experience helped me to pass this certification from Indiana University. I would say I am an expert in plagiarism detection and remediation.

In all institutions of learning or business, there are codes of ethics. Most organizations further outline expectations for not cheating or lying, which is essentially what plagiarism is. Plagiarism is academic dishonesty. This competency asks us to acknowledge that there is a code of professional ethics to be followed, and to follow it, and I have done so not only throughout my career, but also in my work as an instructional designer. In the MSEd LDT program, I have a written literature that properly attributed all sources used using APA Style, and in discussion board posts and infographics, I have also followed APA style to ensure all sources were fully documented in the text and on the References page. As an instructional designer, it is my responsibility to distinguish between my original ideas, designs, and other creations, and those of others. Because of my background in English and being committed to upholding academic integrity across my career teaching, I will continue expressing this competency in all that I do in instructional design. As I move into my career in ID, I anticipate learning from veterans in the field and being able to emulate their professional best practices when it comes to integrating source documentation across my designs.