This course has been very eye-opening in terms of ethical lessons. I believe that the two most important message that I received was about deception and plagiarism. The movie that we watched at the beginning of the semester, Shattered Glass, was very interesting in terms of deception. I never realized how one person could so easily deceive so many other people while being successful in the world of journalism. He got caught up in the lie, and made his life out to be even more of a lie. One thing that stuck with me the most was how despite all of his deceptions to readers and to his friends, his greatest deception was to himself. He convinced himself of this persona that he created. He started to believe that persona, started to become that persona, and in turn became a completely different journalist. After watching that movie, I learned that just one lie will lead me down a path that I don’t ever want to go down.
This class has furthered my education about plagiarism. As a media studies major, I have to deal with sourcing on a daily basis in my class assignments. Plagiarism is an ethical issue that I hope to never participate in. I believe that the most important way to attack plagiarism is through education. The more people learn about how to source, the negative effects of plagiarism, and the importance of sourcing properly will contribute to the battle against plagiarism.
I will have to deal with both deception and plagiarism, in addition to the other ethical lessons that I learned in COMM 409, throughout my career. After graduating this semester, I plan on pursuing a master’s degree in elementary special education. By being true to my students and using the lessons I have learned at Penn State, I hope to be even more of a successful teacher. One thing that I really want to incorporate in my lesson plans is the topic of plagiarism. By learning these things, young students will be taught early about making ethical decisions that will impact their entire future. Sometimes this early teaching is the most important and most effective way of learning.
Overall, this course was really informative and interesting. For future classes, I would definitely suggest keeping with the blog format of writing assignments. I really enjoyed answering the questions that were asked of us in this format. In addition to letting other students read my work, I felt that there was almost some “silent support” from other students because I was able to read examples of other student’s work. This helped me make sure that I was answering the questions properly.