The Ethics of “Double Dipping”

Inside Higher Ed posted a story yesterday on a session at the annual meeting of the Association of the Study of Higher Education that explored the ethics of “double dipping,” which is described as faculty “using the same scholarly material in multiple formats and settings.”  For instance, some would consider presenting the same talk at two different conferences unethical.

I found it interesting that Marybeth Gasman and Kristen Renn, the presenters of the session, used clickers to poll the audience, asking for their opinions on the ethics of various actions.  For example,

Is it ethical to submit a proposal to present the same paper to the annual meetings of both ASHE and the American Educational Research Association , which follows the higher education scholarly meeting by a few months? Yes, if the proposal is rejected by ASHE first, said 14 respondents. Yes, even if ASHE accepts it, said two. No under any circumstances, said three others.

This is a great example of the use of clickers to ask opinion questions.  In this public setting where the audience members (faculty members and educational researchers in this case) don’t know each other well and where the topic of the session is a controversial one, asking for a show of hands just might not do the trick.  The anonymity provided by the clickers helps encourage honest answers, and the results of the clicker questions displayed on-screen provide data to fuel the group discussion.