Week 7 Task

Record

The truthfulness of ones record keeping could be brought into question if those records were manipulated to appear correct. A degree of bias may influence ones method of record keeping resulting in a more prejudicial and inaccurate record. Whilst record keeping, having motive and personal perspective towards the event or subject being recorded will ultimately affect the truthfulness of the records. This is because these records are generated to favour the recorders personal point of view/attitude/beliefs rather than the reality of the situation. For example, in ARCH 1392, each student is required to complete a blog entry on a particular word/subject every week. A student knows that at towards the end of the semester, their entire blog will be assessed and marked. Therefore, the student may decide to skip a couple of weekly blog entries and complete them later on closer towards the end of semester. In doing so, they could alter the posted date of their blog entries to make them appear as if they were done on the recommended due dates during the semester. In this scenario, the student has changed the truthfulness of his/her records to favour his/her situation. Therefore, records must be objective and done without bias or prejudice to ensure truth and accuracy is fully captured.

A contrasting example to the aforementioned one can be found on ARCH1392’s main course blog. Russell’s post for the “Week 5 Task” was originally posted stating that before next Wednesday for independent study, “All students will write a blog entry on the theme of "Record". Azize collaborated with Russell by posting a comment questioning why the theme was Record when the course outline webpage clearly states or records that next weeks theme is actually on Knowledge. Russell replied saying “Hi Azize, sorry, typo on my behalf. Thanks for picking it up, you'll see it's corrected now. There's a statement about the authenticity of records in the digital age. Cheers”[1]. Russell quickly edited his blog post to correct the typo.

In the first example, the student changed the dates of his/her blog entries so they appeared to have been done on the correct due dates which is evidently wrong. In contrast, Russell has changed the recorded information in his blog entry in order for it to appear correctly which is proper so that students would not be misled. In conclusion, records can always be changed but there needs to be unbiased and objective reasoning to support its alteration. Otherwise, the truthfulness and authenticity of records is tainted.


References

1.https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3769770311096582435&postID=1980949205780373460 Accessed: May 4, 2008
http://arch1392-2008.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-04-22T00%3A59%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=7 Accessed: May 4, 2008