“Copying from the internet is not cheating.”

With the prevalence of computers and internet access, it is becoming increasingly simple for students to acquire information from each other and from sources on the internet. Students also seem to value a high mark over knowledge gained.

Educators are aware of the possibility that assignments will be copied or shared. However, is seems almost impossible to keep up with the new and innovative ways that students discover to avoid actually doing assigned work!

It is reasonable for students to discuss and share solutions to homework problems. This does not reduce their motivation as they know that they will have to write a test on the content and they will be evaluated on the test results. I try to devise assignments where each student gets a different problem or a bank of problems and each student is randomly assigned two or three of the problems. When this is not possible, I try to give the assignments during class time individually.

When there are larger assignments, it is difficult to avoid the possibility of cheating. A Data Management teacher at my school recently determined that several of her students were submitting power point presentations that they had not created but found or been given.

From the website, http://middlehighschool.suite101.com/blogs.cfm#electronic_cheating,
a recent article by Kellie Hayden, states that cheating using electronics is starting in middle school. She said that recently in a rural middle school, a teacher caught three different students copying during a one week period. One copied another’s homework during class, one used another student’s identification number and took an on-line quiz for that student. The third copied and pasted information for an essay directly from an online book.

An article by Stacey Conradson & Pedro Hernández-Ramos, http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=9&n=9, states that statistics show that cheating is on the rise amongst students and it is starting as early as elementary school. The article states that websites that sell essays are amongst the most popular on the internet. Cheaters.com received 80 to 100 new members daily in the late 1990’s.

As teachers, the challenge is to educate students – sharing information on a regular basis is fine but work that is submitted for evaluation needs to be created by the individual. Also, we need to help students learn to value the acquisition of knowledge and skills. In time, this will result in higher grades. Conversely, cheating that results in higher marks in the short term, will eventually result in lower grades. This is because the prerequisite skills have not been learned.

An article by Rob Taylor, http://www.schoolfinder.com/news/plagiari.asp, supports my idea. He says that students need to realize that, in the long run, they are hurting themselves.