NationStates Jolt Archive

This was just posted to the Judicial Affairs listserv at my university, and I was curious about responses from NSG. I expressed in a reply my own feelings about the difference between posting homework to a forum (e.g. General) looking to reap the benefits of others' insights, on the one hand, and discovering questions in class that prompt a genuine need to reach out to a broader community for discussion... in which case I think the insights gained in such discussion need not be considered cheating, provided that a student can articulate effectively said ideas when challenged. But then, this has really always been my standard for cheating: if you know what you're talking about, then errors in citation are exactly that--errors to be corrected, a pedagogical opportunity to discuss plagiarism; if, on the other hand, you don't know shit but your paper is great, you probably ripped off someone else's ideas.

But what do you think?

In “The Digital Child,” Thomas G. Layton writes, “The ‘digital child’ is the [individual] who came into existence and has lived his or her whole life in a digital world … [S/he] has never known a time when computers were not an ordinary part of day-to-day life, or a time when constant change in the world was not the norm, or a time when it was difficult to access information or to communicate with other human beings with little regard to their actual geographical location.



“Digital children do not learn in isolation. They might work alone, but they learn in groups, and some group members may live in other countries … Working out an answer and sharing it with your digital classmate is no longer considered cheating. Cheating is keeping the answer to yourself. Learning is collaborative and social, not solitary and competitive.”



What do you think of Layton’s assessment? Have you experienced a conflict between traditional notions of academic integrity and the digital culture? How can instructors and students reap the benefits of collaborative learning while maintaining academic integrity?

I had four students write essays on the same topic -- and each of them had, word for word, passages copied from Sparknotes in them.

Yeah, it's cheating.

Yet you can now copy and paste any students essay and see exactly where they got it from with ease. Children have cheated at homework throughout history.

I've recently been part of conducting a huge study on the digital child, it's fascinating and it will change our world for the better.

I might put one aspect up later, but you'll need a Mac and Keynote to read it.

I had four students write essays on the same topic -- and each of them had, word for word, passages copied from Sparknotes in them.

Yeah, it's cheating.

I'm writing as a current college student studying engineering. I'm at home, which is a surprise for a weeknight. Usually I'm over at our lounge (welcome! Come on in! We have two foosball tables, table tennis, our own computer lab, a quiet study room, two refrigerators, tables and chairs to study at, and couches to crash on. All kept safe behind a swipe-card access door.) doing homework with my classmates. Engineering has always been a group exercise. We are encouraged to do our homework together. If we're not together in body, we're all online working together. Professors know and encourage this. This leads to us specializing. (Me? I'm really good at heat transfer and flew through transport phenomena. I'm also a grammar freak, making me good to have in your group for lab reports.)

Then they test us individually. :rolleyes:

But it forces us to learn the material, so I suppose it works.

Not sharing answers is now cheating? What a bunch of crap. I learned, and continue to learn, mostly on my own. Group work sucks- there is always the lazy fucker who doesn't do his share of the work.

I had four students write essays on the same topic -- and each of them had, word for word, passages copied from Sparknotes in them.

Yeah, it's cheating.

Sparknotes from what?

Sparknotes from what?

Google is your friend. That crap was around when I was in high school... scary thought.

I had four students write essays on the same topic — and each of them had, word for word, passages copied from Sparknotes in them.
But there’s obviously a massive difference between discussion to ‘think out’ an idea and blatant plagiarism.

But there’s obviously a massive difference between discussion to ‘think out’ an idea and blatant plagiarism.Right, which is precisely my point.

The big question for me is, as an instructor, how do you tell the difference? Personally I think you identify cheating in the "digital age" in much the same way you always identified cheating: given a suspicious paper, 1) check available resources to confirm/disconfirm cheating (e.g. Turnitin); 2) if still suspicious but lacking proof, challenge the student and ask probing questions to identify what they understand and where they learned it.

My experience is that honest students a) produce a reasonable degree of insight when challenged, commensurate with the written work produced; and/or b) admit to their sources immediately, unaware that borrowing ideas from (say) an online forum "counts" as cheating. In such cases, I am usually willing to give them the benefit of the doubt with the proviso that they learn from their mistakes and I do not catch them doing it again.

Students guilty of plagiarism a) cannot adequately explain their work; and/or b) refuse to explain where they obtained outside insights unlikely to arise in undergraduate education. "I don't know, I just thought of it" usually doesn't convince me if it does not accord with a student's in-class performance. Hence, this is a matter for deeper investigation... whether or not sufficient evidence for disciplinary action can be obtained is a different issue.

There's a fine line between collaboration, which is a good learning method, and cheating. One involves interplay between the students, a give and take were students discover the answer(s) together or develop the project together...

And one is just a disguised version of, 'Hey! What's the answer to number 2?'

I encourage the first and stomp on the second.

I fail to see how becoming part of a collective hive mind (but with free will!) is bad; these kids are cheating, they're learning from experiences other have had.

these kids are cheating, they're learning from experiences other have had.

How is learning from others' experiences cheating?

Students guilty of plagiarism a) cannot adequately explain their work; and/or b) refuse to explain where they obtained outside insights unlikely to arise in undergraduate education. “I don’t know, I just thought of it” usually doesn’t convince me if it does not accord with a student’s in-class performance. Hence, this is a matter for deeper investigation... whether or not sufficient evidence for disciplinary action can be obtained is a different issue.
I think that pretty much sums it up. My university runs with a very similar policy.

Interestingly, my Philosophy department also adds a moral argument into the mix: “ultimately you’d be cheating yourself, letting down the staff and your classmates, and failing to live up to the life of philosophically rigorous enquiry that the department is trying to instil in its students”.

I think that pretty much sums it up. My university runs with a very similar policy.If only. The problem here is that this quasi-liberal claptrap was submitted to the listserv by the very people supposed to be running the place. :rolleyes:

If only. The problem here is that this quasi-liberal claptrap was submitted to the listserv by the very people supposed to be running the place. :rolleyes:

Amm...can you explain that?

Are you saying collaboration and release of information is bad?

The only relevance of the "digital age" would be the enhanced ease of communication and access to information that accompanies it... which probably has minimal relevance for what constitutes cheating for papers, but might, more broadly, imply a need to reconsider certain aspects of education.

In a world where anyone with access to the Internet can fairly easily find a wealth of information on most topics, the worthiness of making students keep careful track of specific facts is at best an open question. Better, I think, to see what students can do with the access they have to facts: analysis is the hardest and most important part anyway. (This is already done, of course. It should be done more.)

In that context, it makes perfect sense to reconsider old rules regarding "cheating": there is no reason to penalize anyone for bringing her notes to the exam, because in any practical context the information would be available. What matters is teaching her how to use it.

The only relevance of the "digital age" would be the enhanced ease of communication and access to information that accompanies it... which probably has minimal relevance for what constitutes cheating for essays, but might, more broadly, imply a need to reconsider certain aspects of education.

In a world where anyone with access to the Internet can fairly easily find a wealth of information on most topics, the worthiness of making students keep careful track of specific facts is at best an open question. Better, I think, to see what students can do with the access they have to facts: analysis is the hardest and most important part anyway. (This is already done, of course. It should be done more.)

In that context, it makes perfect sense to reconsider old rules regarding "cheating": there is no reason to penalize anyone for bringing her notes to the exam, because in any practical context the information would be available. What matters is teaching her how to use it.

I wholeheartedly agree. The rote memorization of facts does not teach students the methods of inquiry that lead to true knowledge, and quite often rob them of precisely this ability. The dynamics of information flow have greatly changed, for the better, I think.

If time that is now devoted to teaching students, from kindergarten to college, how to memorize facts that they may never need to use again were instead spent on teaching them the skills to both research facts in a digital environment and also the critical thinking skills to truly understand what the little quanta of data mean, then I think the liberating possibilities could be tremendous. Rather than the old authoritarian system where teachers commanded students in a system more akin to the Prussian military then a truly academic environment, we could consider an alternative in which the teacher is the guide to knowledge.

I think that perhaps a paradigm shift in our societal educational values is in order.

Amm...can you explain that?

Are you saying collaboration and release of information is bad?No, I'm saying that the blanket notion that "sharing answers" is NOT cheating while withholding answers IS cheating is... yes, bad.

Collaboration good. Sharing of information, in principle, good.

But simply obtaining information does not constitute learning if understanding also happens to be a goal.

In that context, it makes perfect sense to reconsider old rules regarding "cheating": there is no reason to penalize anyone for bringing her notes to the exam, because in any practical context the information would be available. What matters is teaching her how to use it.I agree to a certain extent, but there remain many contexts in which it will be much more useful and the processing of information will be more efficient and effective when students are encouraged to develop the ability to recall information at will.

Yes, much of the time we have the luxury of checking our facts. In most cases it's not even much of a luxury anymore. But the best analysis, in my experience, inevitably comes from students who actually know what they're talking about, through and through. There is no good reason to give up on that.

There's a difference between collaboration and everyone sapping off of the people who actually know the material to get better grades; the latter is cheating, but people working together to get a solution when all of them have an understanding of the material is not. If I feel the latter is the case, you can be pretty damn sure I'm going to withhold my own work until someone else demonstrates that they understand the material and are working with me, not off of me.

However, I don't think collaboration is always a good thing; if a given assignment is entirely manageable by one person, it's usually nothing more than a waste of time to work in a group on it due to the sheer amount of redundancy that occurs. Larger assignments, where each person can focus on a given part and then collaborate to ensure that the entire assignment forms a cohesive and correct package, are perfect for it.

I agree to a certain extent, but there remain many contexts in which it will be much more useful and the processing of information will be more efficient and effective when students are encouraged to develop the ability to recall information at will.

Furthermore, the process of learning something until you can do it with your eyes shut often, in an interested student, results in the student understanding the work, as opposed to just parroting the method.

If anyone ever asked me to help them on something, either in person or on a forum, I would never just give an answer. I would give them questions to think about to help them get started themselves or methods that I might use to solve it. Someone using my advice would not be cheating.

Cheating is someone being wilfully lazy and ignorant. I wouldn't generally answer someone on a forum that asks for specific help with a problem, they just want you to do it for them. I'd gladly contribute to a discussion that the person has started based around a piece of work, either that they didn't quite understand at first or interested them still afterwards, but that is not specifically answering their assignment.

The internet is great for learning, teaching how to search for and analyse information, denying students the right to use it would be silly and unenforcible. I'd always encourage them to use it to further their understanding, but in the end, they must be the one writing the essay and internet-academics are not citable.

Furthermore, the process of learning something until you can do it with your eyes shut often, in an interested student, results in the student understanding the work, as opposed to just parroting the method.

It's actually the other way round. We remember things better when we understand them than if we just learn them by rote (semantic processing versus rote learning, it's one of the more common found findings in memory research).

It's why personally I support the use of essay or possible short answer based assessments over multiple choice (with a few exceptions), because it becomes as much about the understanding of the topic as the memorisation of facts.

But the best analysis, in my experience, inevitably comes from students who actually know what they're talking about, through and through. There is no good reason to give up on that.

That is true; it was not my intention to downplay the importance of knowledge. But analysis remains the context in which this is best judged. There is no reason to penalize anyone who understands the concepts but is unsure about a few specific details over one who unnecessarily expends time and energy memorizing every last piece of information. Those who lack the knowledge requisite of understanding will not be able to obscure that simply by having the information in front of them.

Furthermore, "training" students by getting them to memorize facts can be counterproductive to this end. It encourages rote learning at the expense of understanding... meaning that in times where application or analysis is necessary, students do poorly.

Furthermore, the process of learning something until you can do it with your eyes shut often, in an interested student, results in the student understanding the work, as opposed to just parroting the method.

Surely that is dependent on how you learn to do it with your eyes shut? If you work on memorizing a process long enough, you might be able to do it quite easily while at the same time lacking any understanding of it.

My math teacher in high school said it's okay to ask other people for answers as long as we understand (or better yet, ask the person we're getting answers from to explain how is it done). Especially math -- it's hard to tell if a student had been copying or not... and in a hard subject like math...