by Bruce Friend
I suspect that your e-mail inbox is like mine: news stories with catchy titles show up every day, and in a split second you make a decision to read the article or move on. Today this headline grabbed my attention: “Is the digital age to blame for student plagiarism?”
No one debates the importance of teaching students (young and old) to credit the work of others, whether it be from the Internet, a scholarly journal, or a musty tome from the library stacks. However, to blame the “the digital age” for plagiarism is to ignore the past and to sentimentalize human nature.
Though too young to recall such details myself, elderly colleagues have assured me that unattributed “borrowings” in papers on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness predate the computer age. Desperation, dishonesty, laziness, or ignorance—the real causes of plagiarism—are as old as moveable type.
Over the years, I’ve given hundreds of presentations on the benefits of online learning. Inevitably, someone asks, “But won’t kids cheat?” After a year of trying to come up with the perfect answer, I now say, “Yes, they will. And please raise your hand if cheating does not exist in your school.” My aim is not to be flippant, but simply to make the point that technology did not create cheating and plagiarism.
As educators, we’re responsible for teaching students how to conduct themselves when referring to the ideas of others. Technology poses new challenges: students have access to far more material than they have in the past. But that’s a positive, not a negative. Surely the answer is not to deprive students of the material, but to teach them how to use it.
Of course, technology can also help educators better identify when students are being less than honest in their work. As an online teacher and administrator of online schools, I’ve found that access to data (such as time of student submissions) and the ability to cross-check work from one student to the other allowed me to be more proactive in identifying cheating than would have been the case in the mists of our pre-digital past. Software programs that compare student work against content on the Internet are also a valuable tool.
Let’s not blame technology and the digital age for plagiarism.
Now if we could only get parents to stop doing their children’s science projects.
If you have questions about the use of online learning and what options may be available to you, feel free to email me at: bruce.friend@sas.com
Bruce Friend is the Director of SAS® Curriculum Pathways®, an award-winning education resource that provides online lessons, engaging tools and activities at no cost to U.S. educators. Bruce has spent the past decade working in the field of online learning. He is a national pioneer in helping to establish the country’s first statewide online program and has been the chief administrator of two state virtual schools.
In 2003 he was honored with the “Most Outstanding Achievement in Distance Education” award by the US Distance Learning Association. Prior to joining SAS, Bruce was the Vice President of the International Association for K12 Online Learning; a non-profit organization that provides support to students, parents, and online learning programs.
I suspect that your e-mail inbox is like mine: news stories with catchy titles show up every day, and in a split second you make a decision to read the article or move on. Today this headline grabbed my attention: “Is the digital age to blame for student plagiarism?”
No one debates the importance of teaching students (young and old) to credit the work of others, whether it be from the Internet, a scholarly journal, or a musty tome from the library stacks. However, to blame the “the digital age” for plagiarism is to ignore the past and to sentimentalize human nature.
Though too young to recall such details myself, elderly colleagues have assured me that unattributed “borrowings” in papers on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness predate the computer age. Desperation, dishonesty, laziness, or ignorance—the real causes of plagiarism—are as old as moveable type.
Over the years, I’ve given hundreds of presentations on the benefits of online learning. Inevitably, someone asks, “But won’t kids cheat?” After a year of trying to come up with the perfect answer, I now say, “Yes, they will. And please raise your hand if cheating does not exist in your school.” My aim is not to be flippant, but simply to make the point that technology did not create cheating and plagiarism.
As educators, we’re responsible for teaching students how to conduct themselves when referring to the ideas of others. Technology poses new challenges: students have access to far more material than they have in the past. But that’s a positive, not a negative. Surely the answer is not to deprive students of the material, but to teach them how to use it.
Of course, technology can also help educators better identify when students are being less than honest in their work. As an online teacher and administrator of online schools, I’ve found that access to data (such as time of student submissions) and the ability to cross-check work from one student to the other allowed me to be more proactive in identifying cheating than would have been the case in the mists of our pre-digital past. Software programs that compare student work against content on the Internet are also a valuable tool.
Let’s not blame technology and the digital age for plagiarism.
Now if we could only get parents to stop doing their children’s science projects.
If you have questions about the use of online learning and what options may be available to you, feel free to email me at: bruce.friend@sas.com
Bruce Friend is the Director of SAS® Curriculum Pathways®, an award-winning education resource that provides online lessons, engaging tools and activities at no cost to U.S. educators. Bruce has spent the past decade working in the field of online learning. He is a national pioneer in helping to establish the country’s first statewide online program and has been the chief administrator of two state virtual schools.
In 2003 he was honored with the “Most Outstanding Achievement in Distance Education” award by the US Distance Learning Association. Prior to joining SAS, Bruce was the Vice President of the International Association for K12 Online Learning; a non-profit organization that provides support to students, parents, and online learning programs.
