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Russell Mickler, Principal Consultant, has over 17 years of professional experience leading and managing IT organizations.
Online Modality Ethics – Cheating… Or Not?
Written on October 1, 2006
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Opinion: The Guru Speaks…
ZDnet had two interesting articles concerning online education this last week. The first concerned electronic collaborating and delegating of assignments between cohort members, and the second concerned the use of online plagiarism scanners like Turn-it-In.
In response to the first problem of whether or not collaborating is cheating, I believe there’s a distinction between sharing information that can contribute to better understanding of a problem, and sharing an answer to a problem.
Today, the generation entering post-secondary education is used to using the Internet as a collaborating medium. They’re used to asynchronous work, immediate collaboration over voice and text, and they’re used to working under tight deadlines. So we can’t fault students for using the tools at their disposal to succeed in school and in business where immediate collaboration is all the rage.
However, there’s probably a question here for the student that arises when all of the information necessary to answer a question is just handed to them. The question for the student is an ethical one: does the student accept the answer knowing full well that they haven’t learned anything from attempting to answer it themselves?
Maybe it just comes down to what does the student want out of education. Yeah, maybe they just want the paper: they’ll go through the motions and turn in the assignments they’re required to turn in, and if they can complete the assignments faster by ripping it from a friend, so be it. Or, maybe, the student wants to engage the assignment to learn the material; they realize the exercise is critical to comprehention, just as physical exercise is critical to maintaining a healthy weight.
Thus, it boils down to how the student perceives the value of their education. I think it’d be naieve of school administrators and faculty to think they can patrol, or, stop online collaboration – that seems counter-intuitive for our era if not impossible. We should promote online collaboration to its fullest, but also emphasize the importance of working through problems in an age of information (answer) abundance and accessibility.
On the second point concerning Turn-it-In, it’s amazing that the article cites an investigation into the legality of automated means of correcting grammar, mechanics, and citation. I struggle to understand the crime or harm in using a tool – similar to a word processor’s spellcheck capability – to verify something the student should be doing anyway.
I’ve also seen responses from others under this topic that would accuse instructors of just being lazy. That’s a load of bull – as an instructor with a churn of 150 students every five weeks, any help I can get to return the papers on-time so that they’re constructive criticism for the next assignment is value-added, in my opinion.
Appropriate use of citation is simply a long-standing academic expectation. Those who’d characterize the use of automation as illegal in holding students accountable to such expectations is both inaccurate and disenginuous – it’s like saying to the cop on the road using a radio spedometer on your approaching car, “Hey dude, that was illegal using technology to catch me doing what I shouldn’t be doing.” And the cop would smile, write the ticket, and hand it to you anyway. Then, if you were to protest and suggest the cop was just being lazy – heck, why couldn’t they just use their eyes? – the patrol officer may just be inclined to have you step out of the vehicle.
I think there’s commonality on both of these issues. The point is there are expectations that students cannot avoid and as online collaboration and automation helps them respond to their assignments, so, too, can technology fairly be used to automate and expedite the grading of such assignments. Tit for tat. Yet again, even the question of using citation appropriately comes down to the student’s perception of the value of education: is there value in using appropriate citation method? Is there value in learning something on their own? If the answer’s ‘no’, I think the student has to ask: what is the value in my degree? I guarantee that future employers may ask themselves the same question when reviewing a resume.
R
Russell Mickler works a technology consultant in Battle Ground, WA, USA. With over thirteen years of experience, Mickler holds a CISSP, MCSE, a Masters Degree in Information Technology, and is pursuing his Doctorate at Walden University. His website can be found at www.micklerandassociates.com; he can be contacted at mickler@micklerandassociates.com.