Keep Your Eyes Off the Screen: Online Cheating and What Can We Do About It.

Introduction

Ever since teachers and students have been thrown together in universities, cheating and plagiarism have been persistent problems. The advent of the Internet and other online tools has greatly widened the scope of potential dishonesty. Electronic technology is making the task of protecting research integrity more complicated for both instructors and librarians. This article will identify how dishonest information can be gathered online, and it will also suggest ways that instructors and librarians can prevent research assignments from being compromised.

Electronic Tools for Deliberate Cheating

Acts of academic dishonesty can be committed with deliberate intent or be the unintentional results of inexperience and ignorance. For those who wish to deliberately deceive, the Internet provides some glaring examples of places which provide complete research and paper writing services. These online services are a newer guise for so called "paper mills" that have been around for years.(1) Students who visit these sites can select from an extensive catalog of term papers. Papers can be selected according to subject, and users can customize their selection to shoot for certain grades (of course, the A paper will cost more). A listing of some of the available sites includes:

?? A1 Termpaper <http://www.a1-termpaper.com>

?? Academic Term Papers <http://www.academictermpapers.com>

?? Collegiate Care <http://www.papers-online.com>

?? Evil House of Cheat <http://www.CheatHouse.com>

?? Genius Papers <http://www.geniuspapers.com>

?? Knowledge Reports <http://www.knowledge-reports.com>

?? Papers Inn <http://www.papersinn.com>

?? Paper Masters <http://www.papermasters.com>

?? Research Papers Online <http://www.ezwrite.com>

?? School Sucks <http://www.schoolsucks.com>

?? Superior Termpapers <http://www.superior-termpapers.com>

?? Term Papers 911 <http://www.termpapers911.com>

?? Term Papers & Tutoring Help Line <http://www.serv.com>

?? TermPapers-on-File <http://www.termpapers-on-file.com>

Proof of the frequent traffic on these sites can be seen in the links for mainstream advertising for anything from credit cards to spring break trip packages.

Online "paper mills" provide their clients with either pre-written papers or special research services which will design a paper for a user's specific need. Most of these sites will offer pre-written papers ranging from $5.00-$25.00 per page, and will offer customized packages for $10.00-$60.00 per page. One unique site, Kenneth A. Sahr's "School Sucks," claims to have thousands of papers available for students to download for free.(2) Many sites are up front about who they are and what they do, while others pretend to be offering purely educational services and often caution students about using their services for dishonest purposes. A site called "Paper Masters" offers its clients custom written reports to serve as models for their research projects, and it even has a legal resources link warning students about the dangers of plagiarism. Despite their warnings, the makers of these sites are gearing services toward the most desperate students who plan largely to reproduce word for word the work they receive.

Many cheaters are stealing papers that are put out on the Internet for legitimate educational purposes. The sources of these papers are classes and seminars conducted largely or partially online. Any generic Internet search on almost any topic of academic interest will call up home pages for classes in which students have submitted term papers. In many cases, these will be the better papers, displayed online to reward good work or to promote class discussion. For the computer savvy, all or parts of these papers can be taken and submitted as one's own work. In downloading a paper from one of these online classrooms, a cheater can steal the work from a person's hand and use it as he or she pleases.(3)

In the online world, an increasing amount of research is communicated by discussion lists or list-servs. This fact has not escaped the notice of desperate students looking for material to pass off as their own. Many online discussion groups require only a simple command or e-mail address to join. Once part of a list, a member can be privy to some very sophisticated strands of conversation. In a number of fields, it's not uncommon for original research to appear in an online discussion group before it comes out in print or any other format. It's not surprising to find that information exchanged over discussion lists or list-servs is vulnerable to being stolen, reshaped, and used for dishonest purposes.(4)

What really makes deliberate online cheating possible are the capabilities of word processing programs. Word processors allow information to be altered to fit the needs of the potential cheater. A paper can be bought from a "paper mill," downloaded to a disk, and opened up on a Microsoft Word or WordPerfect program in a matter of minutes. Once in such a program, the context of words can be changed, and whole parts can be re-written with the cheater's own words. Word processors are a key linking technology that can dress up dishonest information and complicate the problem of detection.(5)

Unintentional Cheating

A great deal of dishonest Internet information ends up on assignments due to sheer ignorance. Like most of the rest of us, students are dazzled by the speed and vastness of the Internet. It's not surprising to find that students often see the Internet as an information "free-for-air" with no rules governing how information is used. With information free for the taking, it's easy to see how facts, words, and ideas can innocently appear on assignments without proper credit to the source.

Many students are shocked to hear that the information they're getting on the Internet is owned by the people who "publish" it. Some students are also stunned to discover that the Internet is not an entity unto itself, and that the sites they're using are created by individuals who need to be acknowledged. The structure of the Internet must be seen as a culprit in creating much of this confusion. A great deal of electronic information lacks the tangible physical presence of print sources, and thus permanency and access are always open to question. In many cases, the inter-connectivity of the Internet creates directional problems for users. When navigating across different Internet sites, it's often difficult to see which links might be connected to a parent site or which ones might be able to stand alone. Many developers of Internet sites fail to credit themselves for their own work, and students have trouble determining who they should credit for authoring a particular site. With so much coming at them online, it's not entirely surprising to find students failing to give credit where credit is due.(6)

Preventing Online Cheating

The buying of papers and the sloppy citation of electronic resources represents a breakdown of the instruction and research process. Clearly new technologies demand that information ethics be given more scrutiny in the future. Instructors and librarians have the greatest interest in seeing that research is conducted ethically, and both have a role to play in helping to insure that online information is used responsibly.

What Instructors Can Do

Instructors have a very powerful role to play in preventing research projects from spiraling out of control. Perhaps the most important thing they can do is to encourage deliberation on the formation of good topics. This area is often an overlooked part of the research process. The decision that a student makes often determines if he or she will consider a dishonest shortcut. Last minute generic topics like "abortion" and "gun control" are a prescription for online "paper mills" to provide a ready-made answer. It's clear that topic formulation must be considered early in the research project, and it must also be carefully thought out by the student. From the beginning, the instructor needs to know what the students are researching and how the project might unfold.

Changing the mix of possible assignments is another way instructors might decrease the chances of their students cheating. Large individualized open-ended projects are often invitations for students to use dishonest methods. Researching a topic in groups often requires students to solve a problem on their own. The group dynamics of this situation works against the cheater since the whole group would have to agree to a cheating scheme. Assigning frequent smaller papers that have a large critical evaluation component makes cheating more difficult by forcing the potential cheater to focus on making a mental judgement instead of assembling a group of factual sources. By moving away from traditional term papers and experimenting with alternative assignments, instructors can keep students honest by keeping them guessing.(7)

Whatever an instructor decides in terms of topics and assignments, it's important to take a pro-active role from topic formulation to the final product. Too often papers are assigned, and nothing more is heard until the paper is turned in for a final grade. Meeting with students to check on their progress is a good way to reinforce to students the instructor's interest in the assignment. The periodic review of sources keeps research on the level and lets students know what's acceptable for the final product. By taking a pro-active role, an instructor can make it clear that the research project is an important part of the instructional component of the course.(8)

What Librarians Can Do

Librarians need to take every opportunity to warn instructors and students about online cheating. Librarians can reach the largest audiences through the traditional bibliographic instruction process. In this setting, instructors can be made aware of how research can be bought and sold over the Internet. The location of dishonest sites can be demonstrated, and the dangers of using them exposed to an audience of students. By taking the time to talk about cheating, students can be made aware that their instructors might be looking closely at their final products.

Librarians also need to stress the importance of citing electronic sources. Electronic information demands the same kinds of considerations as sources in other formats. Bibliographic standards for Internet sources have been developed for the most common usage and style manuals. Finding these standards can be tricky, because many of the latest print style manuals (e.g., APA, MLA, and Turabian) don't reflect the great changes in the organization of electronic information. Most of the new standards can be found on the Internet, and librarians need to know how to make them available to students who are compiling bibliographies. Clearly, an emphasis on citing electronic information is a way librarians can advocate for the intellectual ownership of items taken from the Internet.(9)

In their efforts to combat online cheating, librarians must be prepared to encourage a balanced approach to research. Many students end up cheating because their expectations for the Internet are too high. In many cases, the Internet is neither the first nor the best place to go for information. Reva Basch, in talking about online research, identifies four common misconceptions about the Internet:

1. It's all on the Internet.

2. It's all free.

3. "Plug it into your computer and pull it out."

4. It's all there for the taking.(10)

Needless to say, research poses more challenges and questions than this popular formula would suggest. A world of information is not even accessible on the Internet, and much of it could have importance to a potential research project. Much useful material that's historical, specialized, and abstract has not yet made it to the Internet, and probably won't in the foreseeable future. Librarians need to be aware of their total collections so they can encourage the completeness and depth that makes research worthwhile.(11)

Perhaps the best way librarians can reduce cheating is to become aggressive advocates for information literacy. The pace of technological change makes it more apparent that information literacy needs to become a key part of a university's core curriculum.(12) Students who can state what they need, find what they need, and judge the quality of what they receive are less likely to be cheaters. Daily contact with the Interact, research questions, and search strategies put librarians in a unique position to bring information literacy to students. To be good advocates for information literacy, librarians will have to go beyond the standard "one shot" bibliographic instruction session and move toward a critical thinking approach that has its focus on the student.(13)

Conclusion

It's clear that online cheating is an important problem in the classroom today. New technologies are allowing students to both intentionally and unintentionally turn out highly plagiarized research projects. Due to the old antagonisms between students and instructors, perhaps it's too optimistic to think this problem can be entirely eliminated. By knowing the online tools for cheating, and by using creative approaches to research, it's not unreasonable to expect that this problem can be seriously reduced.

References and Notes

(1.) Stebelman, Scott. "Cybercheating: Dishonesty Goes Digital." American Libraries 29 (September 1998): 48-50.

(2.) Stebelman, 48.

(3.) Stebelman, 49.

(4.) Stebelman, 49.

(5.) Stebelman, 49.

(6.) Gresham, Keith. "Preventing Plagiarism of the Internet: Teaching Library Researchers How and Why to Cite Electronic Sources." Colorado Libraries 22 (Summer 1996): 48-50.

(7.) "Plagiarism Goes High Tech." The School Librarian's Workshop 16 (June 1996): 3.

(8.) Gresham, 50.

(9.) Gresham, 49.

(10.) Basch, Reva. Researching Online for Dummies. Foster City CA: IDG Books Worldwide, 1998.

(11.) Basch, 2.

(12.) Sonntag, Gabriela and Donna M. Ohr. "The Development of a Lower-Division, General Education, Course-Integrated Information Literacy Program." College & Research Libraries 57 (July 1996):331-338.

(13.) Snavely, Loanne and Natasha Cooper. "Competing Agendas in Higher Education: Finding a Place for Information Literacy." Reference & User Services Quarterly 37 (Fall 1997):53-62.

Joseph Straw, University of Akron, OH

Joseph Straw is Assistant Professor of Bibliography <[e-mail]>