Homework Copycats Prosper on the Net
Henry Norr, Chronicle Staff Writer
``Wow,'' exclaimed John Schinnerer, a Berkeley-trained school psychologist,
after surveying a handful of homework-help sites. ``Knowing the level of cheating when I
was in school, I think it would be out of control today, with resources like these. How
would you ever catch anyone who was just copying and pasting answers?''
Schinnerer, who is now CEO of an online-testing startup, isn't the only educator
to react that way. Donald McCabe, a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey who is
considered one of the nation's leading experts on academic cheating, has recently begun to
explore the issue at the high school level, including uncredited copying from the Web, and
he is troubled by what his preliminary investigations have revealed.
``Most kids aren't clear about what constitutes acceptable use of online
materials,'' McCabe said, ``and not a lot of schools seem to be doing much to help them.
Kids who've grown up with the Web, even college-bound kids, have a tendency to think,
`Hey, it's on the Web, that means it's public knowledge -- no need to cite it (in
footnotes and bibliography).'
``And if you press them,'' he added, ``they say things like `It's so simple,
everybody does it, and you never get caught -- the teachers are clueless.' ''
A cursory survey of Bay Area educators suggests that McCabe may be right in
suggesting that most schools have yet to confront the academic-integrity issues raised, or
at least exacerbated, by the Internet.
Some of these issues don't require much thought: By any standards, a student who
downloads a term paper from one of the several Web sites that sells them, then submits it
as original work, is cheating. But the lines are fuzzier when it comes to getting
information and assistance from reputable Web sites, including those designed specifically
to help with homework. And it appears that few in the educational establishment have
pondered this problem. Calls to school officials in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Mateo
County, as well as the California Teachers Association and graduate schools of education
at Stanford and Berkeley turned up almost no one even aware of the homework-help sites'
existence.
That situation may change soon, though. Joe Becerra, director of educational
technology and media services for the San Mateo County Office of Education, said that the
plagiarism problem is on the agenda for a meeting of district technology coordinators
scheduled for next month.
``I can see this issue emerging,'' he said. ``Students now have access to
information they can just cut and paste into a paper, and it's not always easy for the
teacher to spot it.''
Over the long run, Becerra suggested, the ready availability of information
might encourage teachers to develop more-creative assignments, compelling students to
think about issues instead of just reporting facts.
A typical essay assignment today, he said, might be something like ``The
Assassination of John F. Kennedy and Its Impact,'' and that kind of material is easy to
find online. ``But suppose,'' he said, ``the assignment was to compare the impact on the
country of the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy -- that's a much more interesting
subject, and one the students probably aren't going to be able to do just by looking
things up at some homework site.''
Linda Lovelace, expanded learning coordinator for the San Francisco Unified
School District, said many of the elementary and middle- school students who use the
after- school drop-in computer labs she supervises use online resources when doing their
homework. The program has adopted some simple precautions to make sure that they do so
properly. In addition to regular teachers, the labs are staffed by college students and
interns who serve as tutors, and kids aren't allowed online unless there is at least 1
tutor for every 5 students.
Lovelace's rules also prohibit kids from copying material from the Web directly
to their homework, and close supervision from the tutors helps assure compliance. In
addition, the tutors are required to check and sign off on any homework the students
complete in the labs.
Carlos Colom, head of the computer science department at San Francisco's Mission
High School, said he thinks the situation isn't as bleak as some suggest. The computer
science course required of all ninth-graders includes sections on copyright law and
acceptable use, he said, and the San Francisco State students who serve as e-mail mentors
to about half his students, under a program called UC Links, are trained to be aware of
such issues.
``We're strict about prohibiting online chat,'' Colom said, citing safety
concerns, ``but we encourage our student to use online reference sites, both here and from
home, and a lot of them are doing so. We think it's important that they learn to use this
kind of material, and to reference it properly.''
Occasionally, he said, students use material from the Web in their papers
without proper references, but ``it doesn't seem malicious, and our teachers are pretty
savvy about spotting this kind of problem and making sure the students understand the
rules.''
©1999
San Francisco Chronicle
