The Thin Line Between Cheating And Research

from the there-is-a-line dept

Yet another article about students using the internet to cheat. This one points out that since the launch of Google Answers students are posting homework questions to the "experts" there. Some students feel, though, that this isn't cheating, since they're doing "work" to get the correct answers. Even more to the point, many feel that since these are "busywork" homework assignments, it really doesn't matter if they're just copying the answers, since figuring it out on their own wouldn't actually teach them anything. Of course, this second article makes a good suggestion for ways teachers can avoid this problem: assign better homework assignments. Instead of just saying "write about this book", ask the students to compare two books, or to explain what they would do in a certain situation in the book. In other words, set up a question that doesn't require regurgitation, but actually makes them think. This is probably better for their education, and makes it much more difficult to cheat.