Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
can equally easily get lost in cyberspace and waste lots of time, making one wonder
just how much time and effort is saved by locating information online.
Once online, students today “do a lot more searching and a lot less digging,”
comments an athletics educator. Greater breadth and less depth of information with
student research surfaces as the general consensus from our interviews. Students
can now more easily and independently “plumb the depths” of a particular subject.
But educator participants explain that with the greater breadth of material students
encounter on the Internet, they correspondingly require better “filtering” mecha-
nisms. As a physics educator recounts, it was more self-limiting when teachers
directed students to specific topics; today students need to learn how to find—and
process—information, a responsibility for which he/she is not sure that teachers
are adequately prepared to teach. The Internet now constitutes students' primary
research tool, largely replacing topics and visits to the library.
Although excited by the wealth of information available to their students online,
the educators we spoke with also caution against information overload. As one his-
tory educator puts it, research “used to be a hunt, now you're swimming in it.” A
visual arts teacher suggests students are cowed by how much they feel they should
know and that makes it more difficult for them to make and reflect upon connec-
tions.
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According to a theater educator, students also tend to assume information
online is correct unless they happen to encounter a contradictory point of view. In the
past, a publisher's profit depended in part on the credibility of its materials, and pub-
lications were vetted through an independent editor. Conversely, published voices
tended to reflect only a limited spectrum of voices. The Internet, on the other hand,
allows one to self-publish free from profit concerns or censorship. It can also eas-
ily bypass the standard third-party editorial oversight process. One English teacher
says that the main challenge facing students conducting research today is how to
determine what constitutes reliable information.
Plagiarism
. While students may use NDM to cheat in a variety of ways, we
focus here on the growing problem of plagiarism. Our educator participants tell
us that incidences of academic cheating have risen in recent years. Plagiarism has
been in the rise since the 1960s, with a sharp rise in the Internet age. In a 2006
report, 35% of high-school students report inappropriately borrowing text or other
information from the Internet; the percentage rises to 40% for undergraduate behav-
iors (Josephson, 2006). The current phenomenon of cheating is a “perfect storm”
of environmental pressures, shifting ethical norms, and the complications around
negotiating proper engagement with NDM-based information.
It is true that some students have always cheated but educators describe students
today as taking greater risks, adopting a dogged “get by at all costs” attitude, and
demonstrating a greater acceptance of those who do cheat. Researchers Stephens
and Nicholson (2008) propose four contemporary models of cheating: (1) unable
(students who try to complete assignments and fail), (2) under-interested (those not
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The significance of the ability to synthesize information is examined in detail in
Five Minds for
the Future
(Gardner, 2007).
