“A ship in harbor is safe -- but that is not what ships are built for.” (Shedd, 1928)
I was recently in a computer lab with my grade 12 English class when I came across two girls, clearly off topic, madly googling in tandem. Before I directed them back to their assigned task I paused; curious what they were looking for. I scanned over their query for ‘Meaningful Images’. Without turning her eyes from the screen, one girl plainly said, “We’re like, looking for like, a really meaningful image… for the tattoo I’m gonna get tonight."
I was flabbergasted! Who hadn’t shown these girls how to use effective search terms? In all seriousness, these two young ladies were not unintelligent. I believe they were, simply put, ‘lost at sea’.
Don't believe that the Internet is “an information super highway” (Gore 1991); that term is far too simple, and too linear, and too 1991. The Internet it is a vast ocean of ideas too wide for anyone to swim unaided. Strong currents in art, science, and history are continually flushing with undercurrents of taboo topics, and countless conduits dumping unfiltered opinions and toxic levels of spam. While society agrees that a child should be protected from these often murky, on-line waters for their lack of discernment, should it be a surprise to anyone that our students are resorting to plagiarism because they are unable to navigate the sea of information?
Now I should state that I’m not trying to present plagiarists as victims. I simply sympathize for anyone who has been placed in a boat, handed an oar, and told, “Go find a place you’ve never been before without a map”. This is in essence, what often occurs with our students and online research. Without proper preparation, it should be no surprise that many students end up floating aimlessly and desperately dipping into the pool of ideas, calling it a ‘personal discovery’ (an actual term once used by a student I caught plagiarizing).
In the digital age plagiarism almost seems an unsinkable foe, surfacing too often. In our places of learning plagiarism is becoming common, even predictable. New software aims to bust the rule-breakers, but should we be happy to pay a hi-tech crew to round up our pirates? Obviously, this software is not an end-all solution. It only attempts to scare those contemplating plagiarism and catch the offenders, and clearly punishing criminals has not eradicated crime from our society. So, how do we sink cheating? We don’t. We steer our students from it.
Academic integrity is a set of conventions, but cannot be maintained as an old code for the university bound as it was in the past, because the map and scale of our intellectual sphere is ever-changing. These days through the Internet, a six year old can access almost an equal amount of information as post-doc academics. But are we training these children for proper Internet use? Or are children getting lost?
Technology is simply the building of better boats, and there are plenty of fancy new boats out there. Academic integrity is simply a boater’s license. Around where I live, you need that little piece of paper to take out the simplest of watercraft, because it could be deadly to allow a person on the water without adequate knowledge and skills. Consider again the two young women in my grade 12 class in their search for “meaningful images”. Would you take a seat in their boat?
References
Gore Jr., A. (1991, January 1). Information superhighways: the next information
revolution. The Futurist, 25, 21-23.
Shedd, John A. (1928). Salt From My Attic. Portland, ME: The Mosher Press.
