On this week’s episode of Spark, Nora talks with Scott Jaschik, the editor of Inside Higher Ed, an education news website. Recently, Scott came across a website that sells students corrupted files. The idea is, if you’re running out of time to finished your homework assignment, instead of handing in a half-finished paper, you send the prof the corrupted file. According to the site, “It will take your professor several hours if not days to notice your file is “unfortunately” corrupted. Use the time this website just bought you wisely and finish that paper!!!”
Is this cheating? Scott joined Nora for a discussion about the site and from there they had a great yap about academic integrity in the digital age.
An edited version of this interview will air on the June 24 & 27 episode of Spark, but you can hear the full version below, or download it.
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Corrupted-files.com did not respond to our emails, but Scott did receive a reply, which he writes about in his story.
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June 24th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
In most universities, the course outline document handed out at the beginning of the term is considered a contract between the instructor and the student. In my department, most instructors include a statement similar to, "Computer-related excuses will not be accepted."
In other words, get your work done with enough lead time so that even printer problems, hard drive crashes, or your roommate peeing on your laptop will not affect your ability to hand in work by deadline. Certainly, sending a corrupted file would not be accepted by me as an excuse.
However, many instructors will negotiate reasonable extensions with students who act in a grown-up manner and ask.
Is this (Corrupted-Files.com) cheating? Not perhaps in the traditional sense. Does it perpetuate the idea that instructors' expectations are unreasonable and that students are almost honour-bound to exert far too much energy and creative thinking into getting around those expectations? Yes.
And so did Scott Jaschik, in my opinion, by saying that instructors need to listen to students and not 'judge' them for cheating. We listen. But we have a duty to the institution, to the discipline, and to those students who actually do the work, in the time alloted, and accept that a less-than-adequate effort may result in a less-than-superior grade.
June 25th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
I'm curious, Sharon: Do your students have a clear understanding and acceptance of the rules around plagiarism? Anecdotally, I sometimes hear that (as I alluded to in the interview) our cut and paste culture is making people less aware of the idea of proper citation and original work. (Not to mention that it can be easier to plagiarize inadvertently…see Chris Anderson's apology:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/0...
June 25th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
It is hard to talk about 'students' in broad terms – they come from such varied backgrounds (not to even bring up the topic of students from other cultures with very different understandings of research and citing sources).
But there are very few students in my experience who HAVEN'T been told to 'give credit where credit is due'.
If we are talking about the details and minutiae of one method of citation/documentation over another (MLS, APA and assorted other acronyms), many students get them wrong, and most instructors grant some leeway, at least in the first two years. That being said, there is little excuse for not even attempting to do it.
However, there certainly is a huge shift coming – when so much of what we do for fun, for profit, and even for scholarship, is collaborative and co-produced (think graphic novels, videos, anime, tv and movies, and then look at the burgeoning fandom creations exploding on youtube and fanfiction sites), it can be hard to explain why it is not okay to 'mashup' your academic paper in the same way you created that fanvid last night.
Perhaps instructors need to appeal not to the old ethical standard (it's wrong because it's a form of intellectual theft, it's lazy, and it will get you kicked out of school – at least theoretically), but to a new one: "This author didn't agree to let you use his or her words without giving them a shoutout."
This is not a topic that is going to go away, for sure – I suspect it will simply become more and more complicated, especially when so many institutions are reluctant to follow their own policies and enforce their own penalties.
For more on the Anderson 'apology' (insert sneer here for mendacity of pretending it is hard to attribute on-line sources) see http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/...
(see how I attributed that information?)
I could go on about this for days and days… (my students would tell you I did, too!)
Sharon
June 26th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
At the school where I went (Valparaiso University), we have a "Honor Code" that was established in the early 1950s and is the educational philosophy we use to this day.
"I have neither given, nor received, nor have I tolerated others use of unauthorized aid."
This was the statement I signed on every homework assignment, every test, every project, every exam, and even the application form to enter the university.
To me, the idea of sending corrupted files is considered a violation of the Honor Code. Even if it is not considered cheating, it is considered very unethical.
When I was at that school (in the mid 1980s), we were given ample time to complete our assignments. Yes, we had printer malfunctions and other hardware problems then, and e-mail was internal only, and was internal to users of the Data General MV-8000 mainframe system, where access was through text-mode terminals and PC systems running DG-terminal emulators under MS-DOS.
As for how violations are handled, there is only one way we do it on campus.
We have an honor council that hears cases on a confidential basis. First time violators fail the effected course. Second time violators get a year suspension from campus, and third time violators are expelled from campus.
This applies to any kind of plagarism that happens on campus, and also shows how seriously we take this issue.
The bottom line here is that there is no substitute for putting in a wholehearted effort into assignments and other work.