Editorial: Cheating on homework begins in the classroom

In the early years, learning a subject in college meant running a pencil over a piece of… In the early years, learning a subject in college meant running a pencil over a piece of paper and letting the magic flow. Only two entities mattered — the astute student’s intuition and the piece of paper to be handed in to the professor. The pencil was only a tool to faciliate this natural flow.

Computer technology is arguably the greatest tool of all in today’s age. And students are keen to incorporate it in their own flow of information, sometimes on tests, but also on homework.

Of course, unapproved use of technology or assistance on a test is cheating. That is not an issue of argument. The real ambiguity arises in homework — that set of problems grounded in fundamental concepts or that essay prompt requiring writing structure similar to the next test — all completed in the comfort and privacy of one’s home.

Each professor has a different policy regarding students copying homework. Sometimes the professor just ignores it, but other times he cares a little more.

This kind of cheating has been assessed in technical classes, which require lists of mathematical problems to be done online. Dr. David Pritchard, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, set up a detection system on his assigned homework to look for abnormal behavior patterns, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The system looked for answers submitted within a minute of viewing the question and marked them as cheating for statistics’ sake. In Pritchard’s view, it is impossible to read the problem and type in the answer, let alone work it out, within a minute. With this standard, Dr. Pritchard found that 50 percent more students cheated than they let be revealed in anonymous surveys, over a period of two years. Along with copying homework, these labeled cheaters also performed two letter grades lower on tests than their classmates.

This is no surprise. Students who didn’t put in the effort did poorly, and that is their own choice.

But what is more expected than corollary exam performance is the original sin — cheating on homework. It is no secret on a school campus that online resources which can help with assignments are abundant in quantity and quality. For example, websites like Cramster.com quite literally provide worked out solutions to problems for a great number of popular college textbooks. Quick information exchanges via texting and social networking websites make a troubling physics problem a simple stroke of the keys.

Part of a college education is learning how to be resourceful, and students are doing just that. Searching the web is as equal a response as opening the textbook for assistance on homework. It would be naive to expect students to simply ignore the wealth to be had. This is how the Internet is used, and it has become a substantial part of life. What is more important is to understand why students copy homework.

Sometimes it is a time issue. There are deadlines for homework assignments, and it is not rare for someone to have forgotten them, so they look for a quick fix. Other times, students just see the homework as busy work. They see it as a simple churning of numbers.

But the greatest reason is probably classroom structure. One professor lectures three hundred students on the theory of electromagnetism while they shuffle about, quietly participating in a unilateral conversation. Some will resort to their phones, as the lecture is not inviting, but to no fault of the material being taught.

If lectures were set up to promote classroom discussion, regardless of the number of participants, students would feel more confident and prepared to tackle their homework. The consulting normally done between students and the web will already have been done under the guidance of the professor.

A second factor in classroom structure is the electronic nature of the homework. It is impersonal, and no one is looking in the textbook to read the work behind the answers. The online system simply feeds your grades into the grade book, and no one asks another question about it. When classes become technological in nature, it is not unexpected for students to reciprocate with a technological answer — that is, depending on technology to answer.

The line between if a technique constitutes cheating or not on homework is a very fine one, depending on the individual professor. Standardizing a punishment system, if desired, will only treat the symptoms. First, an institution should understand the complex to best evaluate how to approach it, and the resulting solution should address cause, not effect.