by Jennifer Carey
It’s an open secret in the education community. As we go about integrating technology into our schools, we are increasing the risk and potential for plagiarism in our tradition-minded classrooms.
In fact, a recent PEW research study found that while educators find technology beneficial in teaching writing skills, they feel it has also led to a direct increase in rates of plagiarism and infringement of intellectual property rights. In my recent article about using Google Drive as a system for students to write and submit work, many of the readers who commented expressed their concern that students would use such a tool to “peek” at their peers’ work and perhaps use it for “inspiration.”
These concerns lead us to an interesting discussion about collaboration and plagiarism in the classroom. It is true that tools such as blogging, social media, Google Drive, and DropBox (among others) allow for faster and easier communication and collaboration – skill sets that many educators and business leaders have identified as valuable and important today. But when does collaboration cross the line into plagiarism, out in the digital frontier of education?
In the balance, does plagiarism make these tools more problematic than they are useful?
An interesting dilemma
We want students to do “group work,” to collaborate, and to discuss. However, we have very specific realms in which we want this to happen: the group assignment, the in-class discussion, studying for exams, etc. At the same time, many of us want to put up barriers and halt any collaboration at other times (during assessments, for example). When collaboration takes place during assessment, we deem it plagiarism or cheating, and technology is often identified as the instrument that tempts students into such behavior.
This leads me to a broader and more provocative question. Should we ever stymie collaboration among our students? We live in a collaborative world. It is rare in a job, let alone life, that individuals work in complete isolation – with lack of assistance or contributions from anyone else. Perhaps as educators, it’s time to reassess how we want students to work.
Instead of fighting a losing battle (as my grandmother would put it – “You can’t nail jello to a wall!”) by trying to ban any type of interaction with students online, what if we incorporated collaboration into our lessons and our assessments?
Transforming “cheating” into collaboration?
While I certainly do not want my students copying and pasting somebody else’s content, at the same time I think that it’s engaging and fruitful for them to be able to discuss assignments and enlist assistance from their peers across the board. For example, my students are currently working on a research essay. They have individual topics that they have chosen. I’m perfectly fine with them sharing their work with their peers and looking for feedback, input, or guidance. This is not cheating, rather it is collaboration. It should be open and above board – transparent – but this is exactly how they should grow as learners.
Using tools such as Google Drive, students can more easily collaborate across distances and with conflicting schedules. Better yet for me as their teacher, I can actually view their collaborative efforts using the “revision history” function of Google Drive (Go to File → See Revision History). This allows me to see who contributed what and when. This way, I can track not only quality, but quantity. (See my post on Google Docs and research.)
We have all heard students complain that a member of the group has “contributed nothing.” Now there is a method to verify and follow up this complaint. While student A may have contributed fewer comments or changes, those contributions may have been especially meaningful and balanced. Likewise, if student B has never logged into the system, the teacher knows this well before the project is complete and can follow up and discuss with that student the necessities of participation.
But what about the test?
Outside of project work or written papers, we still have the formal quiz and test assessment. Many of us are required to do testing in our classes (in the form of mid-terms or finals). This does not mean that the anti-collaboration walls must go up.
Now, we ask students not to discuss test questions or we guard them in the fear that those questions will leak out via cellphone snapshots — or that a student might Google the answer! Perhaps it’s time to reassess how we write our exams. If you can Google the answer, how good is the question?
Do we want students to simply memorize and regurgitate information? Is this the type of learning that we value in the 21st century? Or do we want them to think, assess, reason, and verbalize (vocally or in written form) their processes and ideas? I would argue that the latter is better not only in assessment but in overall skills.
My students may produce an entirely wrong answer, but if how they got there was through logic, reasonable assumption, educated guessing (not just plain old “guessing”) – and they were effective in communicating that process – then there is evidence of learning that I can take into account. I’m not left to figure out what they DID know from a T/F or multi-choice “wrong” answer.
Perhaps instead of focusing our concerns on technology as a wonderful aid to plagiarizers, we should focus on its ability to foster creativity and collaboration, and then ask ourselves (we are the clever adults here) how we can incorporate those elements into our formalized assessments.
There will always be corner-cutters
Unfortunately, yes, there will always be those students who want to cut corners, find the easy way, and cheat to get out of having to do the hard work. (See my post on combating plagiarism.) But a significant majority of students are inherently inquisitive: they want to learn and do better by engaging and thinking, not memorizing and fact checking. It’s up to us to appeal to that inquisitiveness.
The reality is that rote memorization is largely becoming obsolete and not a reflection of the needs we have in our citizens or our workforce. Instead, we need to get busy fostering creative and developmental skills that will allow them to achieve through their skills as collaborators and creative makers and shapers of information and ideas.
This is the power of the new technologies that are populating the digital frontier of education.
Jennifer Carey
Latest posts by Jennifer Carey (see all)
- How to Get Hesitant Teachers to Use Educational Technology - August 7, 2019
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- How to Infuse Digital Literacy Throughout the Curriculum - March 26, 2014
Your article makes us think. The ideas you give us are so important and all teachers from kindergarten through grad school need to consider them. It takes multiple exposure to these types of ideas to even begin to understand them. Thanks for furthering these important concepts.
Traditional reliance on tests, quizzes and other similar instruments don’ t do much to prepare kids for the collaborative world as Jen suggests. I think that teachers are often too quick to assign blame to technology for any issues they are not comfortable with rather than reflect on their own practice.
To be fair to teachers, we live in an environment of high stakes testing: common core, state tests, SATs, APs, etc. These assessments push our own. Perhaps the whole system needs to examine how we look at assessment.
Teachers, of all people, should understand the process of seeking out inspiration from others. As a teacher, I am constantly looking on the internet for ideas that I can take and tweek my own way. Why are there teachers who think that students who do the same thing are cheating? I understand, as you say, that there are always those kids who try to cut corners, but as teachers, one of jobs is to teach the difference between using someone else’s work as inspiration and simply stealing it.
Thanks Angie for your thoughts. I think that the world we live in now, with technology, has caused such a radical shift so quickly in education. Many of us are teaching classes that look nothing like the ones we once took. It’s foreign land.
A very interesting article…. However, what I would state is that all these devices we are using are effectively replacing our need to memorise, which your article points out is old fashioned learning anyway. The problem is that psychological research has shown personal memory (and not device memory) aids, enhances and enriches the current experience received in any new situation. This is particularly the case with long term memory. The constant communication is placing more and more in short term memory and not providing the ability for it to be transitioned to long term memory.
As a result, if we take away the need for memorisation and replace it with collaboration / communication we are enhancing the short term memory and making long term memory obsolete. As a result:
1) are we really going to enhance the learning experience, the wonder of learning if long term memory is fading?
2) are we really going to be enhancing and enriching effective collaboration / communication if long term memory is fading?
I would say no… cause the experience cannot be personally enriched.
An interesting argument and I would love to see the research you are citing! I suppose the converse side is that with information so readily available, perhaps the focus should not be on having a vast repository of knowledge, but rather a higher skill rate of applying information and using it critically. So in a sense, it’s not in what you know, but how you can apply information in a sophisticated way.
For example, Harvard economists Frank Levy and Richard Murname have been arguing for years that the future workforce (in order to truly innovative and not replaceable by machines) must move away from rote memorization but rather in creative application of knowledge. In other words, employers no longer care “what” you know, they care about how you apply broader understanding and make connections.
And I’m certainly not saying that rote memorization doesn’t have it’s place. When I studied Latin and Greek I had to memorize vocabulary and verb conjugation construction. However, higher levels of linguistic understanding move well beyond that.
*its place. I hate it when auto-correct messes up my contractions!
In short, all our great IT tools that I also use, are affecting our ability to transition our experiences (short term memories) into long term memory (memorization). However, long term memory enhances current learning experience but short term does not for an individual as it is absent from the mind at the next learning experience.
So if memorization (long term) is out whilst collaboration / communication / project learning (short term) is in, this can not enhance the OVERALL learning experience.
Additionally, people seem to forget that it is INDIVIDUALS that make up the group that collaborates. It is INDIVIDUALS that actually learn, that will make the greatest contribution to a collaborative group. Thereby learning for a community will always progress faster when every INDIVIDUAL is required to learn, but then has the ability to speedily communicate and disseminate his / her learning.
INDIVIDUAL learning must take place and must be demonstrated:
1) while concurrently memorisation (long term memory) has be shown to enhance and enrich an individuals learning experience.
2) as groups rely upon individual contribution. The more the individual has learned and the richer their experiences (point 1) the better their contribution to the group.
Ahhh, okay. I see what you are saying. Thank you for clarifying.
Totally agree
In other words, employers no longer care “what” you know, they care about how you apply broader understanding and make connections.
Basically what I am saying though is to be best at the above I don’t think you just need experience in the application of knowledge and connection but you need to possess the experience / memory yourself as this will enrich that ability to apply understanding and make connection.
This is all related work…..
How Technology is Warping Your Mind
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/11/technology-changes-memory_n_4414778.html?ref=topbar#slide=2935543
Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips
ScienceExpress July 2011, 1 – 4. Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu, Daniel M. Wegner,
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wegner/pdfs/science.1207745.full.pdf
When Two is Too Many: Collaborative Encoding Impairs Memory
Memory & Cognition, Year 2010, Vol 38 (3), 255-264. Sarah J. Barber, Suparna Rajaram, and Arthur Aron
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~barbersa/2010_Barber_Rajaram_%26_Aron.pdf
The Effects of Cooperative Learning and Feedback on e-learning in Statistics
Learning and Instruction 19(2):158 – 170 (2009). Ulrike-Marie Krausea, Robin Starka, Heinz Mandlb.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959475208000376
Dr Gary Small and expert on the brain and alzhemier’s
http://www.drgarysmall.com/
Long-term working memory and interrupting messages in human – computer interaction
BEHAVIOUR & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2004, VOL. 23, NO. 1, 53-64
http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~oantti/pubs/oulasvirta04longterm.pdf
American Academy of Paediatrics
http://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/Pages/Media-and-Children.aspx?nfstatus=401&nftoken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&nfstatusdescription=ERROR%3a+No+local+token
The Internet has Become the External Hard Drive for our Memories
Scientific American. By Daniel M. Wegner and Adrian F. Ward
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-internet-has-become-the-external-hard-drive-for-our-memories
Slate
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/09/are_search_engines_and_the_internet_hurting_human_memory.2.html
Is Google making us stupid?
Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education [0077-5762] carr, nicholas yr:2008 vol:107 iss:2 pg:89 -94
Is Google making us stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains.
The Atlantic Monthly [1072-7825] Carr, Nicholas yr:2008 vol:302 iss:1 pg:56 -63
How Stupid Is Google Making Us?
Online [0146-5422] Badke, William yr:2010 vol:34 iss:6 pg:51 -53
Wired Magazine
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/ff_nicholas_carr/
I recently came across the idea of testing as diagnostic (as everyone does in health matters – how am I what do I need to get better) vs testing as comparative (what education seems to get stuck on – B+ etc.). If we truly want learning to continue progressing we need to implement more diagnostic forms of assessment which would absolutely allow for collaboration to occur. In this manner, students can then get feedback from peers and teachers as they progress together and help each other improve throughout the process rather than just a grade at the end.
Great thoughts Steve! I would love to see how that type of plan would work out in practice. Part of the inhibition, of course, is that we’re such a grade driven culture. A radical shift can often be uncomfortable. I was just listening to a great NPR Education podcast that highlighted a new grading system that assessed individual skills at elementary level instead of giving letter grades. So in reading, for example, if you could read with teacher assistance you get a 2 if you can do it alone a 4, a 3 is for limited assistance, etc. It highlights skill based learning instead of just an average for the overall subject.
Great post! As we create learning environments that welcome collaboration we also need to rethink assessment. We should be asking the types of questions to which we don’t know the answers thus enabling the students to demonstrate their mastery of what they have learned as they attempt to answer these questions. Another benefit is that the answers to there types of questions are not so easily found and coped from the Internet. If we establish a culture where it is okay to collaborate it could be okay to collaborate on an answer so long as credit is provided to collaborators accordingly. While collaboration is terrific a good deal of the time, time should also be provided for working alone. That is also an important skill, think of the importance of personal reflection on ones learning, such as blogging. Lastly, while memorization is terribly over valued in education today, there is a time for it. For example, when I go into surgery I want my surgeon to have certain things memorized. Balanced, student centered, passion based, just in time (rather than just in case) learning is the key.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts Larry. You are right that balance is key in learning and assessment.
Jennifer, your article identifies the constant dilemma for teachers who focus on improving learning , education if you like. Schools are very good at sorting sifting and excluding through testing and grading in preparation to qualify for scarce places in higher education institutions.
That PISA results do not include the number of coaching hours associated with each country placing. Shanghai 27h a week!, Australia 8h US 4h..indicates how seriously credentials are to regular learners…
In both the US (and Australia) the best predictor of student success is parents level of schooling and zip code. Teaching methods and class sizes(below25) do not appear to correlate with student achievements at higher secondary levels.
In elementary however, dramatic improvements have been regularly witnessed by a collaborative approach. ACER DERN( meta data research http://www.DERN.edu.au)
So..which is better?…
for student improvement , collaboration, clearly.
For test scores…ie. winners, then create some losers.
There is emerging evidence about ‘ the math gene’…those that get it and those that don’t.
The correlation withparents similar attitudes appears to be learned behaviour, rather than inherited by genes.
Brain plasticity approaches, with mindfulness suggest habits formed can improve problem solving ability through practice and repetition, perseverance…success is generated through effort.
Reward for effort is a clear determinant in student behaviours.
Source: Australian Council for Educational Research ACER DERN list.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and the data.
Students should always take great care to distinguish their own ideas and knowledge from information derived from sources.
http://essayhelpcollege.blogspot.com
this is latest trend of education that emerge rapidly and student take interest in this type of education that replace traditional system of learning. now days all assessment done though online assessment system that give result quickly
Thanks for the great read. Our company is passionate about facilitating better collaboration in the classroom and we’re now following you on Twitter. We also invite you to check out our blog edcompass.smarttech.com to read our perspective on the subject. Thanks! -Sam
I think there is a fine line between collaboration and cheating — I do not think some of my students know or understand the difference. Also, as an old teacher on her way to retirement — collaboration denigrates the individual or at least could. I suppose I am at heart a non-collaborationist. I am egotistical enough to want to know that I DID THAT JOB!!! Not me and two or three others. I would feel like I was part of a socialistic borg. And by the way — why do we as educators bow down and kiss the feet of corporate America. I have never agreed to the business model in education. Too much like cogs in a wheel. I’m glad I am on my way out.
Jennifer,
I enjoyed reading your blog and agree with many of your points, especially that students learn much more from collaborative assessments and assignments. One idea I struggle with, however, is that society has not completely caught up with this idea: SAT’s, GRE”s, Law and Med School Exams, and general college and university life is largely standardized test based.
I wouldn’t want to change my collaborative online class with my students in St. Louis (I teach them from Jerusalem twice a week using Webex) but I like to think I”m preparing them for the future, when in many cases, I’m not. What are your thoughts?
Good points Smadar. The SAT and AP is consistently changing and evolving. You are right that it isn’t collaborative, but they are becoming more explorative. Most graduate programs are project based and while intro courses in college may rote memorization, higher level courses require sophisticated research and collaborative elements.