Combating Internet Ignorance

Daniel L. McCabe argues that "Many of them [high school students] are developing an attitude that anything on the Internet is public domain, and they're not seeing copying it as cheating." (Kellogg, 2002) Lathrop and Foss (2000) cite the example of “students with an assignment to create an original Web site often ‘borrow’ from a site they find attractive” and because they do not realize the rules will be guilty of unintentional plagiarism.

Students can also see identical information posted on a variety of seemingly credible web sites and mistakenly believe that such information can be lifted for their own papers.

References and Resources

Kellogg, Alex P. “Students Plagiarize Online Less Than Many Think, a New Study Finds.” The Chronicle of Higher Education 48.23 (2002): A44.

Lathrop, Ann and Kathleen Foss. Student Cheating and Plagiarism in the Internet Era. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 2000. p. 19.

Steven L. Berg, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English and History
Schoolcraft College, 18600 Haggerty
Livonia, MI 48152
734-462-4400
sberg@schoolcraft.edu

This page was last updated on 4 November 2007.