Most teachers wouldn't be surprised to hear that students have bribed friends or siblings to do their homework in exchange for a few bucks.
What might surprise them is that Google Answers sometimes takes school kids up on the offer.
Staffed by a cadre of 500-plus freelance researchers, the service takes people's questions -- for example, a calculus problem or a term paper topic -- and provides answers and links to information. Google charges a listing fee of 50 cents and, if someone comes up with a satisfactory response, the user pays that researcher a previously entered bid (minimum: $2).
Although Google Answers has a policy encouraging students to use the service as a study aid rather than a substitution for original work, several cases show that students often ignore this advice.
One student in Quebec, dismayed by a response that offered only background research for a paper on religion, pleads, "Make it into an essay, not just links and quotes. I need this asap PLEASE!!! 2500 words is the minimum."
While researchers are scrupulous enough not to churn out a completed term paper -- despite the Quebec student's $55 bid -- other potential homework questions, such as math or science problems, can be harder to identify. In some cases researchers acknowledge that a question looks like homework -- but they still provide the answer.
The dilemma faced by Google Answers researchers highlights a broader issue that vexes many educators around the country. Namely, where do you draw the line between appropriate and inappropriate uses of the Internet and how do you stamp out clear abuses such as cutting and pasting entire paragraphs into an essay?
The question first entered many educators' consciousness following a Kansas cheating scandal earlier in the year that made national headlines. At Piper High School, near Kansas City, a biology teacher failed 28 of 118 students for plagiarism on an assignment that consisted of collecting and gathering information about local leaves.
However, many students (and their parents) contended that there was nothing improper about the leaf descriptions they submitted, which had been lifted straight from the Internet. Others claimed it was unclear where proper citation was required.
Tamara Ballou, who is helping implement an honor code at her Falls Church, Virginia, high school, said that it is not uncommon for teachers and students to disagree on what constitutes academic dishonesty.
"We took a long time to define cheating," she said, noting that many kids felt it was acceptable to copy homework from each other or off the Internet if the assignment was perceived as "busy work."
"A lot of kids don't even know what (plagiarism) is," agreed Kevin Huelsman. "They say, 'Yeah, I did the work; I brought it over (from the Internet).'"
Huelsman, an administrator for the Collier County, Florida, school district, is involved in revising the district's code of conduct to better define plagiarism and emphasize teaching proper citation. The hope is that an initial cheating incident could be "more of a teaching tool than a 'gotcha'."
He said the new code will specifically address electronic forms of research.
As for the more egregious cases of Internet plagiarism -- those in which students can have no doubt they are breaking the rules -- many teachers say that as the Internet giveth, so the Internet taketh away.
Ballou noted that the Internet allows teachers to confirm suspected cases of plagiarism, whereas in the past they might have been reluctant to punish students based only on a strong hunch.
In addition to sites like Turnitin, which analyze papers for likely plagiarism, Ballou said she can usually enter key phrases from an essay into a search engine to find the source from which they were copied.
"Teachers are seeing more plagiarism partly because there is more, but partly because we can find it now," Ballou continued. "It's amazing what you can find on Google."
