The Web is changing the ethics of education

10/19/99

By Doug Bedell / The Dallas Morning News

The Information Age may be dawning, but its intrusion into some corners of academia is being greeted with suspicion.

Three new enterprises posting college class notes to the World Wide Web have drawn fire from professors who fear they promote class-skipping and other evils.

Meanwhile, in the kindergarten through 12th-grade arena, dozens of homework helper sites have opened in the last year. Many, say critics, are nothing more than e-commerce efforts that attempt to create student Internet portals to generate ad revenue.

"For-profit companies can be a powerful partner in education," says Andy Carvin, creator of EdWeb and moderator of a long-running e-mail discussion on the role of the Web in education. "But we can't forget that the bottom line will sometimes have them making decisions that aren't necessarily in the best interest of kids."

Collaborative electronic tools available via the Internet - e-mail, chat, instant messaging and discussion lists - now make it easier for students to share notes and build reports with help from confederates nationwide.

But, educators fear, they can also make it easier to cut corners or cheat.

They recognize, of course, that research is a key attraction of the Internet, which was originally created to exchange data between educational institutions.

In fact, a new study, "Teaching, Learning and Computing 1999" (www.crito.uci.edu/TLC), found that when the Internet was available directly in the classroom, nearly half of teachers reported using it to track down information.

The value of collaborative work, however, was not taken as seriously. Only 7 percent of teachers had their students use e-mail at least three times during the school year; 6 percent had their students participate in an online project with other schools; and 4 percent had their students publish on the Web.

"This would suggest that while teachers are beginning to embrace the Internet as a source for supplying information, the majority of educators have yet to explore its interactive potential," Mr. Carvin says. "Student e-mail communications and Web-based collaborations are still not as commonplace in the classroom as one might expect, even when there are no obstacles to Internet access."

Notes on the Net

Private services have been offering sales of college lecture notes on some campuses since the 1960s. But three upstart Web sites promoting the same service for free have drawn fire on several campuses since opening for business in the last year.

This month, an attorney for the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at Los Angeles said he was asking the services - StudentU.com, Versity.com and Study24-7.com - to stop paying students for their online notes.

"When a student or nonstudent copies faculty lectures for the purpose of selling them, that's a commercial use and that's a violation of our rules," Mike Smith, attorney for the California universities, told the Associated Press.

On the other side of the country, Todd Gitlin, a professor at New York University, said in a New York Times op-ed piece: "The very act of taking notes ... is a way of engaging the material, wrestling with it, struggling to comprehend or to take issue, but in any case entering into the work. ... A download is a poor substitute."

Leaders of the three sites said last week they have received no formal requests from any university to cease operations.

Asks Craig Green, co-founder of Study24-7.com, "How can a Web site that encourages and helps foster studying and communication amongst classmates be a detriment to the classroom environment?"

Adds his partner, Brian Maser: "We emphasize to the students that they only post notes, graphs and outlines that are their original work of authorship. They must not copy nor scan a word-for-word, or chart-for-chart, representation of the professor's lectures and/or notes into the Web site."

The flap is unfounded in copyright law because notes are paraphrased in the words of the student, says Oran Wolf, a 27-year-old Houston-based entrepreneur whose StudentU.com features notes from primarily large "survey" courses on 62 campuses.

Mr. Wolf says he regularly purchased class notes while attending the University of Texas.

"I didn't have to rely on my own, and it freed you up to interact more with the teacher in class," he says.

Still, instructors such as Texas A&M University marketing professor Duane Dewald - whose classes often include more than 400 students, making it impossible to take attendence - have concerns.

Dr. Dewald says he has long been aware that local firms were paying students for class notes from lectures.

"It's nothing new, and certainly I was aware it was going on," he says. "From my perspective, I just worry it could encourage students to skip class. In that large a course where I don't know everybody, I don't want to encourage that."

Mr. Wolf says students are well aware that the notes and study guides he offers are a supplement to their educations.

"I think it's probably the biggest misconception," Mr. Wolf says.

At the University of Houston, where Mr. Wolf began a paper-and-ink notes service before expanding to the Web, he says professors quickly realized that the impact was nonexistent.

"Now we're getting teachers that are doing the same thing," he says. "Some give me everything they can give me, even sample exams."

Professors, including several at Texas A&M and UT, are also taking to the Internet to post their own versions of lecture notes on university-sponsored sites. One UT professor is even putting up streaming video of his lectures to help students review past lessons.

Most of the cries of protest are generated by professors who "have been doing the same thing the same way for 20 years," Mr. Wolf says. "They're so used to handling their class a certain way, this just throws them off."

For cash-strapped college students, the services offer an opportunity to make extra money.

"All my teachers know I'm doing this," says a UT freshman who asked that her name not be used because she is selling the same notes to two rival online services.

StudentU.com pays $300 per semester for notes, then adds $200 for every five note-takers recruited.

Study24-7.com shares 40 percent of its site's advertising revenue with note-takers in large courses. For smaller classes, pay is based on how much Internet traffic the sites generate.

Versity.com pays $7 to $10 per lecture, with bonuses based on note quality and timely posting.

"It actually has helped me, I think," says the UT note-taker. "I have to concentrate more on what's being covered. My attention doesn't wander anymore."

Jeff Lawson, president and co-founder of Versity.com, says the benefits of online lecture notes cannot be overlooked.

"They can be of great value, especially in large lecture halls where you can't hear the professor very well, or with foreign students who may have difficulty with the language," he says.

Mr. Lawson says there should be no fear that students may use the sites to improperly trade completed term papers and exams.

"Students won't find our site is a way to cheat the education system," he says. "Versity is not a place for students who are looking for a way to just get by. It's a supplement to what they're supposed to be doing on their own."

All three sites offer class discussion boards, although those for even the largest classes display little activity.

Mr. Lawson's service, now with notes from about 90 campuses, also takes inventory of a student's course enrollment, then displays a list of who is online with similar interests. Students, he says, can then network in live chat about their studies.

Educational interaction within such "virtual communities" is a potentially powerful component of the Web's future, says Louis Rosenfeld, president and co-founder of Argus Associates and author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web.

"It sounds great in practice. But in reality, they either already exist in the form of e-mail lists, or they form around a body of more static content," Mr. Rosenfeld warns.

The sources of Internet information, Mr. Rosenfeld says, are already widely fragmented.

"You have to have a body of content that attracts people and gives them something to discuss," Mr. Rosenfeld says, "or it isn't going to work."

Not doing your homework?

Similar offerings on the Web for kindergarten through 12th grade are much less developed.

A handful of sites - each with differing approaches - are gradually emerging.

Some ad-driven sites, such as Homework Central (www.homeworkcentral.com) have been working behind the scenes for several years assembling databases geared toward primary and secondary school studies.

"The idea is that the research has been done for the students already," says spokesman Michael Willoughby. "Instead of scouring out the Internet, they know where to find it on our site."

Homework Central claims to have coalesced 75,000 "knowledge sites" that can be searched easily by students, avoiding the return of off-subject hits.

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In its efforts to become "the standard for the Internet," Homework Central is also posting sample lesson plans for teachers and parents.

"It's a way parents and children can use the Internet together," Mr. Willoughby says. "Some parents and teachers are somewhat wary of it still. We're trying to break down that fear."

Homework Helper (www.homeworkhelper.com) and Family Education (www.familyeducation.com) take similar tacks.

Others, such as Highwired (www.highwired.net), are geared specifically toward high schools, offering online tools to create campus newspapers, calendars and virtual classrooms.

Thus far, few schools have participated, but the venture is young.

High-tech TAAS

Perhaps the most ambitious site is Homeroom.com, launched this month by the Princeton Review test preparation firm.

Princeton's idea is to initially target math performance on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, or TAAS, for third through eighth grades.

Using Web-based reports and interplay between parents, teachers and administrators, Homeroom.com will attempt to pinpoint performance shortfalls.

It is designed to help students and parents raise their test scores by directing them to Web-based study guides and resources.

According to the company, it has formed partnerships with educational companies including Classroom Connect, a Web-based service that trains teachers on how to use the Internet and technology; The New York Times Learning Network, an educational service for students in grades six through 12; and Smarterkids.com, an educational e-commerce site.

The effort will begin at pilot schools across Texas this school year, then branch out nationally in the first quarter of 2000.

Mr. Rosenfeld says he sees great potential in the Homeroom.com concept.

"Of course, you have to trust that they will give you an appropriate suite of content to help," he notes. "And if you want something other than New York Times for a study aid, it looks like you may be sort of locked in."

Only time will tell whether such Web-based helper sites will become effective, he says.

Of course, they also require that all parties quickly adopt the Internet at home and school. That may be a tall order.

Even as the federal government is pumping $2.25 billion into school and Internet access programs with its E-rate program, a survey by Market Data Retrieval shows that 39 percent of 1,500 teachers polled reported being well-prepared to use technology in teaching. And basic home access to computers in lower-income districts remains problematic.

"This is a compelling model," Mr. Rosenfeld says. "It looks like the people behind it have done a very good job. Is it ahead of its time? Maybe.

"But I think education is behind in general. It's really going to take a lot to get infrastructures in place that have a good chance to succeed."