"Copying from the internet is not cheating."

In a society where grades play an important role in students' academic records it is not surprising that many students will try anything to gather as much information about their homework assignments as possible to ensure good grades. As long as there are many forms of communication among students (internet, msn, forums, study groups, etc.) I cannot assume that they will not discuss or research homework assignment questions. Even teaching two courses back to back, I cannot assume that my students in period 1 have not provided answers or the questions to my students in period 2. In the high school setting, many of my assignments are completed in class in one period whenever possible. This still does not remove the problem. Students will still discuss the assignment between classes. I try to eliminate this problem by creating different questions that address the same curriculum expectations. For example, I may change the values so that every student receives the same assignment with different values. I am more interested in the process they use to solve the problem. The process is usually taught ahead of time in class and the students are then expected to take what they have learned and apply those skills to the assignment. Unfortunately, any assignment outside of the classroom makes for more difficulty measures to ensure that the assignment still represents a true reflection of the student's ability. Basically, I have to do my own homework and reseach prior to handing out an assignment. Even then, there is no guaranty that I have not missed a website. I can never assume or prevent former students who have taken the course years earlier, from sharing their materials. I have to take all this information into consideration and therefore, I am always creating new assignments. I believe the motivation to learn is very diverse for each student. I do find that students that take the initiative to do well ususally do so on their own and cheating and plagarism is not an issue. The problem arises among those students that have not grasped the material taught or have chosen to try to take the easy way out. These are the students that are usually not aware of the consequences of plagiarism nor are they aware that they are doing anything wrong. In many cases they basically lack the skills of problem solving. The fact that many students will turn to the Internet or to other students for their answers is still learning. However, when students copy or cut and paste papers from the Internet, they are plagiarizing. When students pay for a paper from the Internet, they are cheating. They are submitting work that has been complete by someone else and calling it their own. As mentioned earlier, I must be more creative in creating my assignments. However, the best way to prevent students from cheating and plagiarism is to educate them by making assignments very clear, provide the steps that must be included in the assignment, define clearly through examples what cheating and plagiarism are, the consequences of their actions, and inform them of all the websites that are available to detect cheating and plagiarism.
http://www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm
http://studentaffairs.odu.edu/osja/AIMapril2004.pdf
http://www.shambles.net/pages/staff/Plagiar/