Re: Instant Gratification (was re: paper request)

[Jeff Hecht <jhecht@world.std.com>]

At 2:25 PM -0600 12/31/00, Steve  Brusatte wrote:

> As an example, I'm a 16 year old student.  I take a biology course, 
> and as a project we recently had to write a paper on certain 
> coenzymes, their functions, their sources, etc.  I was, honest to 
> goodness, one of only two or three kids in the whole class (40 kids) 
> to use a non-internet source.  And, to make this more amazing, these 
> internet sources that the other kids used were not scientific papers 
> (as we are debating in this ongoing post), but simple websites from 
> universities and other students.

This sounds distressingly common. Evidently many students go even 
further, picking stuff up from the web and passing it off as their 
own work. There's even a search engine/web site set up for faculty 
members so they can check for documents with suspiciously similar 
wording. ("How did that football player suddenly become literate?" 
asked Professor Jones.)

Learning how to search the web effectively is a valuable skill that 
complements library skills. It's particularly important in areas like 
Paleontology where there are rich archives that are not available 
readily on-line. -- Jeff Hecht