I routinely Google my answers to online college homework. Sometimes Google provides you with tutorials, hints, and even direct answers. The temptation is definitely there to recreate the answer as your own. Is this illegal? Some college guidelines say so. At Clayton State University, the guidelines are as follows:

Academic Conduct Defined

Only cases involving misconduct are adjudicated as violations of the Student Conduct Code.  Cases in which a student questions a grade assignment and raises questions regarding objectivity, competence, judgement, etc. are handled via the Grade and Academic Appeal Policy.

Any type of activity that is considered dishonest by reasonable standards may constitute academic misconduct. The most common forms of academic misconduct are cheating and plagiarism.  Examples include:

1. Submitting material as original when it is, in fact, copied from another person or from another source, without properly acknowledging that source.
2. Using information or devices that are not authorized by faculty such as formulas or data from a computer program, calculators, or unauthorized material for an out-of-class exam or project.
3. Obtaining or using unauthorized material such as a copy of an examination before it is given.
4. Fabricating information such as data for a laboratory report.
5. Collaborating with others on an assignment without faculty consent.
6. Cooperating with or helping another student to cheat.
7. Having another person take an examination or altering exam answers and requesting an exam be re-evaluated.

Click for Source

So, at Clayton State University, my solution is to cite my sources and paraphrase the answer. This seems to be legal. You must be careful. To me, this is a very tough online college dilemma. Most online college courses are on the computer anyway, why not Google?

Cheating in the college classroom is quite common.

“Who’s Who Among American High School Students found that 80% of a recent group of 700,000 top students admitted to cheating.”

Cheating ranges from writing on body parts during exams to turning in full papers written by someone else. One method cites that two students should tag team, and while one raises his or hand, the other pulls out their crib sheets and gets to work.

Click here for source.

Still, is Googling the answer cheating? Shouldn’t Google and the Web be considered fair game. Even if the answers to your teaching material are published online? Often one professor publishes the answers to another professor’s assignment. Is this any different than copying straight from the textbook? To Google or not to Google…

Here is the answer from the viewpoint of one of my professors (keep in mind that you may want to ask your professor if you have any questions concerning individual assignments as different professors and colleges often have differing viewpoints):

“Well, my first thought is that you should not be able to find an exact answer for an open-book assignment by simplying searching the web. If you can just google the web to find an answer, it implies that the problems did not force you to think/apply/calculate/articulate in order to get the answers.

On the issue of whether or not an action of obtaining an answer from the web is considered cheating, I would say it depends on whether the assigned work is open-book or close-book. If it is an open-book assignment, quiz, or exam, then everything is fair game, otherwise you should only be able to use whatever that is already in your memory.

While citation (of the Internet sources) makes sure that you should not be accused of plagiarizing, it can be overdone in many cases if you are not careful. I believe most (if not all) assignments are meant to foster your thought and/or creativity. Thus, looking for info on the web is ok, but you should digest the info and synthesize your answer and put it in your own words. Simply paraphasing the info and citing the sources are akin to regurgitation of a baby hearing the words "dada" from his/her dad. It doesn’t show that you learned anything.

Anyhow, that is just my two cents on this off-topic stuff. There are official guidelines about this somewhere. You can ask an advisor at your school for more info. “

I hope this helps you to get  a good feel of the guidelines and ethics of Googling answers.

Have you been caught cheating or accused of plagiarism? Check out this article for how to protect yourself from plagiarism charges:
http://plagiarism-defence.tripod.com/

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Sun Microsystems offers a free alternative for struggling online college students to Microsoft Word, Access, Excel, and Powerpoint through a free and open productivity suite, OpenOffice.org. All of the source code is available under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), and you may use OpenOffice.org binaries for commercial use. In short, OpenOffice.org offers a free version of Microsoft Word for those of us who can’t afford or do not wish to buy Microsoft Office.

If you want to try Open Office before installing it, Google Docs is a good way to experiment. It is free and you can create and download documents in OpenOffice. You may also save your online college documents to Google Docs for storage and later retrieval. You may make documents private or share them with your online college buddies. Sign in to Google Docs using your Gmail account or create a new one.

You may want to check out Google’s hundreds of other apps that can only supplement your online college career. Most, if not all, are free. http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/#utm_medium=et&utm_source=catch_all

Free Google Applications include:

• Gmail – fast, searchable email. You can create as many free accounts as you’d like, and with Google’s massive storage, you almost never have to erase any messages. Great for online college students as an extra email address.
• Google Earth – View earth from any address.
• Blogger – create your own blog for free. A great way for online college students to grab some computer experience and expertise and share their experience with the world.
• Picasa – edit and share your photos
• Google Maps – free directions from almost anywhere to almost anywhere. Great for occasional trips to your college campus if you forget how to get there.
• Google Chrome – a fast, stable browser that you’ll love to use

Make sure to peruse all of Google’s free apps for use in your online college and university material. You may also download and install the Google Toolbar.

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