CHAPTER 19

Equity And Legal Issues

In the years that have elapsed since the publication of the first edition of Web–Teaching, legal issues have become clouded. New issues have emerged with respect to students. Today, distant learners using campus–based Web resources often are thought to be entitled to to the same resources and privileges as traditional, on–campus students.

More frightening, however, are the equity issues that have arisen. After years of progress in these areas, it is becoming clear that the new technologies favor majority males over members of other groups.

The study conducted in early 1997 indicated that proportionately more than twice as many whites as African Americans had used the Web during the preceding week [Hoffman & Novak, 1998]. The racial divide was most pronounced for those persons who did not own a home computer.

A recent study showed a 24% drop in women pursuing computer science degrees over the decade of the 1990's. While no completely satisfactory explanation is available for this drop, one suggestion is that computer games are less attractive to girls than to boys [Gorriz & Medina, 2000].

It is difficult to see how these observations can translate into a more equitable society in the future. The Internet is becoming a mainstay of United States commerce. To be a player in this economy, it is necessary to understand how to use the Internet and the Web to the fullest advantage. Obviously this favors those persons with the most experience and practice. While we are able to report these differences to our readers, we are unable to offer any meaningful remedies. Only time will tell if these differences proved to create schisms in our society.

The strategies that you choose to employ as a Web–based teacher have potential impacts relative to equity. Webb et al. [1998] report on group composition relative to assessment. They find that low–ability students performed better in heterogeneous groups with high–ability students included. High–ability students, on the other hand, performed best in homogeneous groups with other high–ability students.

The Web is primarily a visual medium, and, so far, hearing–impaired persons do not suffer any striking disadvantages with respect to Web access. An important issue yet to be addressed by the Web is access for the visually impaired. When transmission speed is important or connection rate is slow, users may set their browser so images are not displayed. Creating tags that provide brief text descriptions of the images is important. These descriptions can automatically appear in lieu of the image. (See Figure 19.01.)

There are two dimensions to issues related to copyrights and Web teaching. One deals with the use of copyrighted materials in Web–delivered courses. The other deals with the ownership of faculty–created electronic course materials.

Under current copyright law, material written for Websites, like all other forms of intellectual property, are copyrighted automatically. There may be a tremendous temptation to borrow something from a Web site for inclusion within the materials used in one of your courses. In spite of the fact that publication on the Web puts material out for all to see and use from a Web site, copying that material and transferring it to your site is potentially a copyright violation. The copyright law provides for "fair use" of copyrighted materials for educational purposes. Fair use generally includes the use of copyrighted materials for criticism, reporting, teaching (including a few copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research. Guidelines for fair use are not particularly clear; they call for judgment in their application.

Several factors usually are involved in determining fair use:

• purpose and character of the use, especially whether the use is
• commercial or for nonprofit, educational purposes
• the nature of a copyrighted work
• the amount of the copyrighted work used in relation to the whole work
• how the use of the copyrighted work affects market value

One complicating factor in the application of fair use is that of spontaneity. "If the work is used once and 'the inspiration and decision to use the work and the moment of its use for maximum teaching effectiveness are so close in time that it would be unreasonable to expect a timely reply to a request for permission.' If the use of work does not comply with the standards of brevity and spontaneity permission from the copyright holder is required" [Jasa, 1998]. It is hard to imagine that a Web site developed for a course would meet the standards set forth under this spontaneity clause.

The creation of electronic courses has posed new problems in the relationships between faculty and administration. At one time, the authoring of textbooks was regarded as a private matter between a faculty member and a publisher. The employing institution was not regarded as having any special rights with respect to such products. Today, however, university administrations often seek ownership of electronic materials created by their faculty employees. This represents a significant change in the professor/university relationship.

A study group from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has proposed the following policy: "The authors of scientific works based on government–supported research should be free to distribute those works as they see fit, via journals, electronic postings, and other new modes that may appear. Starting with this perspective, we offer a proposal to advance toward that goal in a way that accommodates the needs of both traditional and modern publishing" [Bachrach et al., 1998].

Plagiarism, broadly defined as taking written works of others and representing them as one's own, has always been a problem in assessment. Papers placed in the files of student social organizations had a way of being resubmitted semester after semester. With so much written material being available on the Web, teachers suspect that plagiarism is increasing. Assessments (Exams)

What once was a mail order business, with ads appearing in campus newspapers, seems to have been transformed into a modern, worldwide industry, thanks to the Web. Two strategies have been developed to deal with this issue. One invites teachers to submit writing samples to a database which then searches the sample for matches. Another suggests that teachers change the nature of their writing assignments to reduce substantially the likelihood that a "commercial" paper will be available. Custom authoring, to the extent that it really happens, simply brings this industry to a new plane.

While dealing with the veracity of submitted papers is a Web teaching issue, it is neither new nor unique to the Web. While it might have been exacerbated by the Web because of easier access, it's the same old problem – once based on the infamous "files at the fraternity house."

Taking exams over the Web certainly is possible. Web exams are at the heart of the largest materials development project we've ever undertaken. Our strategy, however, is that all of these exams are really taken as practice for a written and/or oral exam to be given by a course instructor or proctor once the participating learner is ready to be tested. Not only are all of our exams public, but it is possible simultaneously to open a public page alongside an individualized page, glean enough information by repeatedly serving exams from the public page, and generate what amounts to an answer key response. In our approach, we make no attempt to determine who actually responds to the Web-delivered items. We focus entirely on a more traditional assessment, one that presents no difficulty for a learner who has the kind of understanding of the course material that good performances on our open exams would imply.

Detecting plagiarism has become quite sophisticated. One writer points out that, because Alta Vista indexes the entire contents of each page, it is possible to submit strings of words found in the writing sample and determine whether these have been indexed.

Teachers can and likely should work to discourage plagiarism. There are several ways in which this can be accomplished. One is to provide instruction about plagiarism. These instructions set down some markers for your students, and these seem to pay off. This is an option in Glatt's plagiarism services, for example. Make sure that you have written policies about plagiarism in place, and that the consequences of being caught plagiarizing are clear, enforceable, and consistent with institutional policies.

Stress the process aspects of writing. Insist on topic proposals, outlines, drafts with revisions, etc. Require specific components or sections within papers. Try to get analyses that supercede those of traditional papers. For example, ask that students compare and contrast two different systems, countries, cities, substances, industrial processes, etc. Run the creation of papers as term–long assignments that build along the way. There might be a few short papers, an oral exam, etc. In a Web course, perhaps students would have to make reference to something that popped up during a threaded discussion. Insist on a research trail – not just URLs of references, but copies of papers cited, etc.

Still another aspect of the process is to consider how you post your students' works. This obviously is a very powerful strategy for enhancing the degree of ownership that students feel in their work. At the same time, it is a potential source of papers for those actively engaging in plagiarism.