With the everlasting of advanced technology
With the everlasting of advanced technology, there is no question that the World Wide Web has significantly transformed the ways of students’ performance (Educational platforms). The World Wide Web is an Internet service first appeared in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee, which allows users to access a large volume of information through a system of interlinked, hypertext documents that run over the Internet. However, with the ever-present concern for students’ quality assignments, the effects of WWW have been much debated recently. While many of the opinion that students’ attainment seems to be better thank to WWW, others counter that the WEB has destroyed their performance. I agree that the later viewpoint holds more water …..
1. At the outset, in term of accuracy, there is an amount of unevaluated and unreliable information on the WWW which can mislead students. In fact, it is quite challenging for students, especially those who barely have critical thinking or…., to assess the available information of the WWW. This information is probably unreliable for certain reasons. Firstly, the information is often authored by people with few academic credentials who fail to undertake a background check of their claims before publishing it. Take Wikipedia as an instance. Although it is considered as a global online encyclopedia, virtually all authors with no formal journalistic qualification and its information is easily edited or modified. Additionally, learners without critical thinking promotion can barely evaluate whether the information is accurate. Their performances, therefore, lack of quality. Research has indicated that university students confront dilemmas when searching for information on the Web. (Brand-Gruwel et al 2005).
2. Another significant reason worth mentioning is that information abounds on the Internet maybe old-fashioned and volatile. In fact, there is no gate-keepers like the library to evaluate a sea of instantaneous information before publishing them. Several webs present periodicals with no dates or false ones. As a result, this information is dependable enough to be utilized in the academic products. The Web is characterized as a powerful source of “disinformation (propaganda, incomplete or corrupted information or censorship)” (Luciano Florida). Furthermore, in a report issued by Beljaarts in 2006, rarely do 82% of the students admit to check information but as Ralph Alberico (1995) insisted that they tend to “accept anything the computer says”.
3. Finally, WWW is blamed for students’ plagiarism, which means the content and ideas in students’ assignments are not or not nearly original. The opponents to this point out that the information on the Internet can bring a myriad of beneficial towards students, which helps enhance the quality of their products. According to Tella (2017), cited in recent study in Malaysia by Lauran et al (2013), the Internet is a reservoir of information for students’ research and assignments. Actually, this is only true if student know the way to cite the resource and efficiently paraphrase instead of invent that information their own or even replace the original ideas. The act of fraud that presents others’ production and ideas without clearly acknowledging the source is called plagiarism. A 2011 study entitled “The Digital Revolution & Higher Education” indicated that over past 10 years, the surge of plagiarism in written assignments had been witnessed by 55% of colleges’ presidents. The Internet is making it less demanding for students to cheat and plagiarize via a simple click of a mouse or merely typing a few keywords into the Google searchbox. A recent 2004 study entitled “Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation” found that more than half of the students had “copied portions of a paper from the Internet without citing the source” and 72% of which admitted to “seriously cheating on a written work”. In several cases, while some students have poor time-management skills and barely go far in (effort) searching for their assignments; they, consequently, they are prone to adopt others ideas or others attitudes, other students are confused about citation principles. ( gi?i thích v? cái này ) , which may lead to plagiarism.
Albeit some blame WWW for impairing students’ academic performance, the opponents to this point deem that it is students who are in charge of accommodating themselves in a profusion of information and therefore take responsible for their performance. Besides, teachers also play a role in this problem. They should act as a counselor spending time on defining “plagiarism” to students and instruct them to think critically, produce their own idea, cite others’ work, take note, synthesize and paraphrase, which would definitely facilitate students in generating their own work without plagiarism.
