Name: Tien T.

Tran
Course: ENG 201 American Culture
Instructor: Ms. Letti Stokes
March, 10, 2015.
Kinzie, S. (2009). An Education in the Dangers of Online Research. In M.
Shulman, Culture in Contrast (p. 149). Michigan: The University of
Michigan Press.

Summary
In an article named An Education in the Dangers of Online Research, published in Culture in
Contrast, Suzan Kinzie - the author, has addressed the increasing problem of plagiarism and
explained why online research is partly responsible for that (Kinzie, 2009). To express the
problem, Kinzie uses the examples of Mark Gruntz and Allison Routman, who were on a
studying cruise of the University of Virginia. This school is famous for its 150-year-tradition and
its absolute honor code that is applied everywhere, from the classrooms to the Sea boat. In a
course of Global Studies, their task was to write a paper based on a movie and their knowledge
of Europe and World War II. Gruntz and Routman, like other students, uses Wikipedia as one of
their resources. However, Routman did not cite anything and was accused of plagiarism, the
same thing happened to Gruntz because he did not use quotation when citing it. Both of them
were completely amazed at the fact that they got kicked out of the boat for plagiarism, since they
sincerely had no idea what they had done. Despite receiving a lot of supports from the other
students, Gruntz and Routman still had to go through a meeting where faculty members got to

judge them and the verdict stayed the same. After everything, they still felt unfair because of
their misperception of plagiarism and the unclear administration on the boat.
One of the leading causes for increasing plagiarism today is the instant resources, specifically
online resources. At universities, plagiarism and academic dishonesty are now talked about more
than ever by professors and librarians. Since it is getting easier and easier to get information
from the Internet, students somehow are dependent on digital sources. Also, it does not take as
many efforts as going to the library, finding the right books and retrieving information from
those. In addition, students can get confused because of uncredited sources of information, which
can easily leads to plagiarism.
Response
Recently, plagiarism is concerned because online resources are much more common. However,
the development of the digital world is inevitable so what we have to do is to deal with it, not to
stop it. In my opinion, students have to be well trained about the honor system before they enter
any academic courses, at any universities, anywhere in the country. It is also important that the
administration of the academic honor system is clear and fair. For example, definitions of
concepts such as plagiarism, paraphrasing, citations, etc. must be provided precisely to avoid
students misperception, like in Routman and Gruntzs situations. Also, there should be a
coherence among these honor codes so that when there is a lack of training, students are able
express their academic honesty in general and do not plagiarize by confusion.