INLS 285 – Information Use for Organizational Effectiveness

Information Case 1: Ethics

Option C: Dilemma for Student

The deadline for the assignment was approaching quickly and Susan was not quite ready. She still needed additional sources to support her essay on the role of World War II cryptography and the development of the modern computer. She was required to have a minimum of thirty citations, and she had only eighteen. One day left, and she needed twelve more. The essay itself was fine – the paper was long enough, her arguments were good, and it needed very little editing. Even if she found twelve more books and articles, she would not have time to read them before tomorrow.

She decided to look at the Internet. Her instructor’s guidelines would not allow students to use internet resources unless they were academic journals or the full-text of books, but she was desperate. Instead of doing a Google search for papers to read, she went directly to the Wikipedia. By searching on key words related to her topic (ULTRA, Enigma, cryptography, Alan Turing) she was able to retrieve relevant citations from the Wikipedia article. After only a few pages of reading, she had her twelve sources. Of course she had not read those twelve articles, but she had read the sentences in the Wikipedia that were taken from those sources and these were the sentences that she quoted in her paper. She did not cite Wikipedia because she did not use any of the original Wikipedia material – only the quotes from the other sources.

Susan made her deadline and received an A- on the essay.

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What are the ethical and human issues associated with this case? What do her actions say about her course, her instructor, and her school? What do her actions say about her character? About the Wikipedia? What should she have done? What would you have done in Susan’s case? Why?

Please answer the above questions in a 2-3 page paper.