A new Web site has emerged with the potential to change how college students do their assignments. AssignMine.com promotes the sharing of essays, projects, summaries, lecture notes and other assignments. Initially, one may think the site is absolutely unethical. However, there is a strong argument against this.
Undoubtedly, there is a brigade of academics who would hit the roof at the thought of their old school methods being upstaged by electronic media. The fact is students always have, and always will, share assignments. AssignMine.com recognizes this reality.
I asked a friend about what they thought about a site that promotes the sharing of assignments. Immediately she said, “That’s so wrong.” Going to a Web site and reading an assignment done by another student is not wrong, and it’s not unethical. What would be unethical is if that student chooses to plagiarize the document.
Students have this same choice with books, journals, Web sites and other media. On that point, past papers or assignments are just as much a legitimate research resource for students. An overwhelming majority of students would use them in a responsible manner.
A further point the Web site raises is that it offers students access to a previously inaccessible pool of information. It might be crazy to think that in this day in age, with all sorts of electronic devices and services at our fingertips, there would be information inaccessible to us, but there is. In the past, students didn’t have access to this information. AssignMine.com now makes this resource readily accessible for all students.
Now I know some readers are thinking that if you are not a research student, then you are not at the university level and aren’t able to develop breakthroughs in your field. But beyond a university setting, we are urged to work as a team, to utilize existing resources and to call upon others for help. This is a complete contrast to what university academics and officials are endorsing. If we were to start from where others left off, we would progress much further.
It cannot be denied that many students already share their work. If you have a good network of friends, you can ask them for past assignments. The current system favors people with big networks to give them information. People without this network suffer. AssignMine.com levels the playing field and makes student assessment and performance more accurate.
Up until this point, I have not discussed why someone would upload a document to the site. If someone is scared about having work read or quoted by another student, then AssignMine.com is not for that person. If someone does not mind sharing his or her work, AssignMine.com is an opportunity to post the documents that have been sitting idle on a hard drive and seen only by a professor. If you put in the hours, you may as well get credit for it.
If nothing else, this Web site challenges the conventional ideas about the ethics of seeking help for assignments. It will be interesting to see if this site takes off or if it joins the list of old assignments deep down in the hard drive.
Kate Myerson is a sophomore at CSULB.
