Therapists and counselors have seen a rise in teenagers and young adults who are "onlineaholics," and now treat the addiction much as they do alcoholism and other dependencies.

Policies Clear "From Day One"
The college has always had strict policies on academic integrity, and most professors spell out specific requirements on their syllabi. For the first time this year, all freshmen were required to buy a common reference:Doing Honest Work in College, by University of Chicago professor Charles Lipson. Associate dean Duane Bruce, who introduced the book to the faculty, says the requirement grew out of the need for a college-wide source that was very up-to-date about the Internet.

"In the last few years, there’s been genuine confusion and misunderstanding among students who have a very mixed conception about academic integrity and what constitutes plagiarism," he says. Online translation programs, where a student types in the original language and the target language, are an example.

One reason for cell phone policies such as Professor Vallari’s is to eliminate the possibility of students using the devices to communicate answers during exams. The half dozen Saint Anselm students interviewed for this article all said they knew someone who had used cell phones to cheat on a test. Technologically adept millennials send text messages "blind," using the A-Z keys of their calculators, personal organizers, and cell phones with one hand.

The chemistry department bans calculators with alphanumeric keyboards and significant extended memories during exams. Professor Mary Kate Donais, who wrote the policy statement that appears on chemistry syllabi, says, "For the first couple of exams, I have them show me their calculator. We encourage students to practice for exams using the same non-alphanumeric calculator that they will use during the exam."

Donais likes Doing Honest Work in College because it deals with scientific work like lab reports and presentations: "The students learn from day one that we know about academic dishonesty and are looking for it."

Internet aided plagiarism on papers and essays is a concern throughout education. "The temptation is there in a way that it didn’t exist before," says Christine Boyland, a humanities lecturer and member of the college’s academic honesty task force formed in 2004. "It’s easy for a student to access information from many sources, at any point during the day, and in the eleventh hour use the drag-and-drop technique—maybe not even realizing that what they’re doing is wrong. On the flip side, it’s easier for faculty to discover the sources of that kind of work."

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