‘Psst! Need the Answer .to No. 7? Click Here’ – Lisa W. Foderado
`In this short piece of investigative journalism Foderado shines a light onto the burgeoning internet industry of online student help sites in an attempt to gauge their probity and integrity. The article’s main rhetorical device is logos, because Federado provides evidence for everything she write and there is little appeal to our emotions (pathos) and little sense of the writer’s apparent character (ethos): almost everything in the article is subsumed beneath the evidence that the writer presents in order to support all her observations. In this sense the article is a very balanced piece of journalism: it presents two clear and distinctly different views about the benefits and disadvantages of such sites and really leaves the reader to make up his or her mind.
Federado’s opening paragraph makes clear that the internet has allowed commercial websites to flourish allowing students access to “step-by-step solutions to textbook problems, copies of previous exams, reams of lecture notes, summaries of literary classics, and real-time help with physics, math and computer science problems.” Throughout the article Federado uses testimony from students, professors and representative s of the web-sites themselves.
However, Federado is intent on providing a balanced review of the evidence. The defenders of these websites include some college professors who feel that students who use such sites are likely to be at a disadvantage in their exams (when they do not have access to the websites), and decry the practice of setting exactly the same questions year after year. David A. Sachs, who is both a university associate dean and an advisor for a website called Cramster, argues that college professors should adapt more to the age of the internet and be more aware of the advantages and the possibilities for its abuse. His point of view is endorsed by the president of Course Hero who argues that his website simply provides a much larger and electronic form of the student study group – the sort of mutual self-help club that flourished for decades before the internet was even thought of. Course Hero and Cramster warn their users against the possible problems and dangers of plagiarism, but ultimately the websites really have no control over what their users do with the material they offer online. Their spokespeople insist that they have both been responsive when faced with concerns raised by college professors or requests to remove material. Federado witnesses are very aware that such sites can devalue homework or encourage plagiarism which, of course, is considered “serious academic malpractice.” However, the final words of the article quote a professor and a student who both agree that unethical students or those paying for a quick solutions to their homework problems are at a serious disadvantage when the exams are taken. Because of this, the article’s ‘conclusion’ is that really the problem of such websites is not as great as some people might think, because examinations provide the main way of assessing students. It is importnat to put ‘conclusion’ in inverted commas, because Federado does not make her argument explicit or clear, but the structure of the article – culminating with these quotations – implies that the websites in question are not a serious threat to academic standards or probity. If Federado had ended the article with different, more negative or critical quotations then the article would have had a different impact.
Federado’s technique is to present the evidence without comment, leaving the readers to make up their own minds. The article has very little appeal to the feelings of the readers which is appropriate because, although this is an importnat issue, it is hardly an emotive one. The writer does not make explicit any of her credentials, but the very fact that this article appeared in The New York Times gives it an undoubted authority, since that newspaper has a reputation built up over more than a hundred years and therefore a journalist writing for the newspaper has the advantage of decades of reputation and a history of integrity and truth. Federado makes no direct statements of attitude and values, but her method itself, relying simply on the testimony of a range of interested parties and scrupulously presenting both pints of view, is itself an indirect statement of attitudes and values, since her balanced, logical approach to the issue conveys a sense of intelligent discussion and analysis, rather than a more simplistic response, such as condemning such sites as encouraging cheating. The issue is more complex than such a reaction suggests. Furthermore, as we have seen, the structure of the article and the order in which Federado presents the evidence is in itself an implied argument, since she ends the article with reassuring quotations which reassure the reader.
