But sometimes, it's not a question of "do the right thing" but of filtering the mixed messages, said Don McCabe, the vice chair of Rutgers University's Management and Global Business Department and founder of the Center for Academic Integrity in North Carolina.

Take group projects, for example.

Collaboration — use of study groups and group projects — can be an effective learning process, said Barbara Gross Davis, professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

"(Students) learn more, and retain it longer, than when they're working by themselves," she said.

Davis is more likely to look kindly at collaboration than McCabe, though he knows his way may be waning.

"The industry's plea is, 'Send us people who can work as teams,' " McCabe said. "Some professors who are old farts, like me, are not so progressive on collaboration. We like to individually evaluate each student. And we assume everyone knows that."

Esoteric questions might dance on the head of the higher-education pin, but what about the nagging ethical dilemmas faced by students in grades K through 12?

Homework Ethics 101

One key to ethical homework-behavior, said elementary, middle school and high school teachers, was clear direction from teachers. Make that "clear direction delivered in a variety of ways."

There are 17 different ways of learning, and not everyone learns the same way, said 25-year teacher Faith Tomoyasu, now guiding a third grade class at Lehua Elementary. Some students are verbal, some visual; that's why she not only writes the homework on the board, but discusses it, gives examples and even sends a homework outline home.

And it doesn't end there.

"We discuss what's right and wrong, why it's not good to cheat," Tomoyasu said. "I ask them, '(If you cheat), did you learn it?' Homework is to reinforce what they've learned in class that day."

If they aren't getting it, she takes it as a cue to step back, try a different approach.

"If you make a mistake, that's OK," she explains to her young charges. "You're not bad. You're not dumb. If you didn't get it, it's my job to see you do."

Upper-division ethics

Wray Jose of Moanalua High School, Hawai'i's history teacher of the year as chosen by the White House last June, said students need to know why they're doing homework. As the semester begins, he lays the groundwork with his sophomores. They go through expectations and they discuss plagiarism. Students know his door is open if they run into a question not covered in class.

If problems still occur after all that, you can't just legislate, you also judicate.

"Sometimes you've got to stop (cheating) by making an example of those who do so," Jose said.

"... You show you can catch them. First, lay down the ground rules. Then, you enforce them."

He remembers the term paper that began "The Civil War was fought in 10,000 different places, from Deer Island, Maine to ..."

He read it out loud to the class. Then he flipped on the Ken Burn's Civil War documentary. "The Civil War was fought in 10,000 different places, from Deer Island, Maine, to ..." the narrator intoned from the TV set.

While Jose didn't identify her, the student got the message. She started crying in class. That makes Jose feel bad in hindsight; he thinks he could have let her know what was coming.

"Ideally, we want students to do the work, so they learn," Jose said. "That's the intrinsic reward. Children, like adults, don't always perform for intrinsic rewards. ... Students who don't have conscience — or do, but feel the grade is more important, will change their tune fast if they find out there will be significant negative reactions for cheating."

Talk about it

Center for Academic Integrity founder McCabe said an important time seems to be the switch from elementary to middle school, when students go from having a few people teaching more subjects to having different teachers for each subject.

"Peer pressure builds up," he said. "Not having a strong moral authority removes the 'third parent' to an extent. Peers will say, 'Help me on this.' "

This might be the perfect time to have serious "ethical homework-behavior" conversations, one that should continue throughout one's schooling.

It's important for teachers to reach out to frustrated students and be willing to answer questions, and students to know that if they have questions, they should ask the teacher, not other students, McCabe said.

That's a start. There's more.

"What would be nice, but not practical, would be (if students would) tell teachers who is cheating," McCabe said. "(Or if) you see something going on, you don't say who, but tell the teacher (what's happening)."

Escalation of cheating creates terrible problems down the road, when college and high school students feel they must cheat out of a sense of fairness: Others are getting away with cheating and getting ahead, while they suffer.

"Students who are frustrated by the cheating others are doing should demand change," McCabe said. "They say, 'It's not fair to us, who are doing things honestly.' I hear students who say they're only cheating because faculty members let others cheat."

His advice to teachers: Maybe a change in teaching methodology can help. Really think about tests and assignments you use. Clearly define and explain the ground rules. Address questions from students. Be a role model. And yes, take action when cheating is suspected.

"Even if you don't follow the policy, do something," he said. "Don't make that an excuse for ignoring it. You owe it to honest students in the class."

What parents can do

Megan Kasten, 7, knows better than to let someone copy off her homework.

"That would be cheating," the second-grader at Lehua Elementary said.

While her mom, Lynn Kasten of Pearl City, might look over her finished work, she knows what it means to do your own homework — though other kids' parents sometimes help with homework.

Does she think that's fair?

"Not really," said Megan. "Because if they actually tell you the answer, it would be like cheating."

While Megan responded to questions about cheating, Lynn Kasten listened in on a phone extension from another room. "Megan, I'm very impressed with your answers," she said. "I'm impressed you know right from wrong."

Good homework-behavior starts at home. "Kids tend to get mixed messages about this subject, and oftentimes, the mixed messages come from home," said Barbara Landau, director for the Institute for Teacher Education at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa's college of education.

She illuminates that with her own story about a neighbor back on the Mainland who was an elementary school principal.

One morning Landau saw her, and the principal looked terrible.

"What a night I had!" the neighbor told Landau. The principal's child had an assignment, but couldn't get it done; the principal stayed up until 1 a.m., finishing that assignment for her.

Landau laughs, but it's a horrified kind of laugh. Yes, parents might like making dioramas, but parents aren't putting their name on it, students are.

"Parent night is the time for teachers and parents to have that conversation," said Landau. "Make sure what teachers are seeing is really the student doing the student's work."

It's not a question of whose work looks the best, she adds, which can be affected by "economic, class issues."

"What they really want is the good work, not glitter and Styrofoam," she said.

Landau also suggests teachers give a primer on why you do homework in the first place.

Because who, as one teacher put it, wants to walk across a bridge built by someone who cheated on their algebra exam?

As Moanalua's Jose said, "The student is ultimately the loser when they walk out of a course not having acquired mastery of the content."

Reach Mary Kaye Ritz at mritz@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8035.