eLearning - promoting plagiarism or honesty?

eLearning encourages students to avail themselves of the myriad of resources available via the World Wide Web. The ease and speed of access to material needs to be counterbalanced by appropriate assessment by the student of the credibility of the source, thoughtful evaluation and analysis of the content and the appropriate acknowledgement of the owner of the original ideas. We believe these skills can be taught, and assessed, via eLearning. We also believe that changing behaviours relating to plagiarism and honesty will rely on changing cultural attitudes. To understand prevailing attitudes to plagiarism at our institution, towards improving understanding and changing behaviours, we conducted a survey with academics and students. This paper explores these attitudes to plagiarism through grounded theory, and presents results from a first trial with our Online Honesty Tool.