As we begin our first few weeks of summer, students may want to take a break from learning after (probably) cramming for our finals.

From speed-watching Professor Butler’s Calculus III lectures on YouTube to trying to set the record for most Khan Academy videos watched in a day, students now rely on the Internet to maximize their studying efficiency.

Out with year-old crusty textbooks and in with digital e-books; let’s take some time to talk about the Internet and how its apparent educational revolution may also bring forth some drawbacks.

It’s impossible to graduate from college without hearing a professor lecture a class on how easy our classes are now, with the Internet at our disposal.

Rather than running around at the Parks Library, sifting through books front to back, desperately searching for past data on the correlation of a country’s chocolate consumption and its number of Nobel Prize winners (it’s a positive correlation, by the way), we can turn to Google or Bing to gather information.

In fact, it’s difficult to even imagine conducting research on a topic nowadays without referencing sites like Wikipedia (sorry, English teachers). The internet’s educational revolution has brought forth sites like Khan Academy, YouTube and Chegg, which have allowed for even easier access to education.

Therefore, it’s well nigh impossible to argue the advent of the Internet hasn’t made learning a much more widespread and accessible experience. However, it is vitally important to mention some problems that have arisen with these online resources.

For example, giants of the online learning industry, like YouTube and Khan Academy, feature video lectures for a wide selection of core college courses, ranging from calculus and the physical sciences to psychology and economics.

Some students think, “If I can just watch Professor Butler’s Calc 3 lecture at 1.5 speed later on YouTube, then why bother waking up for my 10 a.m. lecture?” This is readily visible in the astounding difference of people in a lecture on the first day, versus a lecture two months into the semester.

Likewise, it is not uncommon for students to learn material online and only show up to quizzes and exams for the sole purpose of earning a grade for their transcript. Unsurprisingly, many end up with A’s.

The above-mentioned courses are the most common college classes – in other words, classes that universities need to pay more professors to teach.

However, it seems counterintuitive if the material can all be accessed for free online. The availability of online learning is threatening to disrupt the traditional in-person learning style used so extensively.

Online degrees are also becoming more common; after all, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to earn a degree that can be completed in the comfort of your living room? Time will tell, however, whether an internet education can truly compete with traditional learning methods.

The most important consideration of the online education revolution, though, is academic dishonesty.

Phones, tablets, laptops, smartwatches and other modern feats of portable technology are disallowed on exams for obvious reasons. But, as many STEM students may discover, some homework assignments haven’t changed in years.

Professors usually just pick an assortment of problems from commonly assigned textbooks and require students to show their work and write out their solutions.

However, the full solutions (including work) to nearly any problem from any textbook can be found online on sites like Chegg, CourseHero or StudyBlue.

Indeed, students desperately craving these solutions has turned into an industry. Looking up a question from any engineering textbook will likely bring up a result from the aforementioned Chegg.com, a forerunner of the online study industry.

Charging a substantial monthly subscription fee, Chegg netted about $255 million by the end of 2017 and has been gaining 44 percent more subscribers year after year. On Chegg, students can look up their desired homework problem and copy the exact work and solution uploaded by another user.

Chegg usage is also nearly impossible to detect, as the solutions offered are exact replicas of the work of a student who didn’t use Chegg.

While this type of online resource at your disposal can seem like yet another benefit of the online education revolution, these readily-available solutions can severely detract from the traditional learning experience.

It’s taking you too long to find the value of “x”? Look it up on Chegg.

Physics homework due in an hour? Look it up on Chegg.

I have heard from an upperclassman student in engineering, “It almost feels like I’m majoring in Chegg right now.” Students have become much less patient in problem solving and exhibit poor time management skills due to the instant gratification that comes with online solutions at their disposal.

It is not cheating to compare your answer to the solution manual – after you do your own work – to understand what you did right and wrong, which is the naïve intention of these online solution providers.

However, flagrantly copying the solutions is undoubtedly academic dishonesty.

I honestly believe online resources like Chegg can be an immensely powerful learning tool when paired with the correct intentions, so the decision falls to the users whether they want to use it in an honest way.