I have experienced the issues mentioned by everyone here, and it may be compounded in countries (such as Malaysia) where rote learning is heavily emphasised. For Muslim cultures, I believe that drawing a parallel with the very stringent requirements for tracing and documenting sources in the hadith (the isnad - 'chain of transmission') would be a good way of validating citation practices. I also think that incoming students should be given practical classes as soon as possible in their university life, and in particular they should include: 1. A pledge not to plagiarise - some research showed that this has a positive effect (McCabe, Donald L., and Linda Klebe Trevino, 1993. "Academic dishonesty: honor codes and other contextual influences." Journal of Higher Education. 64.5.) 2. Training in the use of a citation management software such as Zotero (which is free). Proper use of such software takes most of the drudgery out of citations, and I continue to be amazed by how many students, and certified academics, do not use it. From experience, a little demonstration of the integrated word processing feature has an immediate Wow! factor that convinces some students to use it. Unfortunately, too many seem to think it's too much work. I think that one reason is that the moment when one needs such software the most is also a moment of high pressure to meet deadlines, thus people put it off because of the need to learn to use the software. If all students were required to set up an online Zotero account (for example), at the beginning of their studies, then they would be a lot more likely to use it. I wrote something about cyberplagiarism in Malaysia once, in case anyone's interested: http://julianhopkins.net/distribution/JulianHopkins_Cyberplagiarism.pdf Regards, Julian ++++++++++ Blog: www.julianhopkins.net Twitter: @julianhopkins Skype: julhop -----Original Message----- Message: 2 Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2010 18:20:46 -0400 From: Joseph Reagle <joseph.2008@reagle.org> To: Matthew Bernius <mbernius@gmail.com> Cc: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age Message-ID: <201008021820.47122.joseph.2008@reagle.org> Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="windows-1252" On Monday, August 02, 2010, Matthew Bernius wrote:
Of that entire article, I thought the most provocative and interesting statement (which opens up completely different questions than the majority of anecdotal evidence brought to bear) was this one:
When I read it, I thought to myself either the students are disingenuous, or their education is not serving them well. One of the things one should learn in college is what is appropriate and why. I include the following in all my syllabi [1], but think the issue should also be part of the first year of every student: not necessarily as a task or rule, but understanding how knowledge work is "done." [1]:http://reagle.org/joseph/2007/teaching/bp-bibliography.html ------------------------------