This is a bit long. In answer to the last question first -- if a student downloads *anything* and turns it in for an assignment, I expect them to tell me where they got it. In most cases, I would only allow them to use material from online if they were also analyzing that material and writing something additional about that material. Purchase College has recently rewritten their plagiarism policy in response to a perceived increase in the amount of plagiarism in classes. In my Classical Social Theory class last semester, 4 out of 40 students turned in papers that included some plagiarized material. (In one case, half the paper was downloaded uncredited from a website; the others included less material, and one student credited some websites and not others.) The semester before that, in my Computers and Culture class, I also had four plagiarized submissions (2 from the same person) out of only 25 students. In that group, most were entire downloaded papers, some with slight alterations. One was a Salon.com article! To discourage this, and to make it easier for me to spot instances of plagiarism (as well as for other pedagogical reasons), I structure my classes so that students do several writing assignments over the course of the semester. I almost never assign "library research" topics or traditional "term papers." As part of each assignment, which they receive in writing, I require that they use (quote from or reference) a set number of readings from the course, usually at least three. A typical assignment has them gathering original data of some sort (doing an interview, looking at a website) and then analyzing their data using the readings and theories presented in class. I usually have them turn in their original materials as well. (For instance, in my popular culture class, they just did analyses of magazine advertisements and attached the ads they analyzed to the paper.) In the case of Classical Social Theory, I paired each classical work (by Durkheim, Weber, and Marx) with a modern work which used that theoretical perspective. These strategies generally prevent my students from finding entire papers which meet the criteria of the assignment. Any paper which fails to complete the requirements of the assignment, fails to cite class materials, or has very different writing styles in differen portions of the paper, sets off my plagiarism "alarm" and I start doing online searches for material from the paper. (If you would like tips on this, feel free to ask, but I don't do anything fancy -- I just use search engines.) Purchase College does not have fraternities. At UC Davis, where I taught previously, we had a problem with fraternity "paper banks." Those can be harder to catch unless you regularly vary your class assignments in some way. Individually-tailored papers, which can be purchased online, would also be harder to catch, but I don't believe most of my students have the financial resources to devote to that -- I guess if they do, I don't know it! I will be interested to hear what experiences other people are having with this. ___________________________________ Lori Kendall Assistant Professor of Sociology Purchase College-SUNY lori.kendall@purchase.edu
Bradley's university-wide policy can not be ammended by individual professors. If a student is accused of plagiarism, a report must be filed with our judicial system. The student can get a "0"/ "F" on the assignment, but not in the course (unless the loss of points leads to an overall low % and earned failure). The faculty member would expect to be asked for proof. I had a student sub in an entire paper last year. He flunked the assignment. I caught him by reading the paper, deciding that it wasn't student work, and searching for it. Found it right off. I spin assignments (never the same one twice); I make my assignments very specialized to my course (making it somewhat difficult to use foreign/imported/lifted stuff) and I grade very carefully. "The trouble" isn't much worse, from my experience, than it was "before." In fact, I think it's generally easier to catch cheaters now than it was before search engines. I gave up spending long nights in the library trying to track down obscure references . . . the kids would just come back with "well, I found that at the library AT HOME" . . . and I was pretty much outta luck. One addition: our students are increasingly worse at differentiating between quality information and junk (let alone between good and bad research). [all undergrads here] peace Edward Lee Lamoureux, Ph. D. Associate Professor, Speech Communication and Multimedia Editor, Journal of Communication and Religion Bradley University Peoria IL 61625 ell@bradley.edu http://hilltop.bradley.edu/~ell Fax: 309-677-3446
The discussion of "Plagiarism" is of course, the debate around Napster brought home to us academics. Need I say to Internet researchers that the Internet combined with digital technologies brought about the capacity for the more or less effortless, costless, (and with more or less perfect verisimilitude), reproduction and universal distribution of information encoded as data--texts being no less subject to such opportunities as is music or video or any other digitally encodable information form. But this is mechanics, and unfortunately most of the discussion concerning "plagiarism" in academia in general (and on this list) seems to be on the level of mechnanics. However, doesn't all this discussion about various mechanical ways of capturing the plargiarizing miscreants say some interesting things about the state of academe where: * student assessment is so ritualized and depersonalized that digitally encoded performances (e.g. student essays/reports) can be substituted one for the other (apparently seamlessly) subject only to mechanical (policing) review * essay topics are of such timelessness that they allow for such subtitution/insertion across time and space * assessments are of student presentation/re-presentation of infinitely reproducible (and in a digital age) completely depersonalized "information" rather than the rather more context (and individual) specific "knowledge". Surely what is important is that students can construct a useful argument, judiciously select and cogently deploy information from the infinite information warehouse on the Net (or elsewhere) rather than find this or that clever way of restating (in their own words) whatever is the content of the subject they are discussing. I teach something called "Knowledge Management" to graduate IS and Management students and among the tenets of KM is that knowledge is collaborative, it grows with use, and that it derives much of its meaning/value from its context. Personally (and here I am speaking completely for myself and not for my Faculty or University), I am less concerned with "plagiarism", understood as the simple reproduction of the words of others than I am with how well these words fit within the context of the matter (essay, exercise, etc.) under review and whether there is an implicit or explicit claim that the words are those of the author e.g. whether there is a referencing of included text. My assumption is that given the availability of Google and the Net, the inclusion of the text of others (where suitably referenced) is not only inevitable, but desireable--not much that students can usefully say about a lot of topics without it. In fact, I see a direct link between the caliber of responses from those students who understand how to use the Net/Google effectively to accumulate their information and construct their answer as knowledge, as compared to those students who don't make such use. In the medium or longer term there would appear to be no technical means for controlling the infinite reproduction and distribution of digitally encoded music and image (read video) at least this side of a more or less total breakdown of the Net/personal computing as we currently know it (see the discussion around Hollywood's Internet anti-piracy proposals and the TechLords responses re: the Hollings bill); so I see no way of controlling "plagiarism" even in the short run, short of devoting vast resources of time, money and energy to this unproductive end and turning us all into Junior detectives/policemen in the process. Just as for the "Napster" issues IMHO the time and resources spent on chasing plagiarists (read Napster/Freenet/Morpheus etc.etc. pirates) would be better spent figuring out how this new medium changes the nature of the messages it is carrying and their larger cultural/institutional contexts and adapting our teaching activities and approaches (and business models) to these new opportunities. Mike Gurstein
participants (3)
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Ed Lamoureux -
Kendall, Lori -
Michael Gurstein