Comments on: Plagiarism

By: Lisa

Lisa — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 16:06:52 +0000

An effortless way of catching plagiarism from online sources is to google a sentence or phrase from suspicious papers. I discovered eight plagiarized papers that way last semester. The great thing about catching students this way is that there is absolutely no doubt about the plagiarism, which makes it possible to fail students without guilt or worry about complaints or (except in a case similar to that of Gunn’s, of course) lawsuits. Some students at my institution use secondary sources excessively, without quote marks or sufficient attribution; in most cases, these students are simply unaware of the proper way to write a paper. I treat these cases of plagiarism as learning opportunities. That kind of ignorance is not their fault. Some of the above commentators, those which excuse student plagiarism because of the morally questionable nature of the academy, do not adequately acknowledge that students themselves are hurt by their acts of plagiarism. Perhaps the commentators are thinking of the sort of highly qualified and already sufficiently educated sorts of students that attended school along with them, I don’t know; but my students, who come to college underprepared, need the practice that we give them to be ready for future employment or graduate education. They may think that cheating is the easy way out, because writing is very difficult for them. They need ethical education (obviously) but also a institutional framework in which cheating is not clearly easier than addressing their educational deficits. Allowing them to cheat shortchanges them of the education they are often too immature to know they really need.

By: mccoll

mccoll — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 22:32:48 +0000

I taught a course in rhetoric and composition for 2 years at a state university in the US. (I was a TA.) All TAs were given a very general syllabus, which we had to flesh out and teach independently, that required 8 papers over the course of the semester. Out of the 180 or so students I had in those 2 years, I was able to catch and confirm 5 instances of plagerism. One student’s paper wasn’t obviously plagerized, but she complained to me that the grade I gave was lower than the one “my other teacher” gave. Another turned in a paper of much higher quality than previous papers, and when I asked him to tell me more about his interesting topic, it quickly became clear that he didn’t understand many of the words in the essay. I’m certain that many more students plagerized. Perhaps I could have caught more cheaters if I weren’t overworked and underpaid—does anyone have any tips on how to cheat at grading?

By: Another Damned Medievalist

Another Damned Medievalist — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 21:07:33 +0000

There’s also the little problem that all the work is not turned in to the same people. In the US, there are even privacy laws that protect student confidentiality—to the extent that legally, faculty are not allowed to discuss a student’s performance with each other—even if they believe there is a real problem with plagiarism or even (although I’ve seen this one ignored, since there are few protections available) if they feel a particular student may be physically harmful to others. There are some ways of getting around this, I think. I know of one private university that asks faculty to turn copies of all plagiarized assignments and their documentation in to the Dean of Students, who keeps a file. The does help to catch repeat offenders. The legal difference is that private schools can demand that students sign releases of information of this kind to certain school offices if they want to be admitted. Still, if a student only turns in 2-3 papers a quarter, and they all seem to be fairly consistent and don’t show any of the earmarks of plagiarism, I can’t blame the university, and I certainly can’t agree with Teresa Niel Hayden—Gunn was lucky not to have been caught, not cheated because he wasn’t.

By: Giles

Giles — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 19:43:02 +0000

I think alex has a pooint here – the increase in plagarism is tied to the decrease in respect for educational – the sturdent knows that in many cases the course work will be graded by someone looking an answer key i.e. copying not making up their own mind – why should then have any respect just because someontes put a defiintion of plagarism on their sylabbus?

By: Alex Fradera

Alex Fradera — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 19:24:37 +0000

We have declaration sheets on the front of all coursework that counts towards final grade – ‘I confirm the enclosed report is my own work’ etc – and yet this year I’ve had a string of students acting utterly bemused when I’ve called them in, due to large tracts of their reports being identical. I don’t know if this is just a favoured first line of defence: if you act ignorant you get a free pass; general naivety is hard to swallow. The trouble is that if work cannot demonstrably be shown to be copied, it’s a hard position for a teacher to be in, especially, if like me and many other individuals involved in student assessment, you’re a postgraduate with only a year or two of authority behind you. None of our work is currently handed in electronically, so it’s down to strategic allocation of marking to group students who took the same topic to research. Essays, which thankfully do not go toward final grades, we rely on guts and glaring mistakes. But there are no resources to systematically exclude plagiarism. We do our best with a bad situation, and for the onus to be further put on us and excuse the student who does try and milk the system seems plain wrong.

By: HP

HP — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 19:04:31 +0000

At my Canadian institution, each course syllabus is required to have warnings about plagiarism, what constitutes it, and the dire penalties attached. I have yet to take a course that involved any sort of written assignment where we were not informed several times that if we were caught cheating or plagiarizing, there would be no second chances and absolutely no mercy. There has been so much of it in recent years that practically every instructor I have encountered has made a serious effort to outline not only the parameters of what constitutes plagiarism, but also the dire consequences for the student should plagiarism be discovered. If Kent University doesn’t have a similar policy for professors, instructors, and teaching assistants to follow, it should. I think a university is entitled to argue that anyone who displays the stupidity described in not even knowing what is wrong with plagiarism is quite unqualified for its degrees anyway. If you are smart enough to get into college, then you are smart enough to know when you are cheating.

By: E. Naeher

E. Naeher — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 18:24:24 +0000

Like Bryan, I am sufficiently misanthropic and disillusioned with higher education to admire anyone who successfully plays the system. However, I also can’t understand why plagiarism is an issue even to those who still have faith in our educational institutions. What is the purpose of a university—to spit out diplomas with a certain market value, or to educate? If the latter, who gives a damn if a student is idiotic enough to forfeit the education for which he’s paying a significant chunk of change? Of course I’m also opposed to grades in general on the same principal.

By: q

Sun, 06 Jun 2004 12:10:33 +0000

Bryan- Don’t underestimate the fear which you arouse because of your intellectual ability. When you demonstrate the healing and positive benefits of such ability, you will find some key people have an affectionate response.

By: bryan

bryan — Sun, 06 Jun 2004 10:01:47 +0000

“Ah, the argument from entertainment.” ah, the argument that intellectual interest is a form of entertainment combined with the argument that entertainment is a debased activity. If a document is devoid of intellectual interest it is likely to be untruthful, and to be ignored.

By: bryan

bryan — Sun, 06 Jun 2004 09:43:22 +0000

I don’t know that it’s particularly contemptible, that is to say possessed of a higher degree of contemptibility than most things classifiable as contemptible, but the things that arouse my contempt against it are as follows: 1. I have noted in different institutions that constitute the system a tendency to allow a pass to sports figures necessary for the greater glory of the institution. 2. A similar pass can be given to students from wealthy and influential families. 3. It often struck me that students I dealt with in the humanities were less informed about their particular specialty than students in other subjects. This is of course an anecdotal observation, no doubt prejudiced by my not much liking the idea of matriculation in such diverse subjects as philosophy, literature, fine arts, and so on. From the courses I have taken, audited, or observed from without it seems that often the relative importance of making oneself personable to the teacher is greater in such than is the case in courses dealing with more quantifiable subject matters, I make a general causal connection between this observation of the importance of personability and the stupidity of the students where their specialty was concerned. It may be that my contempt on this point is an outgrowth of my general misanthropy (or indeed my contempt on all points), and it may be that I don’t want to make myself personable to any teacher because I have a rather big chip on my shoulder where authority is concerned. Obviously these things can be considered to be problems with individual components of the system, that I see them as hurting the validity of the system itself is probably related to my hierarchical views on realtiy.

By: q

Sun, 06 Jun 2004 02:09:40 +0000

I have no conscience about the matter because I find the U.S educational system contemptible and deserving of being gamed. Bryan- Why is it particularly contemptible?

By: bryan

bryan — Sun, 06 Jun 2004 01:53:06 +0000

That particular essay was 10+ pages long, written in approximately 5 hrs, and it paid $80 which went towards one night at the local punketeria, three hits of really good acid, breakfast at village inn, and also some support of a very nice punk rock girl as my companion. Oh and 7-11 nachos the next day.

By: bryan

bryan — Sun, 06 Jun 2004 01:42:14 +0000

hmm, well I used to sell essays. I have no conscience about the matter because I find the U.S educational system contemptible and deserving of being gamed. Then again I would never have plagiarised anyone else’s work, out of a sense of smug superiority. There is of course a difference between the most commonly encountered form of plagiarism and plagiarism involving content that one has paid for with the understanding that the content is to be passed off as the sole work of the client. I’m smirking sarcastically here if you can’t tell. ‘But if it’s just a suspicion, what are you supposed to do?’ One highly creative solution (and one that was at least as ethical as plagiarism itself) was hit upon by a professor of one of my ‘clients’. The professor was very impressed with some essay I wrote attacking “On the Hypothesis that Animals Are Automata, and Its History” and gave it an high grade. She then changed her mind in the next two days because she had come to the conclusion that my client had not written the essay; this was of course true, but not provable. Given that my client could not have written the essay she was unwilling to pursue the matter and took the lowered grade. The main error was my client’s in not rewriting the essay in her own words. I suppose I also provided a poor service by writing at a higher pitch than the case demanded, prodded by my interest in the subject.

By: agm

agm — Sun, 06 Jun 2004 01:06:04 +0000

At the school where I did my BS, my old boss ignored the school policy of reporting cheaters to the administration because no one in memory has been punished for cheating and plagiarism. Instead we just carefully evaluated, and if more than one section of an exam was the same* as someone else’s, no partial credit was given. Leaving aside that most of those copying still wouldn’t pass after cheating, this is devastating to a course grade, even for the brightest students. While slightly shady, it does an end-run around the circumstances that let students get away with it. * You can easily tell if someone copied more than a quarter of a physics exam when they turn in their work: physical layout of the equations, argument, copying down the original student’s name…

By: clive

clive — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 22:31:30 +0000

The problem I have experienced is that plagiarism is pretty hard to prove. In the course I teach the issue is more one well-written piece compared to three badly-written. And I suppose I could spend hours and hours surfing the net to find the piece they’ve nicked (I’m prepared to spend a few minutes, but otherwise life’s too short). But if it’s just a suspicion, what are you supposed to do?