Plagiarism on blast

mannybolone

I know we have a few teachers in the mix here...let me ask something:I've caught three students (out of 70), this semester, plagiarizing major parts of their papers, if not their entire paper (add to this at least 2-3 cases last semester). That's more than ALL the cases of plagiarism I experienced in my years TAing in grad school. I don't know if it's a difference of institution (i.e. where I am now, compared to where I was) or technology on both sides - i.e. more paper mills to cheat with, more ways of catching cheating - but it blows my mind how many students are trying to get away with it (and I'm sure, in a few cases, they probably have and I didn't catch it). Is the innanet to blame? Declining student ethics? Blue moon? Anyone else run into this? Motown? Big Stacks? Et al?

twoply

Could be pure laziness. A lot of people like to procrastinate and when a big paper is due, someone is bound to try a shortcut or two. When I edited the school paper I caught three people in two terms plagiarizing entire paragraphs, sometimes nearly whole articles, from other news sources.

drewnice

I'm half way through a marketing certificate at Wharton and one of the guys in my group for a final project turned in 3 pages of his contribution to our paper, almost all of which were a variety of paragraphs copied and pasted from blogs about our assigned book to review. Then he refused to rewrite it and said he only intending to "rephrase" some of the content. This is an adult in his late 20s with a kid.

The professor was pretty unfazed by his behavior, saying that not only is plagiarism becoming more of an issue in beyond higher education, but that she thinks people don't have a clear enough understanding of exactly what plagiarism really means anymore, especially when it involves the internet. She encourged us to give him a second chance and he still didn't really put the stuff in his own words.

DrJoel

One of my favorite professors from college is a film critic in Philly. He's done write ups, been on radio, been on TV, the whole nine. He told us one day that he was grading reports and came across a few sentences that seemed really really familiar to him, but he couldn't figure out why. It bugged him enough to type them in a search engine.....as it turns out he had written them while reviewing a film several years earlier.



I'll also add just to give a broader picture of how great this guy is. Within minutes of the first film class i ever took with him came the proclamation, "Citizen Kane is the greatest movie of all time. If you don't think so, f#$! you."

mannybolone

I'm half way through a marketing certificate at Wharton and one of the guys in my group for a final project turned in 3 pages of his contribution to our paper, almost all of which were a variety of paragraphs copied and pasted from blogs about our assigned book to review. Then he refused to rewrite it and said he only intending to "rephrase" some of the content. This is an adult in his late 20s with a kid.

The professor was pretty unfazed by his behavior, saying that not only is plagiarism becoming more of an issue in beyond higher education, but that she thinks people don't have a clear enough understanding of exactly what plagiarism really means anymore, especially when it involves the internet. She encourged us to give him a second chance and he still didn't really put the stuff in his own words.

I don't get her last point: that some how, our "definitions" of plagiarism have changed so that things are "ambiguous." How is cutting and pasting from an internet site that different from cutting and pasting from a book? The main difference is that it's so much easier but that doesn't seem to muddle definitions...ethics maybe.

I'm really blown that your classmate was so blase about it...actually, I'm more amazed that your professor was so blase about it. And people wonder why there are so many people in business with poor ethics!

deej

zero tolerance for that laziness

o-dub, how did you catch these dudes? Was it just a google search?

If you're going to be lazy man up and do what we did in high school, fill in the middle of your outline with Doritos ingredients.

TrueStu

Back in '96 when I was a freshman in college I loaned a friend (who really struggled with writing) a paper I'd written about affirmative action for an english class - I loaned it to him because he was struggling with an assignment and I was trying to show him how to structure an argument and organize his ideas (he was in a provisional program trying to get into the school). I found out later he turned it in as his own work. The prof immediately knew he didn't write it. He was kicked out of the University. He never went back to college.

djanna

I'm seeing the same thing with my kids- one student, who can barely put together a coherent sentence turned in a reading log with the phrases: "Paris is both an exciting and dangerous place to visit. The capital of France is one of the most heavily populated cities in Europe". For contrast, his previous reading log entry read: "It's good".

He lied when I asked him if it was copied and didn't fess up until I threatened to have a meeting with mom and the principal to "investigate".

From Special Ed classrooms to the halls of academia- 'tis a plague upon us!

canonical

I TA a few courses for engineering students and practically 50% of them copy off each other. It's a tough thing to prove, since there is usually only a few ways to solve a problem, and therefore everyones paper looks similar. However, it's the ones with the same ridiculous errors that are suspicious.

We can't do anything though so we have to let it slide.

Swayze

Kids who do plagerism are . And when your in highschool, the teachers don't really care (the majority) so they don't really care if you do it and just give you an 80 or 90. Schitt is unfair. Things gotta change.

DrJoel

I TA a few courses for engineering students and practically 50% of them copy off each other. It's a tough thing to prove, since there is usually only a few ways to solve a problem, and therefore everyones paper looks similar. However, it's the ones with the same ridiculous errors that are suspicious.

We can't do anything though so we have to let it slide.

Towards the end of college for me a lot of the professors had us sending the actual file to this website and it did a search through the whole paper to see if something was quoted incorrectly or just straight ripped off. It's been a few years, but i think it wouldn't accept a paper unless it passed a certain percentage or something like that.

mannybolone

zero tolerance for that laziness

o-dub, how did you catch these dudes? Was it just a google search?

If you're going to be lazy man up and do what we did in high school, fill in the middle of your outline with Doritos ingredients.

Deej,

There's a system called Turnitin.com that maintains a massive database of papers that instructors can check student papers again. It's not a bad system, probably the most widely used, but of course, it can't catch everything.

I had one student who turned in a paper that was clearly YEARS beyond her ability to have written but turnitin couldn't find anything. She purchased it from a paper mill. However, as "luck" would have it, the article she ripped off (in total) ended up being posted to the internet and thus, was google-able.

Catching fraudulent papers isn't as hard as catching papers that clip paragraphs EXCEPT in those cases where students didn't bother to CHANGE THE FONT of where they were cutting and pasting from.

It really blows your mind sometimes.

mannybolone

Back in '96 when I was a freshman in college I loaned a friend (who really struggled with writing) a paper I'd written about affirmative action for an english class - I loaned it to him because he was struggling with an assignment and I was trying to show him how to structure an argument and organize his ideas (he was in a provisional program trying to get into the school). I found out later he turned it in as his own work. The prof immediately knew he didn't write it. He was kicked out of the University. He never went back to college.

Wow - what school is that?

Much as I hate plagiarism (or academic cheating in general), I'd never try to have a first-time offender kicked out of school for it (fail them for the class though? Sure). I just don't like punitive measures that, in the long run, don't really benefit anyone. Scaring the crap out of them can be an effective means of getting them to stay honest however.

spelunk

My instinct tells me that a big part of it is the difference of institution, but I have no real evidence to back that up. I know when I was going to UC San Diego they were dead serious about plagerism, and the freshman writing course tried to frighten people into never plagerizing (they even made us submit all papers to a website that checked them against online sources & other similar papers). Here in Santa Cruz I didn't get beaten over the head with it, but lower-division teachers did warn us.

I really have no clue though, I've never personally known other students who plagerize, but I like to think I wouldn't be kickin it with such clowns in the first place. It is scary how many students do not know how to write, and are unable to edit their own work because they have no sense of what constitutes a clear and well written sentence. The effects of California's poor K-12 education system become glaringly evident when people get to college.

mannybolone

It is scary how many students do not know how to write, and are unable to edit their own work because they have no sense of what constitutes a clear and well written sentence. The effects of California's poor K-12 education system become glaringly evident when people get to college.

It's terrible, really.

TrueStu

Back in '96 when I was a freshman in college I loaned a friend (who really struggled with writing) a paper I'd written about affirmative action for an english class - I loaned it to him because he was struggling with an assignment and I was trying to show him how to structure an argument and organize his ideas (he was in a provisional program trying to get into the school). I found out later he turned it in as his own work. The prof immediately knew he didn't write it. He was kicked out of the University. He never went back to college.

Wow - what school is that?

Much as I hate plagiarism (or academic cheating in general), I'd never try to have a first-time offender kicked out of school for it (fail them for the class though? Sure). I just don't like punitive measures that, in the long run, don't really benefit anyone. Scaring the crap out of them can be an effective means of getting them to stay honest however.

The University of Texas at Austin.

To be honest with you, I don't know for sure if they kicked him out or if he stopped going to classes. I heard he was kicked out (I've never talked to him about it). Since it was a provisional program he was in, if he failed a class he didn't get into the University - So I think either way he was fucked.

Deejay_OM

I'll also add just to give a broader picture of how great this guy is. Within minutes of the first film class i ever took with him came the proclamation, "Citizen Kane is the greatest movie of all time. If you don't think so, f#$! you."

gotta love that conviction!

faux_rillz

It is scary how many students do not know how to write, and are unable to edit their own work because they have no sense of what constitutes a clear and well written sentence. The effects of California's poor K-12 education system become glaringly evident when people get to college.

It's terrible, really.

I distinctly recall a classmate handing in a paper when I was in college with the caveat, "My spellcheck was broken".

Hello?

Young_Phonics

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Controller_7

where students didn't bother to CHANGE THE FONT of where they were cutting and pasting from.

It really blows your mind sometimes.

That is too funny.

rootlesscosmo

S

T

O

P


S

N

I

T

C

H

I

N

G

!

!

!

oldjeezy

The place I went to library school issued a well-defined statement warning about how to avoid plagarism. They supplied examples of do's and don'ts. Basically, everything needs proper attribution. Even just a concept or idea should mention the source, ANY quotes or phrases need to be cited in the bibliography or footnotes. I certainly didn't learn this from high school.

So I blame the schools. But even if the students are properly instructed on how to right a paper, there are always lots of folks who will cheat. Yes, they do go on to head corporations and governments.

ariel_calmer

Plagiarism is completely rampant in upper education and it's upsetting. I have no idea what it stems from, but it's completely unacceptable. If I had to hazard a guess, maybe it is related to google, but I think it's more linked to the work ethic of students. They really think they have it hard, but are unwilling to take risks, or even spend a few hours in the library. Try to get an undergraduate to read more than, I don't know, 40 pages in a week for a class. You will either get a barrage of complaints or a classroom of students, half of whom haven't even looked at the text. The text is value-less to them. So it's not a big surprise that when the time comes for them to formulate their own ideas through writing, they consider text fair game for theft.

My wife currently teaches and I've taught a bit as well. The stories I could tell, not just of students stealing text, but code and images.

For instance, I taught Flash for a few semesters. I tried to get students to realize why not everything you can google up is fair game for putting in a project. Why it's important that, if we're teaching principles of software development, that submitting code that isn't your own is, well, not acceptable for course credit.

I went over this multiple times. Beat a dead horse. Each semester I got multiple infractions on the FINAL PROJECT.

My wife has had students try to submit pictures in a photography class.... which they took and scanned from other students. And then they had the gall to deny it. These were adult undergrads.

white_tea

Flunk them. Maybe it's not worth it to kick them out of school, but the least you can do is give them a nice stain on their report card and, perhaps, require them to retake the class next semester.

spelunk

My wife has had students try to submit pictures in a photography class.... which they took and scanned from other students. And then they had the gall to deny it. These were adult undergrads.

You would think that with something as enjoyable as photography they might have fun with the assignment

My beef with all of this is that if you are in college, you should want to learn and work on your skills, and at least make the best out of the situation, if not enjoy it. Otherwise you are pretty much in school just because a) your parents want you there b) people with college degrees get paid more or c) a dingbat severely lacking in motivation. So many students describe the academic elements of college as a burden, like they would describe having to get up and work a crappy job. Shit is a fucking privilage, and if you don't believe that then talk to the people who can't afford it, or who are working hard trying to support themselves in school, taking out student loans and such.

Plagerism is pretty much the ultimate slap in the face to any academic institution that takes itself seriously.

motown67

I have seen plagarism at all different levels. Many high school students plagarize because their teachers simply don't care. In Oakland, all seniors have to complete a senior project research paper in order to graduate. The system is completely screwed up with little motivation or oversight, so as long as the kids turn in a paper, even if it is completely plagarized, teachers will take it.

I have also run into it in college. In order to graduate from my program you had to take this class that required 3 15+ page research papers and 3 power point presentations on them. This one girl printed up a paper that not only had 3 inch margins, but were cut and pastes of newspaper articles from the 1970s that said, "Today in Kenya there was shooting on the border with ..." I was her advisor and told her she had to re-do her paper. She turned in almost the SAME thing, and then tried to do it for her next 2 papers as well.

In all cases, if I find kids even paraphrasing on class assignments I make them re-do it. Everything has to be in their own words.

sabadabada

I thought cutting and pasting without citing references was the order of the day around this place. It's hard to see you guys having a titty attack over this when you do it all the time.

ariel_calmer

My wife has had students try to submit pictures in a photography class.... which they took and scanned from other students. And then they had the gall to deny it. These were adult undergrads.

You would think that with something as enjoyable as photography they might have fun with the assignment

Exactly. Some will even plagiarize an artist statement. All you have to do in an artist statement is write a creative page or two on why you create art. Ridiculous.

yuichi

Has anybody on this board ever been caught plagarizing?

ariel_calmer

I thought cutting and pasting without citing references was the order of the day around this place. It's hard to see you guys having a titty attack over this when you do it all the time.

You can't be serious. This is an Internet message board, not a classroom. There's a world of difference between what goes on here and submitting your own work for an assignment, essay, or article.

Mad Drama Teacher

zero tolerance for that laziness

o-dub, how did you catch these dudes? Was it just a google search?

If you're going to be lazy man up and do what we did in high school, fill in the middle of your outline with Doritos ingredients.

Deej,

There's a system called Turnitin.com that maintains a massive database of papers that instructors can check student papers again. It's not a bad system, probably the most widely used, but of course, it can't catch everything.

This website doesn't do anything. It's horrible.