Plagiarism on blast
mannybolone
Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
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?
Comments
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'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."
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's terrible, really.
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.
gotta love that conviction!
I distinctly recall a classmate handing in a paper when I was in college with the caveat, "My spellcheck was broken".
Hello?
That is too funny.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This website doesn't do anything. It's horrible.