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I was accused of plagiarism my first year in college for something that was 100% original work. It worked out fine. I was able to convince the teacher that I was capable of having written the paper, despite his doubts, and that I had in fact written it, and of course having done that I also won a fair amount of respect from him. But it would have been nice if there had been easy ways for him to check obvious plagiarism back then.
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<p>Time also frames this discussion! What did the professors do for several centuries before the advent of the internet, unrestricted PUBLIC forums a la CHE, and new technologies? Are we supposed to assume that students of the generations prior to the last two or three ones were a lot more honest, or are we supposed to assume that the teachers simply were UNABLE to identify plagiarism and other deceptions? Or were the teachers better to rely on their instincts. training, or ... knowledge? </p>
<p>Is there really a difference between a student not hesitating to cut and paste from an online source, or one who would take a trip to the library and photocopy an interesting "source" to claim it as his or her own? </p>
<p>Of course, the reproduction must have been harder with quills and peck and hunt typewriters!</p>