<p>Daughter was assigned a group projects. Members of group decided to research different aspects of topic and each write a section of final paper. Daughter volunteered to combine everyone's section into final draft. While doing so, she need to check source of some material. When she went online to do so, she found one of the group members had essentially cut and pasted her whole section from Wikipedia. That left my daughter with the choice of rewriting the section or confronting the other student.</p>
<p>May I get on my soapbox?</p>
<p>What is wrong with some students? Don't they get it? It's about learning the material, not cutting and pasting yourself into an "A." And do they think professors are so dumb that they don't check papers for plagerism? And in the very basic sense, don't they know Wikipedia is probably not the best source for a research project?</p>
<p>What's really sad about my daughter's experience is that it took place in a class that is required for teacher certification. So we have someone that thinks it is ok to plagerize preparing for a career in education!</p>
<p>Oh, and daughter did suggest to student in question that "some professors may consider cutting and pasting from the internet plagerism." Student didn't even deny it. Just said she was busy with several other papers that were more important.</p>
<p>Accepable ending for the story is that between my daughter and the other student, sections of the report were revised. Of course, not without lots of last minute rewriting on both their parts.</p>
<p>I once taught a graduate course in a school of education. At the time, I was in my mid 30s, and most of the students were older than me.</p>
<p>I only had them do a class presentation and write a ten-page paper. One student, who I believe was transitioning from a criminal justice career to one as a teacher, handed in a paper that he had completely plagiarized.</p>
<p>I'm assuming that since this class is for teacher certification that it is a college class. HS or College, Plagiarism is plagiarism and it's wrong. Good for your daughter, Marlene to catch it before the project was turned in.</p>
<p>Jude, please be respectful on the parents boards. We generally don't slam people when they post or trivalize their concerns if they are sincere.</p>
<p>I taught a high school literature course as an adjunct a few years ago, and caught a student (quite easily, but very regretfully) in what I considered "misdemeanor plagiarism": in a five-page paper, copying a key long paragraph from an internet source and not citing the source or indicating that he had not written it or done the analysis it presented.</p>
<p>The school's faculty took it very, very seriously. Although I was arguing strongly against it, they were initially inclined to give the student a meaningful suspension and to inform the colleges that had already accepted him. Only after a lot of discussion and cross-departmental practice comparisons did they decide that a lesser penalty could be imposed. The whole thing was very unpleasant for everyone.</p>
<p>The student, by the way, was defensive and unapologetic throughout the process, which didn't endear him to anybody. Like most seniors, he was under a lot of stress, and people were worried about him for lots of reasons before this happened. I liked him a lot, and had a lot of sympathy for him, but I also saw what he did as a significant moral failing, and his apparent inability to understand what was wrong with it as an even more significant moral failing. He wound up hating my guts, of course, but that was fine with me.</p>
<p>I've had my work plagiarized, so I can speak from the other side. To have someone claim my original work as their own made me very angry. </p>
<p>As a teacher, I caught plagiarists several times, at three different schools. Every school had a different policy. </p>
<p>One thing I asked my students is whether they would want their house designed by an architect who plagiarized; would they want a surgeon who plagiarized to operate on their heart; a lawyer who plagiarized to defend them in court?</p>
<p>When I was a college newspaper advisor, a student stupidly submitted work that she plagiarized from another student, who happened to be the editor of the section that the plagiarizer submitted the work to.</p>
<p>Not quite the same thing - but sort of. Many moons ago (think key punch cards for computer entry for those old enough to understand - the rest just think stone age) I was part of a multi departmental team testing a new computer program and we had to come up with data to test every weird eventuality of incorrect data to see how the program would handle it. One woman from another dept not only copied my data - she didn't even rewrite it - just wrote over my writing. And it was given to me to check. I was pretty speechless. Our dept had a good laugh over it.</p>
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It's laughable that people who have grown up in this country, attending these same high schools, don't realise how irrelevant to actual learning these exercises are.
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<p>It's sad, to me, that students who have grown up in this country and attended the same high schools and universities I did can't hear it when people tell them that plagiarism isn't an irrelevant issue at all, to them or to others. I hope j-j-jude grows out of his/her cocky, cynical obtuseness before it has more serious consequences for him/her than making him/her look immature.</p>
<p>Please excuse my spelling error. I thought about looking up the plagiarism, but then just got busy. Wish these forums had a spell check.</p>
<p>Having said that, though, your comments suggest you are exactly the kind of student I don't want my daughters to be. You are in school to learn and do the work assigned. whether you think it is irrelevent or not.</p>
<p>And I despise the attitude that as long as you make the grade, how you accomplish it doesn't matter.</p>
<p>Furthermore, I expect my daughters to be kind and considerate to everyone.<br>
That means the highschool dropout coworker as well as the brilliant professor. And being considerate of other people is treating their concerns as important even when you don't agree with them. The gift of intelligence is demeaned by arrogance.</p>
<p>I remember when my D was in high school a person plagarized a section of their senior thesis and as a result failed the course and was not allowed to graduate.</p>
<p>At D's college they take academic integrity very seriously and pagarism will get you a 3 term suspension.</p>
<p>If you use the latest version of Mozilla Firefox to browse these forums, you will have a spell check. I just tried some misspellings as I filled out the form for this reply, and they were all flagged for my review. The correct spelling of "plagiarism" is suggested if I type out your spelling, and then right-click on it. </p>
<p>
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One thing I asked my students is whether they would want their house designed by an architect who plagiarized; would they want a surgeon who plagiarized to operate on their heart; a lawyer who plagiarized to defend them in court?
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<p>I agree with your conclusion that plagiarism is wrong, but I wouldn't use that rhetorical question to convince students of the point. Architects have their own professional process for adapting existing designs into new designs--perhaps the architects who populate this list can comment on this--but if a plagiarized design results in a good house, that is no problem for a home-buyer. I once had occasion to seek out the best surgeon in my town, for an operation my wife needed, and my mom, a surgical nurse, knew exactly whom to recommend. All I wanted to know about him was his skill as a surgeon, not how he prepared his school papers. Most clients of most lawyers want a lawyer who will let them get away with doing what they want, and don't particularly desire morality-in-the-abstract in their attorneys. But, yes, plagiarism is wrong, because it is stealing credit from another worker, and I would come down hard on it as a teacher.</p>
<p>Your frustration is completely on the mark, marlene, imho.</p>
<p>My S' high school required that they, on their own, run each research paper through the online "plagiarism checker" whose name I forget right now. They were to attach the sheet showing their submittal was "all clear" along with their paper.</p>
<p>Seems to me your D's college needs a similar requirement. Sad but true.</p>
<p>May not be a perfect system, but at least it would help prevent students like your D from having to be the plagiarism police and assist someone in re-writing (well, writing for the first time actually :p) another student's work.</p>
<p>j-j-jude, it appears you would not have made it successfully through my son's high school. Here's hoping you won't make it successfully through college if you are approaching your work in the manner you describe here.</p>
<p>What j-j-jude doesn't seem to realize is that most high school and even college assignments are not really about finding information and giving it to the teacher but about reading up on a topic and reformulating the significant ideas and concepts in your own words. It is often the re-formulating that causes learning to happen because writing is always a thinking process --analogous to digestion in the eating process. Digestion makes food usable to your body. Writing in you own words makes information usable to your brain. Plagiarism is regurgitation and not nourishing.</p>
<p>Marlene, the incident with your daughter sounds really pathetic (not on your daughter's behalf of course, but on the other student). I think what jude was trying to say though is that plagiarism isn't as uncommon as parents/teachers/so on like to think, especially in high school (although in your case, it sounds like your daughter is at college). Kids just don't understand that copying something is wrong, and therefore it has profilerated wildly throughout high schools and colleges alike. I know at OU they had a serious plagiarism problem with their engineering department in which a handful of students were not given their diplomas or had them taken away. The professor(s) who judged their portfolios even RECOGNIZED that they plagiarised, but let it slide -- unsurprisingly, that prof was quickly fired.</p>
<p>But it's funny/sad how some of the the members on here are so quick to spread animosity, but not before they denounce it first! The comments aimed at jude saying that he/she would not have made it through high school x or university y is ridiculous. It would be like me saying that the person who made that comment would not pass my high school because they don't know how to form complete sentences. If I ever wrote "May not be a perfect system," in a paper, I would get a F.</p>
<p>The university my daughters attends has a program for submitting papers electronically. As I understand it, papers submitted this way can be screened for plagiarism using the program, should the professor choose to do so. The professor teaching my daughters's class did require the students to submit paper electronically... which begs the question was the other student just betting he wouldn't go through effort of screening papers. This paticular professer had a reputation as relaxed and students were aware he had only a few days to grade papers as he was leaving country as soon as semester was over.</p>
<p>I mentioned to daughter that maybe an honor system at her college would prevent problems with plagiarism. She wasn't sure this would help.</p>
<p>originaloog, can you post or PM me regarding ignore list? I don't know about that feature but obviously I need to. Then I can say bye bye to j-j-jude too!</p>
<p>Someday -- after college -- in the real world -- even brilliant graduates of Cornell wil be asked to do work they think is irrelevant and not worth their time. Hopefully, they will just smile, do their best, and not imply to their boss that such projects are worthless.</p>