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Do you remember when your third-grade teacher told you to write about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and fully expected you to find and copy the entry from the classroom Encyclopedia Britannica? When, and how, did you learn the difference between copying and paraphrasing?
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<p>Uh, for my older son it was third grade. He had to write a research paper about cold deserts. With a bibliography! (No footnotes though.) They were carefully taught about paraphasing as part of that project.</p>
<p>One solution, might be for the professor to have suggested essay topics that don't lend themselves to cut and paste copying. I also had a professor that had you discuss topics with him. He'd suggest sources and ideas. Long before the internet of course...</p>
<p>When I taught, I used turnitin.com (which is fantastic). I told the students ahead of time that I would be running all papers through it - the panicked looks on their faces, quite frankly, was horrifying as a teacher. I had the students run at least one rough draft through as well as the final draft. When citation issues, etc. came through the system, I sat with the student, discussed why it would be considered plagiarism, and showed them how to fix it. Most times, it was just a matter of them not realizing what they were doing was wrong, so I used it as a teaching tool. However, there were a couple hard core cut-and-pasters that got zeros.</p>
<p>For my straight plagiarizers, that was a load of fun. One time I had to have a parent conference and defend my decision - a conference in which the parent insisted the student just didn't know what was expected (this student actually turned in a printout of an online encyclopedia page - without removing the web address that automatically prints on the top and bottom of the page). For my other instance, the parent called me and demanded I pass the paper or let him redo it, even though the student admitted when confronted that he plagiarized. I referred him to the plagiarism policy I handed out at the beginning of the year. The parent then called the assistant principal, who called me in, where I had to defend my position. She let the grade stand as a zero with no chance to make it up, but only because I had a written policy. I was a pain in the butt. These kids were juniors in high school - please.</p>
<p>For those posters who feel that they should decide when to do the work and when to fake it - just because you justify it to yourself doesn't mean you're right. You passed of something as yours that wasn't. That's unethical, no matter how you split it. What makes you think you know better than the professional, adult teacher that has assigned the paper. I realize that occasionally a teacher assigns worthless assignments, but you don't get to decide. I have never assigned busy work or "worthless" assignments in my life, although at the time my students didn't always agree. I knew why they needed to do it, and I don't listen to any baloney about why so and so is so special he doesn't need to do the stuff mere mortals do. Suck it up, do your work, and be honest. If you think the assignment is so worthless you can't be bothered, have the balls to not do the work at all and explain it to your teachers. Plagiarism is cowardly.</p>
<p>If you really want to be shocked, read the "In The Classroom" forum on The Chronicle of Higher Education. College professors post here about all kinds of stuff that goes on in the classroom, and plagiarism seems to be the biggest pet peeve. Here's the link to the forum</p>
<p>Despseekphd - I really like your approach. My daughter had a paper run through one of those programs and it came back as suspicious. When the teacher went through it it turned out it was the number of quotes she had used (all in quotations and cited). Even though he said the paper was fine but contained too many quotes It really freaked her out and she was in tears. Now she is quite nervous about using quotes - how much is too much. Wish her teacher had used the opportunity as more of a teaching tool and actually sat with the students and shown them where they are going wrong. That would have been a really helpful lesson.</p>
<p>Plagiarism is epidemic in education from K through grad school. I had a course in grad school at a top university in which the prof all but explicitly told us to use specific web sites as sources for papers and himself posted whole chunks from Wikipedia in lecture notes. When I went to the Dean to complain about this (and other things), he told me he thought the students really liked this professor and seemed really surprised. The last I heard he was still on the faculty.</p>
<p>Tools like turnitin.com are a step in the right direction, but they're like putting a band-aid on an arterial bleed. </p>
<p>The main problem is that students, led by some lazy teachers, don't understand that learning is about more than looking up someone else's work and cutting and pasting or, at best, paraphrasing. In 3rd grade, this may have been acceptable, but by 4th grade, we should know better. </p>
<p>I mostly blame teachers for being lazy and not caring whether students' work is original or not.</p>