<p>Another alternative, requiring more creativity and effort on the part of the teacher, is the construction of assignments that don’t lend themselves to plagiarism.</p>
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<p>Such as? Maybe I am not thinking creatively enough, but it seems to me that anything that is written (outside of class) is potentially subject to plagiarism. All majors in my department must write a 25 page research paper in order to graduate. What more creative assignment could we substitute?</p>
<p>I find these automated plagiarism systems interesting…what happens when some snippet you’ve written yourself is out on the internet…does the potential exist that you could plagiarize yourself? Or do the automated systems return exactly where something was lifted?</p>
<p>Stradmom–students can’t find an essay that fulfills all of my carefully constructed assignments on the web. But they can certainly find snippets of this and that which they can stitch together to supplement their own attempts. And they do.</p>
<p>believe me, original assignmetns are my starting place. Wish it ended there.</p>
<p>I don’t want to debate the value of specific assignments. Over the years, I’ve struggled to come up with creative research topics that engage the students and allow them to demonstrate mastery of the material, and I’ve watched my colleagues do the same thing. I’ve personally had little problem with plagiarism (or maybe I’m just oblivious), but it clearly is a growing problem in an era where cut-and-paste is so easy.</p>
<p>Our HS requires Turnitin.com on some papers. My senior is supposedly in his room doing a rewrite of certain Shakespearean odes as an assignment - who knows how that will come across on TII.</p>
<p>Another thing is that even our middle school does not permit Wikipedia as a source. My current 7th grader’s teacher recommended that they read the Wikipedia article on a topic and use ITS sources as starting points for their research.</p>
<p>Many, many years ago my then boyfriend’s most obnoxious cousin was caught plagiarizing in her last year of college. I was SO hoping she’d be expelled as she was a total witch to me, but nothing ever came of it. Years later, my bf told me his cousin had given oral sex to the prof to not turn her in. Those were the days of Animal House, for sure.</p>
<p>Coincidentally, I’m about to report a student who is still under sanction for an earlier incident in my class this semester.(just came across this new paper tonight.) This will apparently be his third offense.</p>
<p>I wish he realized how much his purloined snippets did NOT add up to what the assignment was, not to mention that he can barely write coherent English on his own, and so it’s a bit suspicious when he suddenly sounds like a grad student.It’s a shame, really–he could learn what he needs to, if he was willing to try. Big sigh.</p>
<p>^ Sorry I have to say “if he were willing to try”. Subjunctive tense. :)</p>
<p>I should write drafts for message board comments, apparently. But thanks for the correction. We don’t mostly do that here, but go for it. I’m sure you can find lots of typos in my posts, too!</p>
<p>I’m always wondering how hard it is to find plagiarism if the student involved masters another language extremely well. If the student finds an article in this other language and translates it into proper English, it must be hard for any system to track this form of plagiarism. Computerized ‘translators’ often come up with results that are garbage. Highly likely the student’s translation is so much better and different that plagiarism cannot be recognized. </p>
<p>I’m a non-native English speaker and a non-native resident of country of which I do not speak the language. Sometimes I try Google translator to find out information written on some local websites. The results are ranging from poor to hilarious.</p>
<p>Tai–that’s an interesting thought. Sometimes what makes me question whether a student has copied something is that the writing changes–different word choices, different sentence structure, different tone or voice. If a student takes a passage from another language and translates it into her own words/grammar/voice, then I suspect that you are correct that it would be hard to detect.</p>
<p>^ It also depends on the actual class, not just what TII might detect. In his field, DH knows most of the important works you might use, in several original languages or in translation. And, many wiki-style sites are simply translated into another language, no unusual perspective that could pass for original thought.</p>
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<p>The problem is that there are several ways that students plagiarize. What you are talking about–a student taking someone else’s idea and presenting it as her own–is probably the least of my worries. I teach a social science/humanities subject and I teach only to undergrads, so what I am looking for in students’ papers is not so much original ideas as a discussion that demonstrates a well-developed and thorough understanding of concepts discussed in class, plus intelligent application of those concepts to a new set a facts (new to the student but not new to the discipline).</p>
<p>The Original Poster has vanished…but the topic lives on</p>
<p>…but the topic lives on </p>
<p>Yes, and I think for a reason. The rules are such that the most honest student on planet earth may end up in a nightmare situation because (s)he has forgotten to mention a source.</p>
<p>Shortly after having handed in an essay the coordinator of the department invited my S to come over the day thereafter. The e-mail was very vague; all my son knew was that it concerned his essay. My S couldn’t sleep that night. He checked, re-checked, re-re-checked whatever there was to check. As it turned out he had been asked to come over to pass on some wonderful and totally unexpected news (unexpected as it has probably never happened before).</p>
<p>Here’s the original post:
and now that poster has vanished. Me thinks that poster is the kid who is accused of plagarism, was planning to say it was unintentional, and checking in to get the most credible story for his/her defense. I’m betting your stories are the ones being used in that defense! </p>
<p>Wow, I just realized the poster probably got caught plagarizing in a essay/paper, but now is going to steal your stories… more plagarizing.</p>
<p>You’re right, that was an interesting original post. If it was a parent, perhaps all the discussion has made clear the point that if a student has been suspended, the plagiarism was most likely though unfortunately quite intentional. The overly harsh accusations are clearly very rare, and the well-founded accusations are sadly common. I’d like to add, for any students reading, that the point was well-made in this discussion that intentional plagiarism is very easy to detect, and students are caught all the time. So cite, it’s not that difficult.</p>