<p>Honor codes exist to make sure a student turns in his own work (rather than someone else’s work). Is it his work, yes? Did he use it twice? Yes. </p>
<p>Problem? Not unless the student was warned in advance (verbally or written) that a paper could not be used for two assignments.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The key phrase here is “ask to reprint it.”</p>
<p>It would NOT be right for the magazine to reprint the article without asking for permission.</p>
<p>In the academic examples we’re talking about, we’re talking about students using the same paper twice without asking permission. The situation changes when the students ask permission.</p>
<p>
How does the time disadvantaged student plan around this disadvantage? In my example, by sheer luck, the student had already done the work for his or her class ahead of time. There is no way for the other students to plan for this.</p>
<p>I’m only addressing the time disadvantage issue. With the exception of the double credit issue, I see no difference between this student and a student, by sheer stroke of luck, finds themselves in the position to submit the same paper to two classes.</p>
<p>As far as the time issue only, how is this any differnt than a student who just happened to have an essay about Joyce laying around from a prior class assignment?</p>
<p>eaglemom10, there are quite a few colleges that explicitly prohibit submitting the same paper for two different courses, without the consent of both instructors.</p>
<p>I remarked a long way upthread that I did not think that the college could enforce sanctions against the student if the college did not have a published rule that prohibited it. I am pretty sure that some colleges do not. </p>
<p>I still wouldn’t see it as <em>right,</em> but if the college wanted to prohibit it, the college would need to do so explicitly–the discussion on this thread clearly indicates that there is no general consensus about it.</p>
<p>I have been thinking a bit more about the issue of advantages. I am not an advocate of enforced equality–as in the science fiction story (by Kurt Vonnegut?) where smarter people have to wear headphones that feed them distracting white noise. </p>
<p>There are cases where a student is more mathematically adept, better able to memorize vocabulary, or more familiar with an area, and so will need to spend much less time than other students, to have the same results. Part of the difference involves the issue of the likely knowledge of other students taking the same class. By the time a student reaches college, he/she usually has some idea how good his/her memory is, relative to other students, and how strong his/her gift for language acquisition is. So the student can gauge the likely demands of a course schedule, relative to his/her likely level of effort needed to handle it.</p>
<p>I think that a mathematically adept student should try to rise to his/her level as quickly as possible. I think that a native speaker of a foreign language should not take low-level courses in the language. If the option to move to a higher-level course exists, a student with a strong background in any area should move to that level, in my opinion. This is better for all concerned–better for the strong student in a particular area, and more equitable also.</p>
<p>bovertine, on the basis of the time issue only, I have to admit that there is no difference between having written an essay and socked it away for future use, vs. having an essay that was already submitted for some other course. Still wrestling overall with the challenge that your questions pose to my position–don’t want to move too quickly to writing about <em>legitimate</em> vs. <em>illegitimate</em> advantages.</p>
<p>
I suspect that many professors would not want to accept such a paper (which is one reason I gave this example). That’s because I think that a lot of what’s going on here is that professors feel that the work should grow out of what is learned in the class. I can understand this, but I’m not sure I can really justify it.</p>
<p>But here’s an example that I think would be more problematic. Student takes a music composition class. In the first couple of weeks, they study the writing of fugues. The professor then assigns each student to write a fugue. Student has been writing music for years, and has several fugues in his portfolio–never submitted anywhere. Should he write a new one? It seems to me that he should, but it’s not for reasons of honesty or integrity, exactly.</p>
<p>Well, a lot of good arguments here anyway. Although it may not be evident from my posts, I think my position may have moved a bit from “no big deal, what’s the problem?” to “I can see a reason for this prohibition in many cases.”</p>
<p>I still think the school/journal needs to spell it out. And apparently most do.</p>
<p>Sorry if maybe I got a little snarky up-thread.</p>
<p>I understand (now) that this seems to be prohibited at a number of schools; nonetheless it seems like a non-problem in the real world. All of the arguments about why it ought to be prohibited seem to come down to “getting something for nothing,” and I’m not buying it. Leverage has tremendous advantage in almost every field, and school is no exception. I learned more about calculus in my physics class (which always seemed to be a good two weeks ahead of where we were in freshman calc) than I did in the actual calculus class, and many of the test problems in calc were actually physics problems. It didn’t somehow reduce the number of credits I earned in either class. All my prior stats classes made the econometrics class I had to take a cakewalk, while others sweated bullets. It didn’t reduce my credits. And on and on. </p>
<p>Reusing your own paper isn’t plagiarizing, isn’t stealing, isn’t falsifying data, isn’t stealing a peak at a test ahead of time, or cheating on a test. Those are things that ought to be covered by an honor code. </p>
<p>I’m just not buying that reusing a paper is anywhere similar to these other honor code violations.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t think this is right. It’s not just a question of the college having a published policy. It’s also a question of whether submitting a previously written paper is actually doing the work that’s required for the class; and that depends in large part on the actual assignment. A student who resubmits old work when the assignment clearly calls for new work is engaging in academic fraud, and that’s sanctionable whether or not the college’s rules expressly address that particular form of academic fraud. </p>
<p>As best I can tell, my daughter’s LAC has no explicit written policy prohibiting double-dipping on papers. But I’m pretty confident that such a practice, if detected, would be considered a serious violation of the school’s Honor Code, which says (among other things): “As students we are responsible for proper conduct and integrity in all of our scholastic work. We must follow a professor’s instruction as to the completion of tests, quizzes, homework, and laboratory reports, and must ask for clarification if the instructions are not clear.”</p>
<p>Now, suppose a student takes a class with a syllabus containing the following assignments:</p>
<p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>I think it’s absolutely clear from the language and context of these assignments that this professor is not merely asking that a major paper be submitted, but that the student is required to actually WRITE an original major paper for the class, which can either grow out of one of the shorter weekly papers or “advance completely new ideas” involving “extended discussion of any element of the course.” The professor also expects to be involved in supervising the development of the paper; he lays out a schedule for submission of rough drafts, a process incompatible with resubmission of a previously completed paper. I don’t think there’s any ambiguity about the assignment; and I don’t think anyone could fairly read this and think submission of a previously written paper pulled out of a file drawer or a computer hard drive comes close to satisfying the requirements for the course. And if there IS any question about what the professor wants and expects, the burden is properly on the student to request clarification of the assignment, instead of creatively and deliberately misconstruing the assignment to authorize resubmission of previously written work. In such a case, I think it would be entirely fair for my daughter’s LAC to take disciplinary action against a student who resubmitted previously written work, based on the general language in the honor code and the deliberate misreading of the assignment.</p>
<p>The sample syllabus I’ve quoted here isn’t atypical. Students KNOW that when a professor assigns a paper, she’s not just saying “submit a paper,” she’s saying “WRITE a paper,” and submitting a previously written paper doesn’t satisfy the latter requirement. It’s disingenuous, or willful self-deception, to pretend otherwise. And if it’s not clear, it’s the student’s responsibility to ask for clarification. I guarantee that if they do, the professor will say “No!” to resubmission of previously written work every time, unless there’s an agreement that the student will revise the previously written paper in such a substantial way that the revisions are roughly equivalent to a new paper.</p>
<p>bclintonk, I have stated clearly that I think it would be wrong for a student to submit the same paper in two classes. When it comes to honor codes, I favor Caltech’s: “No member of the Caltech community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the community.” Although I am not connected in any way with Caltech, I think this would rule out the double submission.</p>
<p>In the example syllabus you quoted, the directions start out with "Write . . . " This makes the expectation clear. However, if the syllabus just lists “Weekly seminar papers” and “Final paper,” and if the university has no explicit rule against multiple submissions, and if it is a public university, then I stand by what I wrote before: Unwritten rules of this type are not enforceable in those circumstances. It doesn’t matter that the unwritten rule is consistent with what I think is right.</p>
<p>The posts on this thread make it clear that well-meaning people have different views about this issue. That by itself would make an unwritten rule unenforceable, in this case. Written rules are in an entirely different category.</p>
<p>^ I stand by what I said. Unless they’re deliberately deceiving themselves, students know that when a professor assigns a paper, she doesn’t just mean “turn in a paper,” she means “write a paper.” And if it’s not clear, it’s the student’s responsibility to ask, and the answer will be, “Of course you can’t just turn in a previously submitted paper; don’t be ridiculous. Now if you want to do some major revisions or extensions on a previously submitted paper, that’s something we can reasonably talk about.”</p>
<p>Sometimes I wonder, what is the purpose of the college paper??
<p>What’s the answer(s)?</p>
<p>In many classes that just require tests it can be pretty easy to already know much iof the material if you read a lot or went to an advanced high school. Today you can test out of many classes that might have required papers and never have to do any to get the credits. Is that fair?</p>
<p>^ barrons,</p>
<p>As an academic who regularly assigns and grades papers, I’d say the purpose of a paper assignment is to get the student to:
<p>Believe it or not, most academics I know are far more interested in teaching than in testing. The point of a paper assignment is NOT to test what the student knows. It is to require the student to do some structured intellectual work that advances the student’s skills and knowledge. The evaluative part of that exercise is secondary, at best; and even within the evaluative part, the principal concern is to give the student detailed written feedback with the aim to improve the student’s capacity going forward. It’s ALWAYS harder and more time-consuming to grade papers than to grade exams, because grading papers requires so much more individuation and attention to detail. The only reason a professor would assign a paper in lieu of, or in addition to, an exam is the belief that the paper serves a valuable pedagogical purpose or purposes, like those outlined above. And those pedagogical purposes are utterly defeated by re-submission of old work. That makes re-submission an inherently fraudulent practice.</p>
<p>When students are asked to submit an original piece of work for an assignment it is expected that it is original not only inasmuch as it is the students own work but that it is an original piece for the task provided.</p>
<p>Original refers not only to the author but to the effort vis-a-vis the question.
Simply refashioning an existing paper to fit a similar question is not quite on par with plagiarism (self) but is a recognised form of intellectual laziness and dishonesty.</p>
<p>In our Humanities department the papers involved would be marked out of a best mark of 70%. Thus the student gains a grade but cannot receive outstanding (or even very good mark probably) but avoids the heavier sanction of a zero.</p>
<p>Here’s another little thought experiment. A university offers a course in Introductory General Psychology, and a specialized follow-up course in Abnormal Psychology.</p>
<p>An instructor teaches both courses, and assigns a paper on the topic of “Schizophrenia” in both courses.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Should an identical paper receive an identical grade in both courses? Or should the instructor expect different levels of performance and grade the two papers differently- Because one would assume that if the professor were doing their job, the paper in the abnormal psych course should approach the subject from different angles and more in depth than a paper in the other course. To me an identical paper receiving an identical grade in these courses is an example of laziness on the part of the instructor.</p></li>
<li><p>If the instructor does not review and grade the papers to this standard, are they guilty of “defrauding” the student? Because let’s remember that with respect to the pecuniary arrangement, the money flows from the student to tthe professor, at least at some level. Not the other way around.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>and finally,
3. Is it common for two supposedly different courses at a university to approach the same subject from exactly the same point of view and at exactly the same expected level of specificity? To me, that’s a waste of the student’s time and money. That subject matter should be eliminated from one of the courses to make room for new material.</p>
<p>^^^Let’s change those courses to Developmental Psychology and Diagnostic Psychology, to make the distinction clearer. (I think those are possible course names. I’m no psychologist,)</p>
<p>
I think the first and last sentences of this are telling. I can understand that professors feel they are being treated with disrespect if they are given old work, and they have to spend all that time grading it. Of course, all of those pedagogical purposes–except maybe for “exercising”–could be met by writing the same paper for two classes. But bclintock, for you to refer to this practice as “fraudulent” suggests that you think you, the professor, are being defrauded. I just don’t think you’ve made the case that there’s anything “fraudulent” about this, unless it’s clearly forbidden and somebody does it anyway.</p>
<p>By the way, how would you respond to the example I gave above–you assign a paper on Joyce, and a student tells you he wrote a paper on Joyce on his own over the summer. Would you accept it, or would you make him write a new paper?</p>
<p>The case of a double submission being ‘fraudulent’ relies less on the specific professors being defrauded but rather that the student is defrauding the academic record by simply not doing the amount of work required.</p>
<p>If one thinks that such an approach is ‘clever’ or ‘imaginative’ then perhaps it is in the way exotic financial instruments on Wall Street are clever and imaginative but I would suggest there are many ways to ‘play’ the system when the student leaves college and gets a job.</p>
<p>Perhaps one could look at it this way…?</p>
<p>It would be extremely rare that two identical questions were offered in two separate courses and that a single unedited paper could be successfully submitted to cover both courses, so what we are probably discussing are two papers with similar subject matters and themes. If this is the case then the student hasn’t even taken the time to edit, re-jig, alter, adapt, revise, and rephrase the original piece and at best the student has simply cut and pasted large sections whole, to the extent that the 2 submissions are not identical but easily identifiable as being derived from a single piece of work.</p>
<p>If you don’t want to censure the student for the double submission, perhaps you should censure the student for being too stupid to execute what should be a fairly simple time saving short cut.</p>
<p>Lets face it, with the real work having been done in the first paper, the second paper required less planning, little research, obviously less critical thinking and less actual writing time… But this student was too lazy to even edit and revise the second submission so as to make it discernible from the first.</p>
<p>Don’t punish the student for academic dishonesty then, punish the student for rank stupidity instead.</p>
<p>
Or maybe it is clever in the way people reuse work in real life in not so nefarious ways.</p>
<p>Maybe it is clever in the way object oriented programmers specifically program reusable classes, objects and methods, and how I would have been ridiculed and likely failed my computer courses had I not done so.</p>
<p>Or maybe it was like my electronic design courses and labs, where, for example we first built a DC power supply, then were instructed to use that supply to power amplifiers and filters, which we also reused in later projects. I designed a phase-locked loop in a junior level design class that I reused for my senior project. Everyone did similar things. The professor would likely have laughed in our faces if we asked if that was permissible.</p>
<p>My buddy has about 10 patents for drug delivery mechanisms. He tells me it is startling how little people have to change to get new patents, and that they are not only allowed to patent relatively minor changes, but that they are ordered by their employer to do so. I’m not sure if that is true, but I don’t see why he would lie to me.</p>
<p>It is only in some places that redoing work to address the overlapping assignments is considered noble. As I’ve stated ad nauseum, I understand it is verboten is certain areas of academia. But let’s not pretend it is obviously inherently immoral or stupid.</p>
<p>bovertine</p>
<p>Regarding your Psychology though experiment.</p>
<p>As I wrote earlier, I think that the likelihood of exact questions in separate courses would be extremely rare. The only example I can think of where identical papers could be submitted would not be as an answer to an essay question but if the separate submissions were Case Studies, where the student formulates the question, submits the question for approval and then writes the Study. There a student could then have the opportunity to submit the exact same question, and answer, to separate professors. </p>
<p>But in set essay questions a professor would expect different arguments and differing depth of analysis coming from the course material.</p>
<p>If the professor failed to review and grade appropriately then its not a matter of the professor ‘defrauding’ the student but the professor simply not doing his job to the standard required by the school (there is no legal relationship between the professor and the student for a ‘fraud’ to occur, as I said earlier, the student could be said to ‘defraud’ the academic record, not the professor). Colleges have a review system to handle marking queries and adjudications. </p>
<p>I don’t think your third point about similar content in separate courses being a wast of time is an issue. As I wrote above it is possible that examples, text, and argument structure could, in large part, be cut and pasted from one essay to another even though the actual essay titles were different.</p>
<p>Here is an example of 2 essay questions in two different courses in a recent Political Science/International Relations Degree.</p>
<p>Theories of Securitisation: (A mandatory Core Topic)
Q. Critically discus the proposition that Human Rights are ethnocentric.</p>
<p>and from an Elective Topic in the same degree path…</p>
<p>Conflict, Security, and Development:
Q. Is there such a thing as Liberal Imperialism?</p>
<p>Now at face value these are 2 different essay questions with 2 different answers but in reality, if I’m smart, I can cut and paste maybe 60-70% of either essay and utilise the core arguments and examples of either essay in both.</p>
<p>Of course I have to be smart enough to edit and revise the language and not just cut and paste whole identical chunks of text. …Failure to do so leading to, I figure, how the student got caught. :)</p>
<p>Example:</p>
<p>Liberal Imperialism would be defined as the coercive manipulation of states onto the agenda of western liberal democracy through agents such as IMF, ICC, World Bank, the UN, and NGO’s, in pushing for universal human rights, transparent democratic governance, and free markets. The keystone of the Liberal agenda (some would say imperialism) is Universal Human Rights.</p>
<p>The second topic asks whether Human Rights are ethnocentric and a product of the western liberal mindset and thus not universal…The arguments and possible examples could be the same in both essays </p>
<p>If I agreed in essay 1 that there WAS such a thing as Liberal Imperialism I would base my arguments and examples on the fact that Human Rights are a construct of western liberal thinking and not universal, the same argument and possible examples as required for essay 2</p>