<p>bovertine…</p>
<p>I agree that re-use of ones own work in neither wrong or nefarious outside academia. In scientific research it is the norm as long as one references ones earlier work clearly.</p>
<p>But yes within the walls and ivory towers of academia it is understood to be an intellectually dishonest undertaking…and since its students we are talking about then its academic rules that apply…when in Rome, and all that. :)</p>
<p>Please forgive me if this point has been addressed; I had an ethical lapse and didn’t feel like wading through 180 posts, so here goes:</p>
<p>If this practice isn’t mentioned in the honor code, then there should be no penalty. Period. And frankly, shame on the instructor for an assignment that makes this outcome possible. </p>
<p>If it is mentioned, then the school should give the benefit of the doubt to the student; unless they have every reason to believe the student should know this is a violation.</p>
<p>Is the practice a bad habit, and a needless compromise of one’s quality of education? Of course. Students shouldn’t clone their own work. It’s a teachable moment. But not, on its face, unethical.</p>
<p>La Contra</p>
<p>Okay, I think I sort of agree with what you are saying in both these posts above.
I’m not sure that you would agree with my understanding of your example however.</p>
<p>First, I’m assuming in your example that if the student submitted the exact same papers for both questions they would be punished with substandard grades in both, even if they were not caught, merely because no single paper could adequately satisfy both questions? </p>
<p>If that is true, then is what you are saying that you consider it permissible to merely reword 60-70% of an overlapping assignment to avoid detection, and then basically do the extra 30-40% of work? So basically you are receiving the majority of your grade for the extra 30-40%? Well, I think that I would expect a student to do that too. </p>
<p>As far as the second post, I agree. What I don’t agree with is that any person who doesn’t instinctively know this is either stupid or just fooling themselves (not saying this is your opinion, I don’t know). </p>
<p>I personally would probably just assume this is not something one should do. But I do see a need to spell it out specifically (similar to chnews). And I don’t think we’re alone in this thought.</p>
<p>bovertine…</p>
<p>Yes I do find it highly unlikely that the same questions would appear in separate courses and even if some overly broad, ill defined question was posed, that the same answer would satisfy both courses. </p>
<p>As to whether a reworking of the content of one essay into a latter essay would be permissible, well yes it is permissible.</p>
<p>Those questions I used were from a 2005 MSc International Relations degree.
I actually wrote the essays in the manner I described and received the equivalent of an A in both submissions. Both essays were double marked (in line with school policy) and nobody noticed…but that’s because no one but I could possibly notice.</p>
<p>Lets make one thing clear…
Writing a good essay is the simplest part of academic essay writing.
The Planning required,
The Research involved
The Reading needed
…these are the time consuming and tiring aspects of completing the essay. </p>
<p>This approached saved me valuable research and reading efforts as perhaps 80% of my research material was from the same source.
I obviously only had to read and take the necessary notes once, and use them twice.</p>
<p>The content of the second essay started at perhaps 60% of the original.
When I did cut and paste sections of the first essay they were then edited and reworked.
Examples were used but in different order, with different emphasis, and different language and sentence structure. Sources and reference material was interchanged and varied…</p>
<p>In the end, although I had largely started with the first essay, I ended up with a very different essay for maybe half the effort.</p>
<p>I saved time on research planning and composition.
But spent a lot of time on editing and reworking the text…which is easier and less time consuming than starting from scratch.</p>
<p>Not that you can ever really start from scratch…Take the essay examples above:
I mean once you understand the relationship between ethnocentric human rights and the western liberal democratic agenda based on those same human rights, no matter how many essays you write on the subject, you are never a ‘tabla rasa’ but you are layering and increasing your knowledge…you don’t forget it all to start a new essay.</p>
<p>No, the point is with the student in the OP is that he or she has taken a shortcut on the prep and research but failed to accomplish the required editing and reworking of the second submission so it no longer looks like a copy…</p>
<p>Getting caught here is the problem…these are legitimate ways to lessen your prep work, these are ways to lighten your research load…getting caught out by not polishing your final submission is just lazy and dumb…You can’t submit a paper that appears to largely copies anyone’s work, even your own.</p>
<p>…and as to whether undergrads should instinctively ‘know’ or understand that this action is wrong in the academic world…well probably not.</p>
<p>But I have yet to come across a university that does not make the boundaries clear. In US colleges this is usually in the ‘Honor Code’. In the UK it is made clear in the course handbook for each and every course!</p>
<p>It states what constitutes academic plagiarism
How references are to be attributed and noted.
…and most importantly that each submission must be a specifically original piece of work.</p>
<p>Its going to be in the academic Honor Code or the Course Documents somewhere I assure you.</p>
<p>^^^
Okay LaContra. Very good explanation. I can’t find fault with any of that.</p>
<p>I’m going to force myself to stop looking at this thread now :)</p>
<p>Bookmarked.</p>
<p>What will happen to student’s admission to colleges if this happened in HS senior year? How do colleges look at ‘academic dishonesty’ as disciplinary warning and dropped grade due to that, especially if student was one of the top students with no discipline records before?</p>
<p>Double submission was a violation of the honor code at Oberlin when I attended in the mid-late '90s. </p>
<p>Never would have been inclined to do so not only because I never had problems coming up with paper topics/ideas, but also the fact even the most pre-professional relatives felt this was a form of cheating…cheating oneself out of an education, disrespectful of the learning process, and “cutting corners”. Not allowed…especially if the parents are footing the full bill. </p>
<p>In my mind…this rule is in place to ensure no student has a substantial unearned time advantage over other classmates, to ensure that they’re actually doing the work to merit the graded credits on their final transcript, and to discourage blatant laziness.</p>
<p>Why is it wrong? If assignments are so similar one paper would work and it’s the students own work, why is this wrong?</p>
<p>I am asking seriously</p>
<p>Why is it cheating? The student did the work</p>
<p>It’s a problem because writing papers is part of the learning process. Professors don’t have you write papers for their benefit, lol. Organizing your thoughts and presenting an argument on a topic is a great way of solidifying information in your long term memory.</p>
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<p>When I went to school, a student could repeat a D or F grade and have the new grade replace it in the GPA, but both instances of taking the course and both grades will be shown on the transcript.</p>
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<p>At some schools, foreign language course instructors are aggressive at trying to detect students who should be in higher level courses and dropping them from the beginner course.</p>
<p>Just give him one grade for both classes, he can pick which class gets the graded credit and the other gets the zero. It’s all good.</p>