<p>Maybe it is more the case that mores have changed. When I was in college, students dating TAs or faculty members was considered neither inappropriate nor unusual. I have several friends who ended up marrying that way. </p>
<p>Today that kind of dating could get a faculty member rather quickly terminated or admonished. </p>
<p>The act hasn’t changed, but our view of it has markedly changed. </p>
<p>I suspect that many of us are applying the mores about papers that were applicable and appropriate from our own experiences, and clearly there have been some changes since then.</p>
<p>I know this is semantics – but multiple submissions is not plagiarism, and the colleges aren’t calling it plagiarism. At some schools, it’s considered cheating.</p>
<p>As I already said, in the world of journalism it wouldn’t be kosher to fulfill an assignment by submitting the exact same article for payment to two different magazines/newspapers at the same time. Unless both publications gave you permission to do that, and only if their circulation didn’t overlap.</p>
<p>Question: In the business world, if Kelloggs and General Mills asked a consultant for marketing recommendations for their cereals, would it be OK to give both companies the exact same report simultaneously?</p>
<p>Back in the dark ages, I used the same paper for both a database architecture class and a technical writing class. No one ever took issue with it and I never considered that it was wrong. I got a much better grade in the writing class because it was well-written but it had some technical issues that the English teacher didn’t care (or know) about and the systems teacher did. I think I got an A and a C for the same paper. I was not looking for a broad liberal education though, I was just trying to graduate in a pretty technical major.</p>
<p>Fireandrain: I did lots of security analyses, and the reports included a lot of my own boilerplate paragraphs. I don’t (and didn’t) see the need to write a unique paragraph explaining why uncontrolled access to your production network operations area is a bad idea, or why password systems that result in people putting sticky notes with the passwords under their keyboards is bad too. </p>
<p>It saved my clients money – because I would have charged them for the time spent writing everything anew. </p>
This does not hold up to comparison with submitting work for college. Kellogs and GM would be paying the consultant to come up with this information. The professor is having the student do the work for the student’s own benefit.</p>
<p>That said, I would completely expect that the consultant would use some of the same general research for both reports (on market segments, pricing, etc). Why repeat the same surveys for the same information twice? This would be data they would keep on file in their own data bank. But unless each company was releasing identical cereal, the specifics for each product would be different.</p>
<p>I re-wrote a paper from my AP US History class for a college course. I had to update my data, narrow the scope of the paper, and get additional info for the subject the new paper concentrated on. But that said, it was about 50% the same paper, and I don’t feel it was unethical.</p>
<p>Every college that my 5 Ds have attended have disallowed a paper to be used for more than one course. It is clearly stated in the Code of Behavior on Academic Matters. Here is the wording for one:</p>
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</p>
<p>I, personally, do not know any professors who would allow this, and I did not when I taught. The penalty will vary depending upon the particular infraction but would usually result in a grade of zero for that paper.</p>
<p>This, if I’m not mistaken, is exactly the reason that the website turnitin.com was started.</p>
<p>I agree with those that don’t see any problem with this – assuming there’s no rule against it. Since there is a rule against it, I think dropping the grade the student receives by two grades (and A paper receives a C, for example) is sufficiently harsh. And, if a student is unable to do two different papers for whatever reason, they have the option to take a big hit on their grade and use it twice if different classes’ prompts (or lack thereof) make that a possibility.</p>
<p>I do think it’s poor rule, however. If different teachers require different papers, then give the students different topics. Otherwise you could easily have a situation where people are recycling old papers for past terms or something like that and just not getting caught. I don’t like rules that are not consistently enforced or even mostly enforceable. (This infraction was discovered by accident.) Unenforced, inconsistently enforced, or rarely enforced rules just create cynicism.</p>
<p>This is an odd question because Kelloggs and General Mills market different cereals.</p>
<p>I used to be a consultant and we wrote custom applications for companies. We wrote the contracts so that we owned the rights to the software and we could change them and sell them to other companies. This was a pretty good racket as the first company would essentially pay for the development and we could charge subsequent companies the same cost of the software or whatever the market would bear. What do you think my management would have done if I wrote the software over again from scratch?</p>
When I was in college I was not given paper topics, though sometimes the professor would suggest a few. But in general thinking up a topic was considered part of the exercise - thinking up a good topic is a lot of work. Most profs asked us to run our topics by them before committing to doing the research.</p>
<p>@alwaysamom turnitin.com was started to catch students who plagiarize other’s work. This is a much bigger problem than reusing their own, although the service could catch that as well.</p>
<p>This is the crux of the matter. It’s not that a student is being given the same assigned topic in two different classes. It’s that the student is lazy enough not to come up with a topic for the class and would rather take the easy way out by using a paper written and submitted for another class. Most papers in college require the student to decide what they will write about and usually include some initial research, possibly preparing a proposal, and then running it by the prof prior to actually diving in. In many instances, this is a substantial amount of work and is part of the assessment of the assignment.</p>
<p>motherbear, turnitin was originally created at Berkeley in 1994 to catch students who submitted their own work in more than one class or handed in another student’s essay as their own. It was a few years later that the company was formed in order to license it to other academic institutions. Still later, software was developed to include internet searches.</p>
<p>I can certainly see the benefits of cross-pollinating between different courses, though – one of my favorite parts of college was seeing the interplay between different classes I was taking and how it all connected. </p>
<p>S2 took an Intro to Islam course this fall, as well as a course on nuclear issues. For his Islam final paper, he wrote about Muslim perspectives on the use of nuclear weapons. Contacted a visiting speaker from his nuke class w/interview questions, and the guy sent S an article he’d written. Turns out his Islam prof is friends with said visiting speaker, too. S was pleased with how his paper turned out, and was happy he “didn’t have to write something on Islamic art” (no offense intended; just definitely not his thing). Has no intentions on using the paper for his nuke class, but saw no issues with deepening his understanding of areas he’s very interested in pursuing.</p>
<p>S’s MS and HS used turnitin.com for major IB assignments and term papers. Knows that drill already.</p>
<p>Agree that in business, there are good business reasons for NOT continually reinventing the wheel – accuracy & consistency in work product, recouping R&D expenses, ability to delegate some tasks to others so that the rainmakers can develop new products and expand the client base, etc.</p>
<p>I actually think I’ve only gotten to pick my own topic two or three times total the entire time I’ve been in college, it’s almost always been assigned. I’ve had to go through the motions of submitting a proposal for approval twice, and they were both in introductory english classes.</p>
<p>This semester I had a professor assign the same prompt, albeit involving different books, twice for the same class. THAT sucked. I am taking her again next semester for a different class, and if we have to write that same paper again I am not going to be pleased.</p>
<p>Yes, this was considered academic dishonesty when I attended college also. I did do it once in an Eng comp class and a poli sci class but I had permission. The comp class just required a certain format. The poli sci class required a certain topic. I asked the polic sci TA if I could use the same paper and he said yes. The Eng teacher was a professional writer and made it clear at the beginning of the semester that we could use writing we had done in any environment-- including work-- if it was our own and fit the assignment. I honestly think the poli sci teacher must have forgotten the permission (or thought the permission was granted because I was using the same topic) because when I received the paper back, he told me he thought the format was absolutely inspired. </p>
<p>I don’t think it should be considered academic dishonesty (especially if it’s not the exact same paper but the same topic) but I realize it is at many schools. In this specific case, I think that a teacher that leaves the topic open is going to get a lot of students re-using papers, whether the teacher catches them or not.</p>
<p>In high school, we are strongly encouraged to reuse papers.</p>
<p>It isn’t a bad idea to consider generalizing papers so that they can be used for multiple purposes. You should always write to handle a variety of parameters. The idea is that writing papers takes a lot of time and effort. Reuse is a smart use of previous work as it allows the student to spend more time on more important stuff.</p>
<p>Sorry to the original poster of this:) but I couldn’t help it!</p>
<p>At my daughter’s school it would be considered academic dishonesty unless the teachers had given permission. I think it would be at most schools. From the handbook list of academic dishonesty at her school:
The policy states the consequence for this particular academic dishonesty (there are different levels) at her school would be that the student would receive a failing grade for the class (class, not assignment) and the transcript would show an F! (= F shreek indicating the F is for academic dishonesty).</p>
<p>I’m surprised how many people think it is OK to do this. I have recently returned to college and all this academic dishonesty stuff and plagiarism was not something I ever had to deal with in my younger days (pre internet ), so it was new to me. But I was aware of it because of what my kids learned about it and because the first day of every single class they reiterate over and over again about how serious academic dishonesty is taken. Last semester I had a speech class and many of the speeches were similar subjects to the comp 2 class I had just taken. I asked the instructor if it was ok to use my essays as the basis for the speeches. He was fine with it. Thank goodness, I was so sick of researching problem/solutions and persuasive stuff, but I wouldn’t have re used the info without checking first. I doubt that it would have been OK’d if it were a class where the focus was writing a paper rathen than giving a speech.</p>
<p>I think most college students would be aware it was wrong, or at least consider the possibility - especially if their schools use plagiarism sites such as turnitin because a paper submitted twice would be flagged as a very high % of similarities to another paper (the first time I turned a paper in through turnitin I was really freaking out about it).</p>
<p>So, double-dipping is okay so long as the professor gives permission and you don’t quote too much from your own work. Interesting. I’m sincerely curious what percentage of quotes can be from the first paper before the writer will admit they are, in fact, double dipping with the second paper. 10%? 45%?</p>
<p>I’ve never double dipped but also was never aware there was a rule against it. It strikes me as very much a “only in academia” type of thing. I believe that students are responsible for what they will take from classes. If a working mother wants to submit the same paper to two classes to save time, I think she should be able too as it is all her work. Yes, she’ll miss out on what she would have learned writing two papers but it’s purely her loss. I’m not seeing the harm to anyone else.</p>
<p>I made this work in high school, writing an awesome research paper on bioluminescence which worked for both AP Biology and Oceanography. Never knew it was an ethical issue and of course I purposefully picked a topic which worked for both classes. I’m pretty sure I mentioned that to the teachers too.</p>
<p>Question: In the business world, if Kelloggs and General Mills asked a consultant for marketing recommendations for their cereals, would it be OK to give both companies the exact same report simultaneously?
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<p>Ha, this is my professional world. Bad analogy. Kelloggs and GM are competitors. They have a reason to ensure that anyone they hire is not actively working on their competitor’s business, and they would put in non-disclosure agreements if relevant. I sign these all the time. Professor A and Professor B are not competitors. Work done for Professor A is not “secret” and it still belongs to the student.</p>
), so it was new to me. But I was aware of it because of what my kids learned about it and because the first day of every single class they reiterate over and over again about how serious academic dishonesty is taken. Last semester I had a speech class and many of the speeches were similar subjects to the comp 2 class I had just taken. I asked the instructor if it was ok to use my essays as the basis for the speeches. He was fine with it. Thank goodness, I was so sick of researching problem/solutions and persuasive stuff, but I wouldn’t have re used the info without checking first. I doubt that it would have been OK’d if it were a class where the focus was writing a paper rathen than giving a speech.</p>