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I find it very odd that while you talk about quality, you clearly think that credit should be based on the amount of effort. Why is the effort more important than demonstration of an understanding of the course material?</p>
<p>It seems to me that lurking here is an idea that submitting work done in another class is somehow disrespectful to the professor of the second class. I get that, and it’s not unreasonable, but I think referring to it as dishonesty muddies what’s really going on.</p>
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<p>Universities I suppose are against it for this reason. Their transcripts suggest that the students did four courses worth of work in a term, when in fact they did only one course worth of work. The transcripts are then, to that extent, misleading.</p>
<p>The student who presents him/herself as having done four courses worth of work, when in fact that was not the case, is also being misleading.</p>
<p>Would it be ethical for a student to use the same paper in every course in his/her major–having chosen the courses intentionally so that the paper would meet the requirements for each course?</p>
<p>Ah, CC. Just when I think I’m out, you pull me back in…</p>
<p>I think part of the problem here is that we’re not differentiating between the humanities and math/science.</p>
<p>Until the most advanced levels, math and science courses are designed to measure your mastery of a subject. Where you happen to have learned the information is beside the point; you may be shortchanging yourself by taking Bio 101 after getting a 5 on AP bio, but there’s nothing really wrong with an instructor giving you an “A” for demonstrating the necessary skills. In addition, by the nature of the class you’ll still have had to complete the work, even if your prior experiences made it very easy for you: you’ll write up the lab reports, do the problem sets, sit for the exam, etc.</p>
<p>While most humanities departments have some distribution requirements to foster a wide range of knowledge, the purpose of any individual class is not simply to master an era, an author, or a particular set of works. In every Brit-lit survey course, there are going to be some kids who have never read a single Victorian novel and others who come in familiar with the entire syllabus. All of them, however, are supposed to critically engage with the works they have read, learn from the professor’s approach, and produce original work. If a student comes out of that class without having written a paper specifically for that class, he has done no work for it and, depending on his level of prior knowledge, may not have learned all that much. It is also important to remember that many lit courses (my guess is this is where most double submission occurs) are going to teach some of the same works: I read Paradise Lost in a Western Civ class, in a Milton seminar, and on a seminar on literary depictions of innocence. There really is a risk that someone could do very well in college without ever producing more than a handful of papers.</p>
<p>There is no way for a professor to make essay topics specific enough to avoid double submission. Even in a lecture class that may hand out a number of prompts, they are going to be general enough to accommodate the development of original arguments. The only way to combat double submission is to do exactly what schools are doing - ban it.</p>
<p>Two questions for those of you who don’t see the problem with double submission:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Do you think it is fair for professors to have an attendance policy? If the student can pass the exam or write a good paper without it, assuming there is no participation grade, why should coming to class matter?</p></li>
<li><p>Do you think it is reasonable for math teachers to forbid students from using calculators so that they need to learn the concepts on their own? In a real world setting, no one working in a job that required it would not have access to even a pretty sophisticated calculator.</p></li>
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Sure, it’s fair to have such a policy–but it has nothing to do with dishonesty. There’s nothing dishonest, per se, about skipping class, skipping the reading, or both, as long as you know enough to perform well on the exam. A professor might reasonably feel that it’s disrespectful for students to skip classes, though, and might require attendance.</p>
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This is reasonable, I think–and it would be cheating to use the calculator anyway, because then you’re not demonstrating the skill the professor wants to evaluate.</p>
<p>I don’t care what it’s called, it’s ridiculous. If a student wrote the paper and the writing and research behind it was solid enough that it could pass muster for more than one class then I do not see the ethical lapse here. MOF, I think if it’s an exceptional paper then more than one professor should see it.</p>
<p>The issue is the professors don’t like to be made to feel like sloppy seconds.</p>
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<p>So? Is college about producing the maximum number of papers?</p>
<p>Amesie, I’m not going to judge the policy, but am just going to give the OP the benefit of the doubt that the policy serves some purpose. </p>
<p>The first question is whether it’s essentially the same work, or just “similar”. If it’s just similar, with significant differences, I would recommend a warning because the student has violated the spirit but not the letter of the policy. </p>
<p>If the student has indeed submitted identical work for multiple classes and knew the policy, then I would give a zero for the paper that was turned in second. The assignment was simply not completed. I definitely wouldn’t expel or suspend the student for a major honor code violation. I think this is at worst a “misdemeanor” in the world of academic integrity violations. </p>
<p>As an employer, I would view being able to kill two birds with one stone favorably and would hold the employee in the highest regard since in my business, where we bill for time, being able to reuse results derived on one project for another project provides more value to my customer (the US government) since we are not allowed to charge twice for the same work. So I view being clever enough to do this as an asset. However, if the student knowingly violated the honor code, then some penalty is warranted.</p>
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<p>Sure, I don’t see anything wrong with professors having an attendance policy (as long as there are reasonable exceptions for truly extenuating circumstances, that type of thing). However, while skipping a class may be <em>lazy</em> (and I never skipped college classes, ever, until I had minor surgery my senior year and had to miss a few days while recuperating), I don’t think it’s <em>unethical</em>. Those are two very different things in my book.</p>
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<p>Sure, I think it’s reasonable. </p>
<p>And I can totally see that a college / professor might have this policy and if that’s the policy, it needs to be followed and that’s how it goes (and I wouldn’t tell my kids to play civil-disobedience on this one). That doesn’t mean we can’t debate whether the policy is a good one or not, or whether not following it is actually unethical / immoral or just “against policy.” Whether or not a class attendance policy makes sense or not, no one can argue that skipping class is unethical / immoral.</p>
<p>Well said, CRDad. There’s a difference between not knowing the policy and doing this, and knowing the policy but deliberately violating it. No one has taken the position that one who knows what this policy is should go ahead and deliberately violate it and that would be hunky-dory.</p>
<p>It is fair for a professor to set any policy they want. That’s not the point. </p>
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Again, although a prof can set a policy, I think having an attendance policy for college students is absurd. I have two bachelors and a masters degree and nerver had a class with an attendance policy.</p>
<p>If you have a class that requires participation I can see getting a grade for your contribution, not merely for showing up. </p>
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Again, fair, but ridiculous. I have degrees in physics and EE. I’ve taken a lot of classes in Math. In fact, when I first took Physics in High school I used a sliderule and scientific notation to solve problems. Working out arithmentic problems is a complete waste of time. You ought to know arithmetic and basic Algebra by the time you get to advanced science and math classes. Believe, the use or non-use of a calculator is not the issue. If my calculator died in the middle of the exam, and I merely wrote down the inputs I would have made to the calculator, I probably would have gotten the same credit in most classes.</p>
<p>Similarly, in most of my classes they let us bring in sheets of formulas, because in the real world you did not have to memorize formulas.</p>
<p>This reminds me of the PE exam forum I frequent for engineers, where people complain about being limited to which calculator they can use. I don’t care if you could bring in a super computer - it won’t help you on that exam.</p>
<p>Were they EXACTLY the same paper, or were they papers on related topics that took advantage of some of the same sources?</p>
<p>In the academic world, as in the work world, this distinction may matter.</p>
<p>I used to be a freelance writer. I often wrote several articles for different publications on related topics, based largely on the same body of research. This is acceptable – even expected. But in most instances (except for the rare magazines that permit simultaneous submissions), it would have been unacceptable for me to submit the exact same article to more than one magazine at the same time. My articles each focused on different aspects of the subject matter and were written for different audiences, in the styles of the publications for which they were intended. </p>
<p>The same sort of thinking may apply to papers written for college courses, although I am not sure.</p>
<p>It’s interesting to consider the situation with exam-based courses, which is not at all parallel. Often, two college courses will have some overlapping content, but not enough so that the university prohibits students from getting credit for both. In that instance, there is no ethical problem if the student gets an A on an exam based largely on material learned for another course. I once wrote a spectacularly good answer to an essay question on a college exam based entirely on material I had learned in another course. Was this wrong? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>I agree that it isn’t inherently unethical to turn in the same paper for multiple classes, although it is lazy. On the other hand, once there is a policy against it, it becomes unethical in a way that violating an attendance policy isn’t, because you are in that case misrepresenting the work you are handing in. It isn’t on the level of plagiarism, but it is dishonest.</p>
<p>Even in the absence of a policy, there are cases in which double submission would require lying by omission, at the very least. For instance, if you’re in a seminar and the professor is meeting with students to discuss their topics, or if there is some sort of workshopping process where students circulate draft. In that case, it is evident that the professor’s expectation is that you’re writing an original paper, and you’re going to wind up acting as if you’re going through a writing process that has already been completed. </p>
<p>I have no idea what my graduate program’s policy on double submission is. But while I certainly use ideas from previous papers (it would be hard not to at a certain point in your education, and silly not to incorporate previous insights into new arguments), I would never think of handing in a paper that was substantially similar to something I’d handed in as an undergrad, and not only because writing is a learning experience.</p>
<p>"I agree that it isn’t inherently unethical to turn in the same paper for multiple classes, although it is lazy. On the other hand, once there is a policy against it, it becomes unethical in a way that violating an attendance policy isn’t, because you are in that case misrepresenting the work you are handing in. "</p>
<p>But we’re not talking about deliberately violating a policy that you know is there, in effect thumbing your nose at a policy. We’re talking about whether the concept of turning in the same paper (or versions of the same people) that in and of themselves fully meet the need / criteria of each class independently, in and of itself, is <em>inherently</em> unethical. </p>
<p>Put another way. Professor assigns a paper. Joe Schmoe turns in his paper. Professor reads it, it fully fills the brief of what he was looking for, well done, Joe - here’s your A. The A work that Joe did doesn’t suddenly magically only become “B” or “C” work because Joe also submitted the paper in another class, maybe with some modifications, in another class last year. So therefore I"m not getting the “this paper didn’t fulfill the brief.” Of course it did. It did so at an A level in this example. Therefore, why doesn’t it deserve an A, in the absence of a policy stating elsewise?</p>
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<p>If it is possible for a student to submit a completely identical paper to three different classes that supposedly approach a subject “from different angles”, and to recieve good grades on the exact same paper in those three supposedly different subjects, I question the value of having those three different classes, as well as the contention that they approach the subject in different ways.</p>
<p>Anyway, I’ve certainly said my peace in this thread. Honestly, I think it would be a horrible practice for a student to do this double dipping. I would never do it myself, because I would feel I was robbing myself of an opportunity to learn something, and demonstrate my skill. And as I’ve said multiple times, “a rule is a rule.”</p>
<p>I just think that in most cases it’s a silly, confusing and arbitrary rule.</p>
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<p>It doesn’t work that way.</p>
<p>If you write a story for New Yorker, you sign a contract promising NOT to submit the story to another publication. If the New Yorker picked up Atlantic and saw the same story running the same month, I assure you they would be extremely angry. The New Yorker gets certain rights of publication when they pay you for that story. Perhaps 6 months later your contract allows you to resell the story – but I doubt the Atlantic will want it then. Perhaps a noncompeting magazine would publish it. And some writers take a story and rewrite it for different publications – but usually there is some significant rewriting happening and the publications serve different markets.</p>
<p>Syndication is a whole different ballgame. But you won’t see the same same syndicated column in the same market. When newspapers runs a syndicated column they know in advance that it is being run elsewhere. Readers Digest pays to rerun stories – and I am certain there are restrictions on when the reprinting happens, and credit must be given to the original publication.</p>
<p>In other words, a writer can’t submit the same article to multiple magazines in the hope of getting paid more than once for the same article, unless the publications agree that this can happen.</p>
<p>I don’t believe any professor who assigns a paper would knowingly allow a student simply to turn in a paper written for a previous class, as is, without doing additional work. The point of assigning a paper isn’t simply to test the student’s substantive knowledge; a paper would be a really stupid way to do that, since it’s typically on a single, narrowly defined topic, and it’s inherently an “open book” process. If demonstration of substantive knowledge were all the professor cared about, she’d simply assign a multiple choice test, which is much easier to grade (and might even be machine-gradable). </p>
<p>The whole point of assigning a paper is to get the student to do the work—to identify and develop an original topic, to do the research and the hard critical-analytical thinking, to develop a persuasive argument, and to express that argument clearly, on the belief and expectation that by doing so the student will not only further develop and deepen those valuable skills but will also broaden and deepen their understanding of the field by doing in-depth work on some topic that takes them beyond work they’ve already done. Turning in a paper from a previous class defeats all that, and in so doing, defeats the pedagogical point of the paper assignment, and perhaps of the course. And having shown that you’ve successfully done all that once is NOT the same as showing that you’re capable of doing it multiple times, in multiple contexts, under the supervision of multiple professors.</p>
<p>I think most students inherently know this, if they stop to think about it. Which is why there is an element of academic fraud to the practice, unless it’s done by the truly clueless. If you asked the professor, the professor would say “No,” or “Not unless you do substantial addition work to develop the argument well beyond where it is.” So typically students DON’T ask.</p>
<p>OP,</p>
<p>It seems clear that your school has a policy in place to deal with this, and ignorance of that policy is not an excuse. I hope the Honor Council deals appropriately with the issue.
I would be interested to learn the outcome, if you care to let us know, when that happens.</p>
<p>When a student receives a certain number of credits for a class, it seems to me that those credits are saying to the world (in particular, to future employers) that this student has completed a certain amount of work for those credits.</p>
<p>It seems to me that if a transcript says- credit received for ENG 205- & Hum 329-
then the student has completed the requirements for those classes- it is up to the professor to decide if the level of completion is A/B or C work, or if the student receives an incomplete or a lower grade- However, if the student has completed the assignments, in a timely fashion- the credits should be granted.</p>
<p>*If a student turns in the same work for two classes, that student receives more credits without completing more work. *</p>
<p>If the student is taking two classes with such similar assignments, that identical work may be submitted to fulfill requirements, then it seems to me, that better communication needs to be happening within the dept. </p>
<p>If the classes are different departments, that could be very valuable, as the student can then receive evaluations of their work from a different perspective.
Perhaps if cross submission is happening a lot & the school wishes to limit this, the profs need to look at how they are writing assignments and be clearer about what is being asked.</p>
<p>That student gains an unfair advantage, compared to the student who does separate work for separate classes.</p>
<p>Advantage in what way? if the student is fulfilling the requirements of the class- they are not impacting the work of other students. If they do not review their work in a way to make the paper fulfill the objectives of both classes, then they are missing an opportunity- but it is only themselves which are being hurt. ( & it is up to prof to decide if the paper fulfills the assignment)</p>
<p>Which is not to say that there are not situations in which a student may write the same paper for two classes–but the student needs to obtain permission, so that the professors know what the student is doing.</p>
<p>Unless the profs state that material used in other classes, is not to be submitted in their own class upfront at the beginning of the term, I don’t see how it is upon the student to read the profs mind re: their wishes.
*</p>
<p>Agree with gloworm. Since the school has a policy expressly forbidding it, can you let us know the outcome? Thanks!</p>
<p>Would it be ethical to submit the exact same paper to the same professor (for different classes)? </p>
<p>Would it be ethical to submit the exact same paper for every class in one’s major?</p>