<p>“mini: I had to read Dombey and Sons. Really long. And Orly Farm, but that was Trollope. Both are over 1000 pages. Might have been for the same class.”</p>
<p>I think the idea was to turn us off to these authors for life. (Much as school effectively turns off many people’s math gene.)</p>
<p>Well, it didn’t work. I read a lot of Trollope later on for myself – The entire Palliser Series and the Barchester Series. I have never returned to Dickens but I had already read Bleak House, Hard Times, Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities, and David Copperfield.</p>
<p>My students plagiarize a lot. Sometimes it’s intentional cheating, but other times it’s a persistent misunderstanding of the protocols of academic life. The internet has made it really easy to cull the ideas of others without students feeling like they are copying of cheating. Sigh. The solution is to give assignments that are specific to a particular course.</p>
<p>I don’t give “research” papers. First, I think it’s hard for students to maintain their own thesis in the face of others’ research and ideas, and second, plagiarism runs rampant.</p>
<p>Other disciplines can’t avoid them because research is central to their enterprises.</p>
<p>In upper courses, I do require literary criticism be used, but then I ask for a reaction paper in which students must respond to the position held by a critic. An overview of the critical argument is present in the paper so plagiarism is not an issue.</p>
<p>Many research papers are assigned to develop library skills which is certainly outdated today. </p>
<p>Well assigned papers should grow out of class explorations which would make it difficult to use the same paper for two classes.</p>
<p>I do think it a violation of the contract of the class if a student did this, but I wouldn’t reflect this in the grade if I discovered that a student had used his/her own paper for two classes. At my institution I would not be required to, and I wouldn’t be fiat do so unless I’d included clear rules about this on my syllabus.</p>
<p>“If the assigner does not mind, it is not fine. It just means it would be allowed”</p>
<p>I disgree. It is important that both assignerS are on board with this. What the students’ motive and reason for this is up to him. Most students do not take the bulk of their courses for self improvement, learning purposes. is the reality. You, Mini, have had the luxury and privilege of having children who have done so, but many students are just getting by, and they often are taking courses just to meet the requirements. That is the hard truth of the matter. So when an assignment is given, they do the bare minimum to get it done and get an acceptable grade in the course. For such students, and in my world, those are the majority fo students, it is very important for them that they clear this with the profs because they cannot handle any fallout if it happens over doing this. Fact of life. </p>
<p>Now for those students with the goals as they should be in an institute of higher learning, we can wax philosophical about all of the ramifications of this.</p>
<p>It still doesn’t make it fine. It might make it common, much as lack of ethics is common, but it still doesn’t make it fine. (But if the hardest thing about college is getting in, why not just award the diploma after the hard work is complete, and be done with it?)</p>
<p>We know what happens when we train young people to think this way. It isn’t pretty.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I wonder what percentage of the time that someone re-uses an old paper that it is done for any other reason than to avoid work.</p>
<p>Every college student I have ever known in the real world, past and present, experienced times when work had to be prioritized, and something had to suffer. Usually (in my experience) it was reading, but sometimes a paper might not get as much attention as you’d like. So I don’t even see “avoiding work” as particularly heinous, at least if there’s no cheating involved. I understand about not overloading yourself, putting schoolwork before ECs, etc., etc., etc., but I’m talking about real people, not the Platonic ideal of a college student. Using the same paper for two classes–with the instructors’ permission–seems to me pretty far down the list of coping strategies in terms of missing out on the value of education. It has to be a hundred times rarer than simply not doing all of the reading. Make that a thousand times rarer.</p>
<p>Not sure how it is at most schools, but my daughter’s high school and college courses usually offer the kids a choice of essay topics from among several prompts. So is it fine to pick and choose from among the topics to maximize the overlap with previous work? I guess that’s efficiency, always pick the most general topic and maybe it will show up again in the future. Don’t waste time tackling a new topic for analysis or rethinking a previously covered topic, because hey, time is short and those STEM courses are more important. And then we lament that writing and problem solving skills are lagging in today’s college graduates.</p>
<p>I haven’t read the whole thread, but DH is a college professor and has said on many occasions that submitting essentially the same paper in different classes is a reason for dismissal. Whether we on CC see anything wrong with it, is irrelevant. It is not permitted in American academics. He has to retrain some of his foreign students in where such practice is permitted and even encouraged.</p>
<p>Mini, it might not make it fine for YOU, but it does for many. it’s certainly just fine for me.</p>
<p>Oh, I’m sure it is. Doesn’t make it so. I’m sorry that your standards are lower than mine, but that’s life. I understand what standards for so-called “education” are in this country, and, as Hunt justly points out, this is certainly not anywhere near the worst scenario by which kids (and adults) are systematically cheated in this country, or learn to “choose” to cheat themselves, either educationally or ethically.</p>
<p>It is what it is.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Presumably “scientists” have built a large body of work and therefore won’t always be working on an original idea. Not quite the same thing as a student coming up the pike who certainly has a lot to learn and wouldn’t normally be able to say they have “mastered” anything and can’t benefit from examining as many new topics as possible.</p>
<p>As far as i am concerned, and on a pragmatic basis, it’s up to the professors. THey are setting the parameters and terms of their assignments. What anyone else thinks, does not matter. We can have all kinds of opinions, but we are not the arbiter of this. We can all agree this is fine, and if one of the teachers thinks it’s not, the trouble can be very much not worth having done this. If the teachers agree, so what if we don’t think so.</p>
<p>
Your standards of righteousness are high, but your standards of graciousness need some work.</p>
<p>:::::::::::::Applause:::::::::::::::::</p>
<p>It is what it is. The fact that it is common doesn’t make it a good thing, either educationally or ethically. It just makes it common.</p>
<p>I plead entirely guilty to uncommon standards. If you’re comfortable with yours, so be it. As I said earlier, if a student felt uncomfortable asking, then s/he already knows what s/he should do. If not uncomfortable, I don’t see that it matters - as Hunt says, certainly not the worst form of educational cheating I can imagine.</p>
<p>I would also plead guilty to the fact that in the rarefied righteous atmosphere of my house, it would never come up. The kids were homeschooled. What would it even mean to hand in the same paper twice? Under what possible circumstances could they even acquire the notion? </p>
<p>They went out into the world ill-prepared.</p>
<p>Unlike me - I learned early how to take shortcuts - and cheat myself - I learned them in school. Grizzled cheater here.</p>
<p>It is double counting and that is a form of fraud. You go to an accredited school which requires you to get 126 credits, if you double count, you are graduating with only 122. Just because you get away with it doesn’t make it okay.</p>
<p>I have taught in 3 different universities. In all of them it was considered academic dishonesty and could lead to dismissal. So, if you want to do it, talk to the professors from both classes and make sure they agree.</p>
<p>Also, I think one thing is 2 write 2 papers in similar topics, and the other one to turn in the same paper twice.</p>
<p>If your uni uses software like blackboard, it is frequently configured with something called safe assign which is anti plagiarism software. The first time you submit the paper it will be compared against existing sources for plagiarism and it also goes into a virtual vault. The second time you submit, safe assign will find the first copy from the vault and your paper now comes up as plagiarized – because it is. And yes my uni would take action against your for that plagiarism even if you only plagiarized yourself.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Is repeated use of the same phrase a form of self-plagiarism?</p>
<p>Haha, sorghum</p>
<p>But I agree with mini, just because it’s common it doesn’t mean is right. It IS plagiarism, even if you are plagiarizing yourself, most universities consider it academic dishonesty.</p>
<p>Not worth the risk. It’s better to get a mediocre grade in a paper because you are overwhelmed than to risk being dismissed. So talk to both professors before you even try.</p>
<p>What I tell students who ask me if they can recycle an old paper is that they can use (and cite) previous work they have written as a basis for a paper. Yes, you have to cite yourself. So, if they wrote a paper on butterflies for another class, they can use that as one of their references for a paper on insects in general.</p>
<p>Is that an advantage? Maybe. But it’s not dishonest.</p>