<p>I did this all the time when I was going to college. I was in the military working crazy shifts and going to school at night. I used to plan my classes that way. I’d try to take classes that were related so that I’d only have to write one paper and it worked most of the time. I had one paper that I used four or five times. For years I’ve joked that I went to college and wrote a paper. I even used the same paper in two different classes with the same instructor. I knew that was really pushing the limit, and I would have taken the F if the professor had said anything, but I got an A on it in both classes. I really didn’t plan on doing that, but I ended up on a last minute deployment, so I used the paper so that I could finish the class before I left. I really thought I was safe if I got caught because you can’t plagarize yourself. This was about 15 years ago, so I guess they’ve changed the rules, but I never thought I was doing anything wrong. I thought it was efficient time management. If I had known that it was considered cheating, I wouldn’t have done it.</p>
<p>I don’t know a teacher or professor who would allow a student to just resubmit an old paper or project that was submitted for another assignment. But they would certainly allow a student to build on it and they might permit one paper for two courses simultaneously, if it truly works. Time is certainly an element in all of this. I would not even bother to ask permission for recycling old work, as I feel the answer is obvious, but I might ask permission for the simultaneous submission. I certainly would not risk submitting the latter without asking and would not just turn in an old paper because I would consider that outright cheating, which is why I would not even pursue that possibility. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that the professor/teacher of the course sets the rules for these things, IMO. If your standards are higher than a particular professor’s in terms of these things, well and good. If it’s lower you gotta belly up to the line or risk getting penalized,even failing the course.</p>
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<p>I think if your goal of going to college is to learn new things and expand your mind, then you really cheated yourself with the extent that you did that. If it was just to get the degree in order to get a job, then I guess no harm no foul.</p>
<p>If a student was to get caught for turning in the same paper for multiple classes, I doubt the school would handle it differently if the student said he/she was there to prepare for a good job rather than for learning.</p>
<p>Re: turning in the same or similar paper in more than one class, that “rule” about getting the approval from both teachers in advance is not just something the teachers decide to require, it is almost always based on the school’s guidelines.</p>
<p>Most colleges and universities have an “Academic Integrity” section in the Student Code of Conduct (or some similarly named compilation of rules and regulations that are generally found in the Student Handbook). When it comes to violations of academic integrity rules, there are usually written guidelines and procedures to follow so the instructor is not free to handle academic dishonesty on a greatly individualized basis. </p>
<p>For example, a colleague recently had a situation of highly suspected plagiarism, and after reviewing the university rules for how to handle it, we saw that there was not room for the professor to deal with it outside of the university’s formal procedures. So, a professor could not just address it privately with the student if it seemed, for example, that the school’s response to plagiarism was going to be very severe and the teacher had an impulse to give the student a second chance if the student seemed not to have understood the rules. </p>
<p>Recently I saw a couple of threads about recommended summer reading. I was tempted to suggest that students about to enter college in the fall be sure to read the Student Handbook or whatever the publication where the rules of student conduct and academic integrity are published for the school the student will attend! I think it is a good idea for parents to read this as well. Even if some of the rules/consequences may not make sense, it is good to know what they are.</p>
<p>It’s sorta cheesy behavior. In the category of re-gift, but self-depriving, so worse. Not much being learned at SCHOOL putting that term paper in the photocopier with a new title page, and so forth.</p>
<p>rigaudon that is a great recommendation (have students read the academic integrity code of the university). I might actually assign that as reading in my classes (it never dawn on me that the students might not have read them before)</p>
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<p>I was saying that rather tongue in cheek. ;)</p>
<p>Sorry, I was doing pretty much the same thing.</p>
<p>I think about it in two different contexts. I don’t think you should always have to start from scratch - as I got later into my undergrad career a lot of my paper topics got very similar and I re-used ideas and edited passages from older papers to create new ones.</p>
<p>First of all, at 18-22 the likelihood that you wrote a perfect paper (even if you got an A on it) is very small. So you can always do some improvement. Turning in the same paper is not only lazy, it comes from the standpoint that you don’t need any improvement, which is likely false. So students should at least look over the old paper and see if there’s a way they can expand it, fix it, edit it, or whatever to make it better or tailor it to the new assignment/new class.</p>
<p>Second of all, if college is supposed to prepare you to be a citizen of the world - in what real-life cases are you allowed to re-use the same material over again? Will your boss allow you to re-use an old white paper from 2010 to address a similar issue in 2012? No, you’d write a new one - maybe drawing heavily from the 2010 paper, but still new. Can you use last year’s sales projections for this year? Of course not. In most cases, you’re going to use old knowledge to help you make new knowledge but you can’t just copy and paste last year’s work into this year. There’s always new knowledge coming out.</p>
<p>I’ve also noted that assignments between classes are rarely exactly the same - if nothing else, there are usually some formatting and structural things that are different. But typically, there are major areas and issues that require a different angle or way of addressing it.</p>
<p>I don’t think students should have to start from scratch all over again every time; that’s silly. They can certainly rework the paper into something new or use passages. But simply printing out a paper from another class and handing it in to me? If the purpose of writing the paper is learning (and learning assessment), how can I tell that you learned anything in <em>my</em> class if you are using work from someone else’s?</p>
<p>I don’t think the student handbook should be the governance of one’s personal ethical principles. If you are doing it to avoid work, you should know you shouldn’t be doing it, and there’s no need to consult the student handbook or the professor. If you think it will somehow enhance your learning, then it’s time to consult the student handbook and/or the professor to see if they object.</p>
<p>I have noticed among some bright but overextended high school and college students, the idea “work smart, not hard” seems to have gained respectability.</p>
<p>That approach can lead one to take shortcuts that may reduce the depth of learning that occurs, but with the least negative effect on gpa.</p>
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Even if it’s naughty, it isn’t plagiarism. If you eat the slice of pizza tonight that you were saving for tomorrow, you haven’t stolen it from yourself.</p>
<p>This discussion is interesting, because it shows the murky line between rules and ethics. Some of us think this particular behavior isn’t unethical unless it violates the rules. And since it appears that it violates the rules essentially everywhere these days, it’s unethical. But I think that if it’s inherently unethical, it’s unethical in the same way that not doing all the reading for a class would be, or not going to a lecture class, or going to a party instead of studying for the big test tomorrow. If you do any of these things, you are depriving yourself of the full value of the class you are taking. I will leave it to those who have never done any of these things to cast stones at the rest of us.</p>
<p>The difference between turning the same paper for 2 classes and not doing the readings/going to a party the night before a test, etc. is that they are usually not grounds for dismissal or suspension. They are unethical, but the potencial consequences are smaller since the worse that can happen is that I flunk a test (which might be a midterm and not the final term grade). It won’t be in my transcripts. Academic honesty violations do show up in the transcripts. A better analogy is trying to copy test answers from a classmate.</p>
<p>I find most of the people in this thread silly. It’s not wrong provided the paper is sufficient for the assignment. It would be silly to rewrite a paper you had already written. That’s the worst waste of time a person could commit. Part of college is learning time management. If you have something to allow you to not waste time, use it.</p>
<p>I mean, would you frown upon a teacher reusing a lesson plan to save some time because (s)he already knows it works?</p>
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Right–the difference is that the first is against the rules while the second only brings about its natural consequences. It’s simply my view that if using the same paper for two classes was not against the rules, it would be no more unethical than failing to do the reading. It is far different from plagiarizing another person’s work.</p>
<p>Right, it’s not the same as plagiarizing someone else’s paper. But it is still academic dishonesty for most universities, so it’s probably not worth the risk unless you ask permission.</p>
<p>Whether it’s ethical or not depends on your views on following rules, education, etc. A whole other can of worms, IMHO</p>