<p>Some of my professors use Turnitin, one professor said he expected 25-30% of our paper to be references that are correctly cited - I had a real shock when I checked one paper and it said 0% was referenced elsewhere - I think it was a practice paper for in-text citation, with paraphrasing. I was such a good paraphraser that my entire paper appeared to be original thought. This was a required class for all students, since I attend a school that is mostly adult learners who have not been to or completed college - basically, a class teaching how to correctly cite your work and what constitutes plagiarism.</p>
<p>My daughter’s high school uses Turnitin for all their papers, too. It makes sense to me as a way to check if language that has been lifted from other sources, but I’ve always wondered at how well it does at identifying when the ideas of others are being passed off as the writer’s own.</p>
<p>^the schools I work at use SafeAssign. it does NOT pick up paraphrases or ideas. Maybe Turnitin is different, but I would be surprised. I do far better in figuring out plagiarism issues through my own Google searches.</p>
<p>In my AP Comp class, plagiarizing resulted in a 0 on the paper.
I’ve found Turnitin to be fairly ineffective at detecting legit plagiarism. It often gives me high percentages when I am quoting books or quoting anything in general. Although, there was a point when a sentence or two of my original writing had actually been written by someone else. Bizarre.</p>
<p>To prevent plagiarism in my English class our teacher just did daily checks on our progress on the paper. We peer reviewed a lot, and reviewed with the teacher, so you couldn’t really get points unless you developed your ideas on your own.</p>
<p>To be honest though, the punishment for plagiarism should be somewhat harsh. It is hard to define the difference between paraphrasing and plagiarism. Also, background info seems to be a bit weird in this manner as well. For example, I know that the capital of Kazakhstan is Astana. Do I have to cite that? It’s background knowledge, but for someone who didn’t know what it was, and looked it up, must they cite that? And how would one know if, this information was not cited, if the writer actually knew the information himself? Of course this is a simple example but hopefully you understand what I am mean.</p>
<p>I think every teacher that assigns papers, no matter the subject, and for both high school and college, ought to spring spontaneous writing assignments on students, to be written on the spot, no preparation allowed, without warning, about a topic that the teacher believes that student could come up with some original thought (some provocative issue that only requires mainstream knowledge) or a topic that has been under study and discussion in the course. That teacher would then have papers that reflect the students’ actual writing abilities and ways of expressing thoughts. It is not that difficult to discern the actual voice of a student in a paper, and separate that voice from the kind of voice that occurs when paraphrasing, and even easier, from the voice of the original author of plagiarized content. Having these sets of spontaneous writing assignments would make the job even easier.</p>
<p>As far as what kind of punishment, well, if I were a professor, I would provide my students with a document that describes plagiarism and gives them fair warning before they ever turned a paper in to me. I understand the poor education high school students get these days when it comes to writing in general, and writing research papers. High school work fails to take students beyond book reports, which are the last types of writing that should ever consist of a lot of paraphrasing. Higher level writing should be composed mostly of the writer’s original ideas and those original ideas then being considered in light of expert sources (whether in support of those ideas or opposed to those ideas.)</p>
<p>Part of my fair warning would be a recommendation that they use a Turn It In type program, which is quite effective at revealing how original a paper is, and I would also make clear that students would get automatic F’s for any paper including any cut and pastes from Wikipedia or other online sources or any other sources period.</p>
<p>I scored thousands of college level papers for a project a while back, and though I had never read any of the students’ work before, it was glaringly clear when the papers switched from the student’s voice to a passive paraphrase or to Wikipedia-speak. Many of the students cut and pasted the exact same phrases, sentences, paragraphs from the same online sources. If it had not been so pathetic, I might have found it amusing. In the old days, a dedicated plagiarist and paraphraser would have worked harder to make the plagiarized sections look less plagiarized. But those university students did not even bother to write transitions or alter the lifted sections in any way to make it fit their voices. They just plugged the cut and pasted words right into their papers and moved on. Ironically, a good deal of what they plagiarized was itself plagiarized - the great crime of the internet these days - even the so-called reputable sites steal. I wrote some articles for Wikipedia years ago in the early days, and all of my research and work was original, and I just added the articles to Wikipedia for fun, as an experiment, and while I did that knowing that I would not get any credit, I do find it funny to this day how often I see my Wikipedia articles cut and pasted by various writers, even writers from top sources, without even, at the very least, giving credit to Wikipedia.</p>
<p>The sad thing is that many universities are going to begin to utilize computers to read student papers, and the computer programs, unless programmed to run a Turn It In type check, do not differentiate based on original thought. The programs look at grammatical structure and word choice, and students who insert plagiarized content will not suffer, unless a human decides to read the papers. So students may get away with plagiarism even easier, but the crime will be that we will end up with fewer original thinkers, and too many unoriginal ones. Makes for a duller and stupider world.</p>
<p>There has to be tough punishment for plagiarists because their contributions to the conversation and to the discourse of ideas are worthless and clutter things up (not to mention some even make money for a while stealing other people’s work.)</p>
<p>I think the best time to give the harshest punishment is in high school, so that students fully understand what plagiarism is, and before they are tempted to get in the habit of stealing content and pathetically attempting to make it their own as they head to college and go off to work for the New York Times. Some grace should be allowed early on as the students learn, but students should have to suffer. If I taught high school, and discovered a student had plagiarized on a first paper, I would discuss this with the student, make the student write the entire paper again, and find different sources than the ones plagiarized the first time around, but the student would still have an opportunity to earn the best grade possible - a do-over option (if they chose not to do it again, they would get an F.) If the student turned in a second paper with plagiarized content, I would discuss this with the student, again, reminding the student of what we had talked about before, and immediately knock off 25% and make the student rewrite and turn in again, with a maximum score of 75%. Do it again with the next paper, then an automatic cut of 50% and also require that student to rewrite the whole paper, with the prospect of only being able to earn 50%. By the third assignment, if plagiarism was still a factor, I would make the student write it again, for a max score of 25%. By the fourth paper, if plagiarism was still a factor, then I would I recommend expelling the student from the class.</p>
<p>With those university essays I scored, I was so bored by the dull, uninspiring, derivative writing, made worse by the inserted plagiarized content. What a waste of my time. If I had been the professor, I would have given all of those students Fs just for boring me to death. The best papers were written by the few exceptional students who excelled and produced college-level work without having to steal, along with the foreign students who, because they were still learning to master English, would not have been able to trick anyone with inserted plagiarized content. Their grammar was horrific, but they actually expressed original thought and analysis - they still had alert, thinking brains with thoughts worth hearing. Plagiarists just waste other people’s time. So off with their heads :)</p>
<p>DS #2 did something very dishonest and stupid this year as HS junior. For Shakespeare English paper, he had to do a plot summary of an Act and then write his interpretation of the Act, and he copied the plot summary, though wrote the hard part, the interpretation himself. He had to know that he would get caught as he copied the plot summary from Sparknotes.(!!!) Not an excuse, but I can only assume he was delirious, as it turns out he had undiagnosed pneumonia and was burning candle at both ends, trying to catch up from multiple missed school days. He should have asked for help or just handed it in late with a late penalty; we were firm with him that it was completely unacceptable as he had other options other than to outright cheat. At his HS, he got the book thrown at him, which we had no choice but to roll with. (I must say that the 34K tuition hurt even more this year! The phrase, “thanks, can i have another” comes to mind…) Even for a kid who has never been in a speck of trouble (not even a late slip at school or a minor infraction at home), he got full disciplinary committee hearing, threatened with expulsion, ended up with suspension that he and his school must report to colleges. He got a 0 on the paper too, which had massive impact on English grade. His school is full of some very perfect kids, so guessing college app process will be interesting. His high school does not mess around. I am surprised by some of the comments above that suggest a lighter penalty even for college students who should know better.</p>
<p>I went to a college with a very strong honor code so I lean on the side with harsher penalties. I agree that there need to be guidelines so it’s obvious what is allowed.</p>
<p>D had been working on a Power Point presentation for social studies class assigned last week and due this week. I had warned her when she started high school to be very careful about not using copyrighted images, and to always cite her photos and graphics. I knew that her middle school teachers had been very lax about that, and had outright told the kids it was OK to not cite artwork etc., since the presentation was for educational purposes. </p>
<p>So I made sure it was very clear that she needed to use proper citations from then on. So there she is citing all her graphics, which took forever (she kept grumbling). But the next day she comes home from school and said her teacher told them they “don’t have to bother” to cite the pictures. Huh? I told her to ignore him and keep doing it anyway. I suspect he may have intended that directive to refer to certain company logos, but she had taken it to mean all pictures. Regardless of the intent, the situation highlighted to me how easily a kid could get confused about this issue, and perhaps suffer severe consequences.</p>
<p>Found this! A “course” for HS students, basically: <a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Plagiarism-A-How-Not-Guide-Students/dp/0325026432”>http://www.amazon.com/Plagiarism-A-How-Not-Guide-Students/dp/0325026432</a></p>
<p>In our HS, a girl was found to have plagiarized midway through senior year. The teacher wrote to the top 10 school that had given her an ED acceptance and revoked his recommendation. They rescinded her acceptance.</p>
<p>When it comes to plagiarism in college, there actually are colleges out there (I work at one) that take ethics seriously – The question we always ask ourselves is “What would happen if this student engaged in plagiarism or other dishonest behavior for their first employer?” Chances are the employer would say “That’s it. I will never again hire anyone from University X. These guys are dishonest and don’t understand basic ethics.” That’s why it’s so important for us to come down hard on plagiarism and academic dishonesty among students – If we were to let it slide and then students went out into the world and did those things, it would damage our reputation.</p>
<p>Your high school teacher might be thinking the same thing in the example above. If this is the first student to get into Really Prestigious University from that high school in many years, then there is at least a possibility that if this
student subsequently gets dismissed for academic dishonesty, it will tarnish the high school’s reputation in admissions in the future. (Maybe I’m assuming that schools are better organized than they actually are, but I’m envisioning a scenario where the adcomm gets a brilliant essay, great recommendations, etc. from a student and they search the database to see if they have other students from this high school and all that comes up is “Mary Lou Whoo – Academically Dismissed, Honor Code Violation.” Even if they don’t want to hold it against the current student, they might on some level begin to think of it as a risk factor – what are the chances that this student will make it through four years without any issues or controversy.) Remember, at heart, university administrators and adcomms are risk-averse. They kind of have to be.</p>
<p>Plagiarism implies more complex acts than descriptions like cheating and stealing imply. As the conversation so far shows, there are all sorts of levels: missed citations, paraphrasing, cut and paste, boughten papers, etc. Just as the act has variety so does the “author’s” intention: “no one cares what I say,” laziness, fear of failure, trying to get it right, taking on too hard a task and needing help. Also a paradox of plagiarism is that copying ideas goes largely unnoticed, but words must never be repeated without acknowledgement. These various factors, as well as the level of the student, all have implications for how hard a professor comes down. Hence some syllabus give a range of consequences. Also some professors emphasize that writing is a process, which may make for lighter penalties; the prof might allow for working too closely with someone else’s words early on, but later require a stronger authorial voice. </p>
<p>Learning to write is a life long process, and university students should be getting increasingly challenging assignments as they progress in their major. With challenge and growth comes stress and maybe plagiarism. I see plagiarism mostly at two levels: freshmen and advanced undergraduates in hard courses. Freshmen, even if they have been taught to report and cite in high school, seldom understand university research, which is why U.S. colleges all require a freshman writing course. It’s not the high schools fault; it is an issue of progression from report to research. Often 18 y.o.'s just have trouble with getting the differences, understanding why, and then writing a paper that engages the sources critically (not just reports or summarizes). If they aren’t taught carefully, there can be a bit of plagiarism at this stage. Older students have trouble,too. Sometimes just the difficulty of the new genre, method, or discourse forces students to paraphrase or over-quote. They focus too much of the genre, method, or new jargon and forget to monitor their sentences, or they depend heavily on the experts to get the discipline’s discourse right, but then get worried about too much dependency on sources and take out the citations. </p>
<p>Most of the plagiarists I see are already in academic trouble. They either can’t handle the writing assignment and make mistakes (not really cheating), or they fear failure and are trying to stay in school. The last time I “caught” a plagiarist I planned to fail him (high weighted paper), but when I got him in my office and heard his story, we called his academic advisor. She got him into a support program, and a few years later he graduated in a hard major. I failed the paper and gave him a C for the course, but he actually liked me and saw me as a helper. </p>
<p>I’m surprised no one has mentioned the scandal about Rand Paul’s use of wikipedia in his speeches, which he first denied, then rationalized, and which seems to have been accepted by the general public as “no big deal.” (I’m not saying this to be political; there have been several politicians over the years who have been caught in this way, Paul is just the latest, and perhaps the most egregious.) It seemed to me to be a very big deal, in that plagiarism, as discussed in the foregoing conversation, is not just carelessness or ignorance, but a kind of intellectual betrayal. How can we expect students to take the concept of original thought vs. stealing intellectual property seriously, if we don’t expect it in our public figures? But, apart from a few bloggers on the left (who are immediately accused of blowing the story out of proportion for political purposes), the whole story seemed to have been treated as the usual over-reaction by over-conscientious sticklers to actions that were perfectly understandable for a busy man, who couldn’t be bothered to attribute his ideas to their sources, but was happy to take the time to find them online. In real life, the idea seems to be, this plagiarism thing just doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>Doesn’t he have a speechwriter, whose work is routinely presented as his own? </p>
<p>Seriously, I understand the difference, but I think people mostly think of Wikipedia as an information source, not a source of ideas or deathless prose, and probably think of using it in a speech as akin to quoting a dictionary. (Of course, if he is going to quote Wikipedia, he ought to say “according to Wikipedia” at least once…) But I guess I can understand how the lines can seem blurry in this instance.</p>
<p>haven’t looked at the details, but if he was using general info that’s one thing, but if he was taking blocks of prose, deathless or not, that would be another. </p>
<p>Okay, just took a look. The kind of unattributed paraphrase would be grounds for failure in my class. Hopefully the fact that we tell them that over and over convinces them that it’s a bad idea, even if politicians are being given a free pass.</p>
<p>Apparently he said: </p>
<p>“The footnote police have really been dogging me for the last week,” Paul said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “I will admit that. And I will admit, sometimes we haven’t footnoted things properly.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/11/04/rand-pauls-plagiarism-allegations-and-why-they-matter/”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/11/04/rand-pauls-plagiarism-allegations-and-why-they-matter/</a></p>
<p>Haha–the footnote police! Wonder how many students, present and pass, grumble about them!</p>
<p>@garland, thanks for the link. I hadn’t looked into the details. To me, the fact that there were plagiarized sections in books that he ostensibly wrote makes it more serious. And, of course, there is a pattern.</p>
<p>I note that he speaks in terms of “we,” which presumably refers to the staffers who do most of the work wring his books and speeches. I would bet that some internal heads might roll, or at least be severely chastened. It is interesting that he apparently routinely employs people who plagiarize. What will he do, one wonders?</p>
<p>Well, this was last year. In general, these kinds of public plagiarism seem to get a pass. It does make my job tougher.</p>
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