Re: the link in Janet Miles' comment, sure, plagiarizing can be a form of self-instruction. It would work much better if the students who try it had the ability to assess what's useful to lift. Plagiarism happens for multiple reasons (as do successful assignments), but when I've seen smart people do it, often the results are just as lame as the cribbed pieces submitted by students who're struggling in the class.
I suggested in a comment to a now-locked post on lj that teaching to exams--essentially, teaching form, not content--encourages students to plagiarize. Teaching to exams, and thinking that teaching to exams is a Good Thing, and spending years being taught as though only exams (not their content) mattered, help shape a fluid sense of accountability. Increasingly "standards" and "success" are measured by passing, not by whether anyone's learned methods and facts, and students are passed if they appear to be doing all right. The students my colleagues and I see are bright--at something(s), if not English composition--and many of them know it; yet a few plagiarize anyway, submitting work which casts them and their self-assessment abilities in a distinctly unfavorable light, because they think it'll suffice.
redfox, plagiarism from books and print journals certainly happens, and it happens now, too. It's slightly easier to catch the journal-skimmers than it used to be, that's all, using the same internet technology that many plagiarists use.
I'm interested to see the many indignant declarations of "They make you sign a sheet!" both here and on livejournal where the U of Kent student has been discussed. There's no sheet where I am, but not all of the students plagiarize. Some of them take the beginning-of-term announcement seriously, and oddly enough, some of them seem to have a sense of integrity.
I think that explicitly demanding a signed sheet works only when every piece for which one is accountable requires a signed sheet. The jobs that many college students go into will not. It seems more useful to me to teach students (while they're students) not to plagiarize, and why, than to extend the period during which the hand of authority shakes a forbidding finger at them as though they were five years old and caught with the cookie jar. No matter what the sanctions are, some of them will do it anyway. That isn't new, and has nothing to do with the internet or with "kids today."
The race article is still up (sorry for commenting twice; wasn't sure I'd find my hd saved copy).
I'm finding this issue interesting on two levels-- the plexiglass window into an industry I care about, and the reactions of people who Know Things; and the fact that people think this is new. :) Back in 1999, Salon published an anonymous article by a then-colleague of mine which "exposed" the hypocritical racism of grad students at a premier US public research university. Guess Salon's subscription sales have dipped again.
Tangentially, the 2002 computer adventure game Syberia requires its protagonist, Kate Walker, to follow an eccentric Ruritanian toymaker on his quest for surviving mammoths. I no longer recall whether the game specifies their size, but the quest does head northeast into a USSR-analogue, loosely Siberiawards.
My foot reverses direction just as I concentrate on starting a "6" and *not* reversing direction; it doesn't matter whether my hand starts to move. Stupid neural overrides.
Does handedness factor in usefully anywhere?
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 7 |
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