She’s already been caught plargiarizing once before and now she’s trying the old trick of just changing some words around from what she’s copying.
She may actually think she wasn’t plagiarizing since she wasn’t copying verbatim but she’s still using someone else’s research and presentation. She didn’t discover that Clioquinol case on her her own. She’s not getting the point of a research paper. If it was a first offense, I’d say dock her some points and chew her out, but since this is the second time she’s been caught cheating (and rephrasing someone else’s research is still cheating, as far as I’m concerned), I think you have to fail her.
I’m a hardass about this stuff, though. I detest academic cheating. I’d expel students after the first offense if it were up to me.
The point is to do your own research and find your own cases, not just to parakeet somebody else’s work. The article she cribbed from is not just a source, it’s a research paper unto itself. It’s no different than borrowing a paper from someone else in the class and then changing a few words around. She didn’t do any research of her own, and I think some people might be missing the fact that Dmark said she has been caught plagiarizing before. I think that should cost her any benefit of doubt.
Either you or I isn’t understanding the OP, so let’s ask for clarification. Is this student the same student who was loathe to admit plagiarism and failed for it? I read it as being a second student.
No - It was a DIFFERENT student that was caught plagiarizing. DMark is upset that after making an example of THAT student, THIS student would hand in a “plagiarized” paper.
FWIW - I agree with the others who have said it’s not plagiarized, per se. More a case of sloppy citing. I would dock marks with an explanation of why, but would not fail this student based on academic dishonesty.
Regardless of whether you try her for plagiarism or dock her a large number of points for not using citations properly, I think this would be a good opportunity to make sure that the entire class understands plagiarism and how to cite things properly. Yes, it takes away from your regularly scheduled lessons, but you’ll have less headaches in the next few papers and will be absolutely sure that these kids have gotten a lecture on what is and is not plagiarism before dealing with another possible plagiarism issue.
In one of my senior level classes, the instructor had to go over basic issues of spelling and punctuation because she (as a non-native speaker of English) was so infuriated by how bad some of the papers were that she received. It took about five minutes, and, despite the fact that the perpetrators were red-faced throughout the lecture, she didn’t have any problems afterward. You’re not just doing yourself a favor, but you’re doing a favor to the people after you that have to read their written work.
Indeed, this lazy fashion design student should get her ass out there and dig up a brand spanking new case of tragic drug side effects to fill out that paragraph in her ethics paper.
Lazy ass kids these days. In my day, we were expected to do original research on each and every report we handed in. I got in a bit of trouble with my paper on Grant’s Tomb, and I still wasn’t able to positively identify those bones.
Using that logic, all undergraduates would fail immediately. My understanding (and that of the UK HE sector) is that the vast majority of undergraduate level study is critical analysis of extant sources. I think you’d be hard pressed to find too much original research of anything.
I’m willing to concede that things in the US might be different, but from my experience studying over there as a student myself, it seemed to be more about rote-learning than anything else, which is about as far removed from original research as you can get!
My mistake about this student being caught plagiarizing before. I still think she was cheating. I’d just give ger a D on the paper. I know that undergrads pull this crap all the time where they just regurigitate previously written articles, but I think they’re coddled. I never did that shit.
Disagree. I went and found that article on Google … it’s public information on an anti-animal-testing advocacy website. I can’t see the difference between using that website as a source and using a book in the college library. It’s true that information-gathering in the Internet age is a jillion times easier than it was in our day … but that doesn’t mean our way was superior and these kids nowadays need to spend the weekend in the library when a paper is due Monday, dammit!
All that said, there are four books referenced on the bottom of the article linked above. DMark’s student could have tracked down one or more of those books and perhaps come up with better cites.
I think there’s something to actually having to track down books and read them and decide on your own what to use from them that you don’t get from just googling an article and rewording it. Damn it, if I had to go to the library then I don’t see why these snot-nosed kids today should be able to just sit in front of a magic box and copy stuff.
This is actually good avice for how to find sources. If I didn’t know where to start with a library search, I would find an article or book on the same or similar subject and search for whatever was in their bibliographies.
Yes, it’s plagiarism, for several reasons: “according to one source” does not count as proper attribution; the passage contains no parenthetical documentation or footnotes, nor is it made clear that the entire paragraph comes from the source rather than just the first sentence; and although the student has attempted to paraphrase the passage, the phrasing and sequence of ideas are too close to the original. However, I agree that this looks like a case of plagiarism from ignorance rather than from intent. This student has probably never learned how to cite sources properly and should be taught how to do so and required to rewrite the paper, rather than assigned a failing grade outright.
Indeed. We’re clear that the rewording is the problem, then … not the nature of the source. People used to reword passages from old-fashioned books all the time.
I do agree with your first sentence. Further, I think it applies especially to online info, where so much info is both unvetted and overtly biased. There definitely is value in tracking down multiple sources – be they websites, periodicals, Lexis-Nexis entries, or … well … books. DMark’s student could have, at the very least, went to Wikpedia and WebMD to read articles on thalidomide and cloquinol.
Maybe a quick Amazon search would turn up some references … and heck, with those, sometimes you can read a few pages in the books. How easy would it be if you could scare up a few legit book citations without ever leaving your desk?
Yes, indeed. The Internet can be a good place to find sources (if you go in with a discriminating eye) … but it can also serve as a huge and uber-efficient card catalog. A few well-cited Wikipedia articles can make the research for a 20-page paper child’s play.
…
An aside: did any of you ever get the impression that the kinds of research papers that used to be allowed 4-6 weeks in the past should really be done maybe in three to five days with the Internet and all?
DMark, I sit on the academic honesty board at my graduate school, and based on what you’ve shared, I think this is a case of a student who does not know how to correctly cite sources. If this is a student who seems to be giving a good effort in class and participating, I would certainly encourage you to talk to her and go through any number of the suggestions that other Dopers have suggested - a lower grade, an additional assignment on sources, etc.
I would strongly dissuade you from referring the student to the review board. IMO, these processes are applied unevenly. We had one prof who referred students constantly. The prof taught a course where students were allowed to work together until the assignment was due. They were expected to then write their own papers. Well, guess what? If you work together there will probably be overlap between notes and on their papers! I saw students humiliated and embarrassed for making honest mistakes repeatedly. Many times, simply because the case comes to the board, there are sanctions that are far greater than what would be levied if the prof dealt with it in class. I think the prof has changed the guidelines for the assignments now as we haven’t had any cases this semester.
The other thing is that the student made it clear that this analysis and research came from elsewhere. It needs a cite, yes, and I would expect a better synthesis of the literature she’s citing, but she didn’t attempt to pass this off as her own original thought. It’s seriously problematic, but I would only consider sending a student to the review board if there was an effort to hide the fact that the passage was not her own. To me, that’s a level of duplicity that requires intent.
The sad fact is, students and faculty do not have discussions about plagiarism. Usually there’s lip service in the syllabus and a threat - and it never comes up again. I think profs should assign readings about using sources - my institution has a manual, about 50 pp, all on what is considered to be academically dishonest - and then discuss with students. With sources so easily available on the internet, I think it is difficult for students to understand consistently what is fair game and what is not. Especially when I hear that some professors encourage students to cut and paste from articles in drafts and non-essential assignments! :eek:
Dmark, this reads like exactly the mistakes I made before I learned how to properly cite. It took *two * comp classes for me to learn how to cite the right way for all sources and I know I handed in stuff just like that as a freshman. The student may have had a poor teacher prior to you. I was lucky for the remaining classes, as the profs would go over what was expected (APA, style, etc) on the same day as the syllabus and we could ask for clarification.
Then again, you have the benefit of knowing this person and her character in previous interactions; is she usually ignorant of things like that?
Good luck on deciding how to handle it, I don’t envy you.
I’d ask her to explain how diarrhea causes blindness.
When I was an undergrad (English, heavy on literature) this would have been plagiarism. This was before the internet made cheating so easy. It bothers me that rewording someone else’s work is now seen as being sort of OK.
I agree and can’t believe so many people are willing to give her a pass.
I obviously wasn’t an English major, but when I worked on a paper I had a handbook or a guide sitting there so I could look up how to do a work cited page or quotations or how to handle sources. I’m sure most people do because it’s not something you know off the top of your head. No book in the world would tell you that what she did was acceptable. If I had any question at all, I would have asked. Personally I loved when some teachers allowed you to submit a draft for examination.
I worked on papers with the assumption that my sources would be checked.
If it was a high school paper it might be a different story, but not college.
The first student had actually started writing her paper, then decided to pay a fellow student to do it for her instead. However, the student she paid to write it for her simply went on line and took an essay and copied it word for word…so when I got the paper, it was a perfect, 100% copy of an essay from the Internet. There was no question in that case that it was total plagiarism in that case, and the student admitted it.
One other fact to consider in all this; the students were allowed to pick their own topic, and were also allowed to use their own thoughts and words (no references needed). 95% of them have done an excellent job in simply taking an ethical situation in their major course of study and discussing the pros and cons. For instance, quite a few of the fashion majors dealt with PETA and products used in fashion design. Those papers were obviously original (the occasional spelling and grammar errors, a vocabulary that was appropriate to the student, style of writing etc.). I sincerely doubt that this student had ever heard of Thalidomide or Clioquinol, let alone spell them correctly.
And the final consideration is that this paper is not at all in the style that was required. They were to present their premise and then put an argument in one paragraph, then respond to it in the next, and then present another argument, respond to that in the next paragraph, and so on. It was to be a minimum of five pages. So in other words, this was not a difficult task: no major research required, just the use of logic and ethics in presenting two sides of an issue and then coming to a conclusion that supported their premise. As one student aptly put it, “it is like being schizophrenic on paper.”
At any rate, thanks for all your comments. We already had the plagiarism discussion earlier in the quarter, and again in greater depth when the first paper was discovered, so there is little excuse for the “cut her some slack, she didn’t know any better”…we have pretty much beat that dead horse into the ground.
Agree 100% with Fretful Porcupine. I would give the student a pretty hard-assed talk: “This is plagarized. Here’s why. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you did not know it was plagarized. You have X days to turn in a paper that is not plagarized. If you turn in a plagarized paper again, you will fail this course.”
And I would include this as an example for future courses of what plagarism is.
