Not neccessarily. I went ot a very good high school, but the teachers there just assumed I had already been taught what to do )I hadn’t). So when I got assigned a research paper, I didn’t do very well at all, because I didn’t quite understand how to do one properly. Part fo the problem was that I had transferred around different high schools with different curricula.
It was not until college that I learned how to do them well. It wasn’t a problem once someone just clearly explained to me how to do it start to finish. In high school, most teachers weren’t very clear when explaining how it differed from any other paper, except that you had these mysterious “citations.”
I’m at a "career university, too, in fact, and this particular assignment was pretty much what you describe–a five-page paper with at least 3 sources.
Interestingly enough, TurnItIn found a website that only matched 60% of the paper he submitted. When I used Google, I found the exact paper he submitted–100% match, character for character.
While TurnItIn has advantages, I don’t think it matches Google.
My daughter is a Freshman in high school this year, and she is well-versed in how to write a research paper, including citing references, using quotations appropriately, and providing complete source information. While I have to admit that she is an Advanced student, she is still only a Freshman in high school.
As an aside, though, all students at our university are expected to take a course in doing research papers their first quarter at school. While I am aware that some students wait until later to take it, we are really pushing to make sure that all students take it as soon as they can get it into their schedule. I know for a fact that this student did take this course before taking mine.
In addition, this particular student took Composition I before taking my class. This is an English class that also focuses on writing research papers.
Even with all of this, I also provide a good overview of how to write a research paper, what kind of information should be included, and how to cite and reference sources. They are expected to submit a topic proposal and at least three acceptable references the second week of the course, so that I can approve the references, and make sure that they have actually done research prior to choosing a topic. I am also willing to work with any student who asks for help, for any reason, and the school provides English tutors for free to any student who needs help writing papers.
This course is entitled “Introduction to the Internet,” and two of the objectives of the course is for students to learn how to evaluate web pages as sources, and provide appropriate references to those pages.
We spend a week talking about finding websites on particular topics, and evaluating web page content. I also provide them with plenty of information about how to write a research paper, despite the fact that every student who takes this course is expected to complete at least one English course on how to write research papers.
In addition, in e-mail correspondence with this student, he tells me that he is expected to write reports for work, and that his employer thinks he writes well.
Actually, the Dean has been very supportive of my position, and has been for every other such incident I’ve had to deal with in the past. I have no qualms about CC’ing messages sent about plagiarism to him when I inform the student why they are receiving a grade of 0. He knows I won’t do it without legitimate cause, and I know that he will back me up.
At this point, the Dean is fully supporting my decision to give the student a grade of F for the course.
The student, OTOH, is being very belligerent about it. He claimed, in two separate e-mails, that he did not copy and paste his paper from the Internet. However, when the Dean told him that my proof was sufficient, he backtracked a little. He admitted to plagiarizing the paper, on the grounds that 1) his computer crashed, and he lost all of the paper he had written, and 2) his anxiety took over, and he did what he could to submit a paper before the due date. He actually apologized, and asked me to reconsider, and give him additional time to write the paper.
I said, flat out, No. If he had told me about the problems with his computer, it’s possible I would have given in an extension (although I seriously doubt he had any part of his paper written at that point), but that computer problems cannot justify his choice to plagiarize the paper.
He then wrote the Dean about what a lousy teacher I was, and that he should tell me to forgive him. Fat chance. :rolleyes: When the Dean wrote that he fully supported my position, the student’s reply was that it was unreasonable of me to expect the students in this course (which is a Computer Science course, NOT an English course, By God!) to write a research paper in the first place. The Dean’s response was that if the student feels he does not deserve a grade of F in the course, he should use the standard Grade Appeals procedure to appeal it.
For the record, I did have one assignment in the second week of the course where the students were expected to find answers to questions on the Internet, and I made it clear that I expected them to paraphrase their answers, and at least provide URLs for each of their sources, even if they didn’t give a full APA citation and reference. This student copied and pasted text wantonly, provided no references whatsoever, and got a Zero for the assignment. (He wasn’t the only one in the course to get a zero, but I thought it would help enforce the need to cite sources on an assignment that was worth only 1% of the grade, rather than waiting to find out about this on the research paper that is worth 15% of the grade.) He argued with me about that one, too, and I gave him the full spiel on how important it is to cite references in any document he creates.
Your dean sounds like mine. You are very fortunate.
So the student thinks that if it’s not an English course, stuff shouldn’t have to be written, and the cheating doesn’t count either? That made me laugh just thinking about it.
Sure, he can appeal the grade. He can knock himself out and waste more energy. It’s all a choice–but then, so is plagiarism.
Ah, yes… don’t you just love the insistence of innocence, followed by backtracking, eventual admissions of guilt, then the lame excuses…?
Once, upon catching a student cheating on a programming assignment (in a non-majors programming course – he was not a CS major), he tried this excuse on me: “But I’m not going to be a programmer. I’m going to be a Systems Analyst”.
And of course… he cheats, gets caught, and somehow (according to him) that makes YOU a bad teacher.
I just wish the administration at my school backed us up on cheating issues like it sounds like your dean does. They need to grow a pair, here.
currently a freshman in college, at a tech school… and i know at least my english class policy on plagiarism is one offense, and out of the course. I love that policy. I agree, i don’t see how anyone can think it’s a good idea… i would hope students, at least by college, would be a bit smarter…
… then again, looking out my dorm door, i see i could be wrong on that…
There’s a student at my university who comes into the library all the time and has a lawsuit against the library and his department. He was given an F for the course for plagiarism (professors have the option of flunking a student for the entire course for a single instance of proven plagiarism) and states that he was not given instructions by his professor or the librarians in how to cite something so that it doesn’t appear like his own work. It’s a totally bogus case that is 100% (imo) an attempt to force the university to let him remain (he perhaps figures they’ll make a compromise of some sort) and the university isn’t the least bit worried about it, thinking it will be thrown out of court as soon as it goes for review. Personally I think they should be more concerned as it’s exactly the kind of dumbass case that you’ll end up reading about on blogs when the jury awards $3 million to the plaintiff in Sorry Dumbass v. The Board of Regents of… .
There was a high school teacher in Auburn who was fired by the public school on ethics charges when it was found he was supplementing his income by writing papers for college students. He sued and I think it was settled out of court (no money but they agreed to say he resigned rather than he was fired), but by that time his reputation was ruined and he left education.
Most students have no idea of the existence of anti-plagiarism software or that many universities have a subscription to the same term paper databases they buy their own from. When I was in grad school there was actually a store that sold old termpapers on the Strip (as “study aides” of course) but they’re closed now; I don’t know if it was University pressure or lack of business.
One professor friend of mine did reverse an F she gave for plagiarism when she said that after talking to the student she was convinced that the girl really was so stupid that she didn’t realize she’d done anything wrong. She still failed the course.
I personally would support corporal punishment where plagiarists are concerned. Have them flogged with a stolen whip, especially if they’re cute. It’s just such a slimy thing to do when most universities have writing tutors and reference librarians and other faculty members more than willing to assist with research, answer questions, etc…
Man, do I feel your pain. And those same students are usually perplexed and stare vacant eyed when there’s not actually five books and twenty-two articles with “a comparison of the Civil War and 9/11” in the title- they have no concept that “it’s YOUR job to make the comparison”. And the World War 2 guy I’m sure has no concept of what you mean when you tell him he’ll need to narrow it down or he’ll get 90,000 sources.
Do you get the 10 minute mea culpa’s from non-trads about how "I’m 48 years old and I don’t know how to use a computer and my brother-in-law just died and my kids all have ringworm and I’m only here because my ex-husband stole my kidneys and yadda yadda blabba bloo… " GET TO THE POINT! I’LL GLADLY SHOW YOU HOW TO USE EVERY DATABASE AND CATALOG HERE BUT STOP WHINING! THE 18 YEAR OLDS DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO THIS EITHER BUT IT AIN’T THAT HARD TO LEARN THE BASICS!
We have a 60ish professor who is absolutely incapable of or unwilling to learn one damned thing about how to use our electronic catalog or any of our databases. All of us have tried to show him how a dozen times and all it means is that when he comes in the thirteenth time he’s going to ask at the desk “Do you have a copy of _______ and where is it?” When you try to show him how to find it for himself, he’ll just glaze his eyes, then ask you to find the next three books on his list. He once accused a librarian of racism (he’s black) for not helping him find the books on a night when she had several patrons needing help and had shown him a buttload of times already how to use the catalog. When he learned that her children are black (she’s white), he changed it to ageism. The hell of it is that he doesn’t even teach at our university but at a small private college in town where he’s banned from the library for being abusive (which even though the college is predominantly black is probably still racism).
And then there are the professors who don’t know how to use the electronic catalogs and databases themselves so they won’t allow their students to use them, and have absolutely no understanding that many periodicals and indexes haven’t come to the library in print for years because we have them electronically (and we simply can’t afford to have them in both print and electronic format). There’s even the occasional professor (usually an adjunct retiree or whatever) who won’t allow Internet resources (understandable enough) but doesn’t understand that databases aren’t Internet resources.
Sampiro, your story reminded me of that girl who sued her school to be valedictorian, then lost her scholarship to Princeton when it was revealed that she had plagarized. And then the dumbass claimed she didn’t know it was wrong.
One of my students plagarized a favorite short story of mine. It was not a particularly well-known story. I had seen it in print only one time and that was in a book that had disappeared from my classroom desk. Nervy, wasn’t he?
I graduated from Caltech a couple dozen years ago. Not what you’d call a lame school, but I don’t feel that I ever really learned to do a research paper properly. The last time I came close was as a short paper I wrote as a freshman. In my high school, there was an elective unit on writing a research paper that was highly regarded among my fellow students, but I avoided it. Goes without saying that I didn’t learn how to use online resources – or how to make footnotes in MS Word, for that matter!
Now I’m looking at going back to school, probably in subjects that will require much more writing. What’s the best way for me to go about learning how to write a proper research paper, good research and organization methods, and so on? Online resources would be especially helpful.
Definition of irony:
About three/four years back, a couple of kids were caught plagiarizing. Pursuent to the clearly stated rules of our chapter of the National Honor Society( that the students had to sign to agree to when entering), the students in question (seniors, IIRC) were summarly dismissed from NHS. They raised a tremedous stink. Complained to everyone who would stop to listen; they tried to get the Principal, then the Superintendant to overturn the ruling. A big brouhaha.
The irony part? About one week later, the committee to create our mission statement presents to the faculty for a vote a plagiarized mission statement!
[At least they changed the name of the school, but that was all they changed. Seriously, we were told we were being presented an original mission statement when someone (I suspect the committee chair, who is now the middle school principal) copied the other school’s mission statement and got the rest of the group to agree with it. What’s even funnier is that the other school was the one said chair had recently visited as part of our reaccrediation process; no way could she have not known.]
APA is a style of formatting your citations. It is not the only style, but it is one of the most common in non-scientific publications that I have seen.
If you go to school, ask someone at your library if they subscribe to Refworks.com. Refworks is an online way to manage and format your citations. If not, http://www.apastyle.org/ might help, but, IIRC, their books are expensive.
I’d be curious to know about his upbringing. Was his mother one of those “Oh, my baby never does anything wrong! Or if he did it wasn’t his fault! Don’t worry, dear, Mommy will go down to the school and straighten out that nasty old teacher and principal. We’ll get that F taken off your report card or I’ll sue!”
I don’t remember a lot of plagarism when I was going to school. Do you think the proliferation of the internet has made it easier, or do you think those parents aren’t doing as good a job discipling their children for lying and stealing? (which is what plagarism is.)
