I am currently attending classes at the University of Phoenix (AXIA College in my area) and I am ready to drive to Phoenix and scream loudly at all staff.
The school is obsessed with plagerisim and their stupid APA format. You can ask an instructor about it and they are ivasive and unclear in their response. When they do respond it contridicts the maunuals and outlines given to us to go by.
It is driving me crazy, I can’t stop, I am paying for this, maybe it will be better once I get through the classes I “have” to take even though I already have credits for the same class because Phoenix apparently thinks they teach it better. Really you spend the first 18 weeks of class trying to figure out what the hell to do and why you are having to do it. Maybe when that is done they think they have you so beat down you will stay and submit…
I am so fed up with this place it even costs way more than the local college I was attending. I love the online thing really but this is crazy!
To be honest, it’s a little hard to figure out exactly what your complaint is. This may sound glib, but if you don’t plan to plagiarize, then why are you so concerned about the policy? And regarding the “stupid” APA format, I didn’t find it any more stupid than any other format. If you have specific questions about the format, why don’t you just pick up a copy of the APA publication guide and see what it has to say?
APA can be a real pain in the ass, but once you get it, it’s not so bad. Do not attempt without an actual copy of the manual though, or you will go insane. I thoroughly support a proper beat-down of the manual writers though.
I haven’t had to deal with APA but I’ve got to switch between MLA and CPS depending on who I’m writing for. If you’re having a hard time with APS I recommend you purchase a book that explains the writing format to you.
Hacker, D. (2003). A Writer’s Reference (5th ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin.
I agree that sometimes it’s a pain in the ass to follow writing guidelines but they’re necessary.
Try dianahacker.com (link goes to APA style information) for help with citations. If you scroll a little down the page, there’s a drop-down menu you can use to see examples of the citations for different types of documents.
Or, use CitationMachine.net - pick the type of resource you’re using, enter the information and you will get a sample citation in MLA and APA style. You do need to check it though, as there are occasional errors in the citation provided.
What the FUCK? You’re not really a uni student are you? How can someone with such limited skills in written communication even get accepted into a tertiary place, let alone start complaining about the plagiarism rules they lay down???
A lot of my husband’s students think that he is unreasonable for insisting on correct spelling and punctuation. APA format? Please-- he’s delighted if he can get them to form complete sentances.
APA format isn’t so bad, once you’ve got used to it - unless they do what they did to us, and switch to Harvard in the second year just when you understand it :rolleyes:
Nah, the odd spelling mistake is fine, and excusable. Incoherent theses are not. The OP in this thread should take him/herself back to highschool and get him/herself thoroughly familiar with English before even attempting to embark upon a university course…no matter what his/her major might be.
Me, too–I thought it was a scam.
I cut my eye teeth on the APA format. You don’t like it? Try going through a BSN program. You can’t declare the need to pee without a cite! (kinda like here…but I never cite here–no computer skills)
Well it’s a given that the OP certainly did their best to obscure it but if the above sentence an accurate description they certainly have grounds for some mild ire.
It is indeed frustrating to try master a new format [or any new guidance] when those responsible for enforcing that guidance are reluctant, unable, or poorly equipped to explain it.
That said, the OP wasn’t terribly coherent so I could be way off base. In regards to the reference to plagiarism I’m at a bit of a loss. My only way I can put it in a good light is to wonder if the complaint might not have been directed at the strict anti-plagiarism standards themselves but rather to constant, redundant lectures, policy letters, etc about plagiarism which can certainly get annoying after then tenth time.
What can I say? I try to find the benefit of the doubt but I freely admit I’m digging here.
Dude, I had just gotten out of bed-- cut me some slack.
I don’t think they are acceptable if you’re in an academic setting. It’s just sloppy and lazy. Nearly everyone has Spell Check, or a dictionary.
He probably should, but he probably doesn’t need to do so. Most of the instructors/professors at my husband’s campus simply ignore it.
I once typed a paper for a friend-of-a-friend who was attending this same school. I was kind-- I corrected some of the spelling mistakes and removed some of the mixed tenses (as much as I could without changing the substance of the paper.) It was completely incoherent, anyway. Apparently, he was one of those folks who erroneously think that if they pepper the paper with “big words” it will look like they know what they’re talking about, even if those words don’t belong together. Later, I asked what grade the paper had recieved, and I was astonished to learn he had gotten a “B”.
Hubby is more generous with his grading than I would be. He doesn’t take off points for grammar errors unless they make the paper unreadable, but he does take off points if there are glaring punctuation and spelling mistakes.
The way I see it is that college is the last training one gets before entering the professional world. When is the student supposed to learn to write correctly if not now? It may seem from the way things are going that one day everyone will write like a highschool dropout, but there are still some dinosaurs who look in askance when they get an error-ridden report from a co-worker or a proposal from a client.
I’m not a grammar-nazi on the boards or in casual conversation, because it’s not important. But I do take notice of errors in news reporting, scholarly works, or books. In novels, it lessens my enjoyment, and in professionally-produced media, it makes me mistrust the information. It seems to be becomming more pervasive, and I can only blame the colleges who put people out into the workforce unprepared.
This may surprise you, OP; it certainly surprised me.
Some people do not know what plagiarism is.
Some college students think they know what plagiarism is, but are genuinely surprised that pulling whole sentences off the internet without a cite would count as plagiarism. I mean, it’s on the internet. And to be fair to them, most of them grew up with the net, but went to high school with teachers who did not. The teachers assumed students would know the internet fell under the same rules as any other publication, but didn’t necessarily spell that out, and the students think that public domain (accessible) = public domain (copyright-free).
Some college students, who think the above behavior is reprehensible, still feel it’s okay to go to a website and use its prose as a model, changing or rearranging the odd word but basically copying the ideas and structure.
And that’s not even considering the dishonest students.
In your case, I think the best response to the constant plagiarism lectures is a smile of smug superiority.
A lot of the time, obsession with plagarism is justified. Every quarter, my husband gets a few papers in which it’s painfully obvious they were not written by the student.
My husband says he doesn’t know whether to be amused or insulted when a student who could not string two words together coherently on a test’s essay-answer suddenly comes up with a brilliant analysis in his term paper. What’s even more amusing are the ones who don’t bother to read the paper they plagarized. Those ones are easily exposed when Hubby asks a few “casual” questions about the topic.
Any instructor/professor who’s paying attention knows his students’ style and what they’re capable of producing (along with how much effort they’re likely to put into it). Of course, anything that sails vastly above the norm is going to raise red flags, but some students don’t seem to realize it.
What’s at issue is whether the instructor/professor actually cares. Yeah, every one of them gives the plagarism speeches, but how many actually put the effort into checking? I’ve even seen professors who know a paper was plagarized give it a pass because they don’t want to go through the bother or scandal of accusing a student of cheating.
