well, the work environment, i should say…?
Actually, in my opinion, the role of the university is to advance knowledge, through research and through teaching. And the teaching part is not simply a matter of churning out drones for “the work environment.” It’s a matter of teaching students skills in research, in critical thinking, in analysis, and in communication that will make them better citizens, not just better employees.
Incubus, could you say precisely
this definition of plagiarism is being used? I’m finding it hard to believe there is a college out there where the faculty is so stupid that they don’t know what plagiarism is. (And, if this is the definition, you and your classmate should transfer to a college where the faculty have a clue.)
Main Entry: pla·gia·rize
Pronunciation: 'plA-j&-"rIz also -jE-&-
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): -rized; -riz·ing
Etymology: plagiary
transitive senses : to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own : use (another’s production) without crediting the source
intransitive senses : to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
The basic concept of plagiarism is stealing the ideas or words of another. This is considered the ultimate academic sin. A college could pass a rule the same paper can’t be submitted to 2 different classes. However, calling that plagiarism is like saying rape is the same as murder.
Oh dear goddess, NO. Submission of a paper does NOT give the instructor the rights to it. I actually had a philosophy professor years ago specifically ask me for permission to show a copy of a paper I wrote to other students. The idea was that when a student complained what was wrong with their paper, the prof could show them mine and say “you should have wrote it something like this.” Ownership belongs to the student; the prof can merely grade the paper. Imaging the scenario of a student expanding a paper s/he wrote years later into a book. The student in this case couldn’t do it if the prof owned the rights.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Virtually all colleges now have a copyright assignment clause in the master enrollment agreement (you did read that before you signed the enrollment papers, didn’t you?) that states that any work you submit as a course assignment or create using the college’s resources is assigned to the college. They own the rights; you don’t.
Not that this has anything to do with plagiarism, mind you. Copyright and plagiarism are separate concepts entirely.
Well, even if it absolutely wasn’t plagerism, it was still obviously against the professor’s rules. When you’re writing essays, you’re writing for an audience of one. You do whatever you have to do to make the audience of one happy, and I’ve done some flatout wacky shit. I’ve had professors who don’t know the difference between MLA and APA. Professors who don’t know the difference between MLA formatting and Chicago style. Professors who threw out everything I ever knew about writing an essay and created their own unique definition of what an essay is.
It’s real easy to just adapt and do what they want. Much easier than bitching about it.
For what it’s worth, I’ve always felt the way you do Kunilou. I know professors don’t like it, but I’ve never understood why.
If I do research and write a paper for an economics class and then realize that the same research could address the issues for a paper in a political science class, what is wrong with having very similar papers for each? I’d still be graded on how well I completed the assignment (did I have a good thesis, did I support it well, how complete was my research, etc). Why does it matter if I submitted something similar in another class–provided the papers submitted meet the criteria for the assignment and I do my own work.
I can’t imagine using the exact same paper in different classes since the objectives of the paper would be slightly different in each. But I could imagine using similar papers.
My dad, who’s a professor agrees with me. My mother, also a professor, thinks doing the same research for different classes is incredibly dishonest. Yet, somehow, they stay married.
FWIW, I always told my university students up front that I didn’t care if they submitted a paper to me that was also submitted for another class, as long as it was their original work and met my (admittedly strict) requirements, and as long as the other prof also knew that the paper was to be submitted for my class.
As far as I was concerned, writing a paper that could meet my standards and earn a decent grade and also meet standards for another class was an achievement worthy of reward.
It may be true that if the student were to write 2 papers, s/he would get more practice and thereby improve his/her writing. Then again, maybe the extra effort would result in reduced performance on one or both assignments. And in the final analysis, it’s the student’s choice how much work s/he decides to allocate to any given class.
In the end, per my point of view, it’s the result that matters. Penalizing a student for being capable of synthesizing assignments seems to me ridiculous and counter-productive. It smacks of busy-work. I believe in outcome-based grading – evaluating only the product, not the effort.
Assuming this is for work done solely by the student, that can’t be right. First of all, how does the university differentiate between “university resources” and research that might be done using a privately owned Internet connection or in another college’s library? Second, if I were to submit a paper or a project for a contest, and I win a prize for that paper, the university would not collect that prize, I would. Third, if the university holds the copyright for my work, then how can I use that work in the professional portfolio I need to graduate?
On the other hand, I can see the university holding the copyright for collaborations between students and faculty.
If you have cites for this, I’d love to see them.
Robin
Read any collegiate master enrollment agreement. The details vary, but virtually all of them stipulate copyright assignment for student work. “University resources” usually means supplies or services provided by the university to students (such as art supplies or computational resources) as part of the provision of educational services. Most of the cases I’ve run across relate either to student-created art which subsequently sold for large sums, or to computer software developed by students. I don’t have WestLaw anymore, so I can’t provide a cite anymore. However, here’s an example statement of a university’s copyright policy:
This university is generous; it does not claim copyright in all student submissions, only those involving the “significant” use of University resources or those which are defined as a “thesis” or “dissertation”.
Well, here’s a sample of my education experiences:
I had to write a 20-page paper during my senior year of high-school, which was for credit for both my Advanced Composition and American Government classes (both teachers knew and approved of this; in fact they had been doing it that way as long as I can remember). My freshman year of college I turned that paper into a speech for my Communications class.
My senior year of college, I had group projects due for both my Web Design and Software Engineering classes (I was a CS major). My group was the same 4 people for both classes, and as such we submitted the same project for both classes (and both classes were, in fact, taught by the same professor). I don’t recall ever explicitly asking permission to do so beforehand, but I did get an A in both classes. And the results are more satisfying (for both the students and the professor) if we can put in 500 man-hours into a single project as opposed to 250 man-hours into two separate projects.
I still have all the code for that thing laying around somewhere… might have to dig it up and laugh at how stupid our design was.
The cite you posted doesn’t really help your argument. If you go back and re-read what I posted, I said that I could buy the university-held copyright in the case of collaborative efforts. I’m even willing to extend that to graduate-level theses.
I am still failing to understand how a university can claim ownership of a work when it can’t prove its resources were used. If you can find a different agreement that makes that claim, I’ll back off.
Robin
The university can claim ownership whenever it wants. These clauses are inserted into agreements, and the student consents to them as part of the admission process. The only limitation on such agreements is whether or not they “shock the sensibilities of the court”, which, these days, amounts to basically nothing. So your failure to understand is really quite irrelevant.
As I said, I no longer have WestLaw. If I did, I could probably find the cases I read four years ago on this issue (although I doubt I’d want to spend the money to do so).