Author Archive for Jenny

Plagiarism in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Published
by
Jenny
on February 26, 2007
in Acacademic Integrity, Pedagogy and Plagiarism
. 5 Comments

I used to take plagiarism seriously; even worse, I used to take it personally. If you are the type of instructor who makes it a business to track down the source of a plagiarized text in order to prove that a student is a plagiarist, then you’re probably finding, in the age of Google and Turn It In, that catching a plagiarist can be a pretty easy job.

The same tools that make it easy to locate sources of plagiarized texts, however, are the same tools that are making it easier for students to plagiarize. Some papers are even constructed by cutting and pasting information from internet sites, and in extreme cases, the student will keep the original html formatting in their papers, not bothering to change the font, color, or line spacing of the lifted material. The internet is also a host to companies that will offer to write or sell papers to students.

In my discussions with faculty members, I try not to spend too much time discussing plagiarism for two reasons. First, plagiarism is not going to go away, and I would rather that faculty walk away from my sessions with ideas of how to make their classroom and teaching more innovative. Second, I think that how we deal with plagiarism is oftentimes touchy and personal–there’s a taboo surrounding the measures that one could take and the measures that one actually takes when confronting or not confronting a student who is inadequate in the area of attribution.

I feel strongly, however, that not confronting a plagiarist will ultimately thwart the student’s ability to develop crucial communication and critical thinking skills.

My method of dealing with plagiarism isn’t the best, I’m sure, and it’s certainly not fool-proof; however, I’ve so often been asked how I go about confronting inadequate attribution that I feel compelled to list my steps here.

1.) Don’t take it personally. The student is not throwing your teaching back in your face, as it were. The student might be suffering from feelings of inadequacy, fear of writing, fear of English, or other feelings that we, in our capacity of instructors, aren’t able to relate to. Of course, the student might also just be trying to get an easy way out of an assignment or just waited until the last minute, only to discover that the work involved in the assignment was too much for one all-nighter.

2.) Don’t spend your time commenting or marking up a paper that you suspect is plagiarized. It’s a good idea to hand back the plagiarized paper with the rest of the class’s papers with a little note. What you want to say is up to you, but I find it best not to use the “P” word.

3.) Always give the student the benefit of the doubt. I always tell myself to assume that the student just didn’t know better, even if the paper is an article on the internet. I ask the student to talk to me after class or during office hours, and I go over citation and attribution with them personally. Some of us might feel that we don’t want to deal with the situation, that sending the student to the Writing Center for a lesson in attribution would be less awkward, but having this lesson straight from the instructor is really the best way to let to student know about the seriousness of the issue. Besides, the student has already been caught, as it were, and probably doesn’t want to face someone else–it’s embarrassing and shameful.

4.) In some cases, when I am able to find the source of the plagiarism on-line, and depending on the case, I will staple the print-outs to the student’s paper with a note that says, “Sally, could you please go through your paper and properly attribute what you’ve written here and then resubmit it? I’ve printed out the sources to make it easier for you to cite the websites in your paper and the web addresses in your Works Cited page. I think you’ve chosen a good topic, but I’m interesting in seeing what YOU think here.”

5.) If a student does it twice, well, then I might consider the measures that I could take, but students, I find, generally don’t do it again.

Inventing the Critical “I”

Published
by
Jenny
on February 12, 2007
in Feedback, Liberal Arts, Pedagogy, Process, Revision and literature
. 1 Comment

In the Uses of Literature, Italo Calvino writes that “[t]he preliminary condition of any work of literature is that the person who is writing has to invent that first character, who is the author of the work.” Literature classrooms present an interesting paradox: although the work under discussion is literature, students are asked to produce critical works, not literature. Yet, when asked to discuss or write about a work of literature, students are often happier, indeed more comfortable, with relating the work to their lives (in a sense creating a type of literature?) instead of looking at the work with a critical eye.

I think that we can apply Calvino’s “preliminary condition” in the classroom. It may be easier to think of Calvino’s “preliminary condition” alongside something that Nancy Sommers writes about in “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” She writes that “experienced writers imagine a reader (reading their product) whose existence and whose expectations influence their revision process. They have abstracted the standards of a reader and this reader seems to be partially a reflection of themselves and functions as a critical and productive collaborator–a collaborator who has yet to love their work.” Just as a writer of literature must first invent an “I” who is, according to Calvino, the author of the work, a successful writer, according to Sommers, imagines (or invents) a critical “I” to shape the work into an effective piece of writing.

Students in literature courses will inevitably encounter religious texts and be asked to write on them or do some comparative work. They are often hesitant to engage in this work, so close are they to their personal selves, the personal “I.”

I once had a student in an out-of-class workshop say that she couldn’t write on religious texts; she was afraid that her writing might be deemed offensive, that she might say “the wrong thing.” One student in an in-class workshop said that he hoped he wouldn’t have to do a presentation on a piece of writing as controversial as a 17th-century sermon. His impulses were to blame the sermon for outcomes in history rather than reading the sermon as a piece of literature.

Instead of having our students write unimaginative and often weak theses, I’m wondering if we should instead be trying to help them invent an “I,” a critical collaborator with which to think through and write, an “I” that can help them to author critical essays without the personal “I” impressing itself needlessly into the work. Perhaps the “preliminary condition” of any literature course should be the invention of this “I.”

Sometimes, Students Know Best

Published
by
Jenny
on November 14, 2006
in Technology
. 2 Comments

When I was an undergraduate, my Shakespeare professor wanted to show a video of one of the best performances of Falstaff she had seen.  The problem was that she didn’t know how to work a VCR.  (Mind you, this was in the late 1990s.)  She spent about 20 minutes trying to get the VCR to work.  She had never used a VCR before.  We watched and watched her, not knowing whether or not it would be appropriate to offer her help.  After all, she’s the professor and smarter than us.  Her actions confirmed what we suspected all along: that she really was living in Shakespeare’s world and was stuck in Elizabethan England.

Baruch is fortunate to have “smart classrooms” equipped with computers, an overhead projector, an opaque projector, microphones, speakers, and white boards that slide and layer over one another, making it possible to for instructors to write, write, write, and refer back to what they have written without fear of having to erase for lack of writing space.  Some of us may not think of white boards as “technology,” but after having taught at a college campus with blackboards and nothing else to offer in the way of teaching aids (hardly a piece of chalk could be found), I have learned that whiteboards are technology.

I have found, however, that some instructors don’t use the tools in their “smart classrooms.”  Many instructors did not even know that they had an opaque projector or what could be accomplished with an opaque projector.  When my colleagues and I set it up for them and project a piece of student writing onto the white board and have the class workshop a thesis, the instructor is invariably amazed at having discovered a new, simpler, more effective way to model thesis revision for the class.

In these smart classrooms, where the technology looms like a scary storm cloud overheard in the form of a projector and the computer console sits like a large, strange beast in the corner, I find that students are stealthily text-messaging under their backpacks, in their laps, inside their purses, under their textbooks, and yes, sometimes in plain view.

Students turn to us for help with assignments, but very rarely do we turn to them for help.  They know technology, and they know it intuitively.  I might spend 10 minutes trying to set up an opaque projector if I’ve never used one before, but I bet a student, who has also never used one before, could set one up in thirty seconds.

My Shakespeare professor eventually asked for help.  The video was inserted in the VCR, the play button was pushed, the TV was turned on and set to the correct input channel, and the video played.  Falstaff laughed and drank and jostled about.  I wonder how arcane we must seem to our students when we hesitate over using the computer in the classroom or simply avoid using the projector because we are afraid of what are, after all, just buttons and wires.  What are students not seeing because of an instructor’s fear of technology?  Rather than being afraid, we should turn to those who so often turn to us.

Value of Role-Playing

Published
by
Jenny
on October 19, 2006
in Faculty Development and Pedagogy
. 0 Comments

If you’re reading this post, chances are that you are one of those lucky few who just happened to posses an innate ability to grasp language. Your teachers called you a “natural” writer. You may have gone through your whole undergraduate career without making a “comma splice” without ever really knowing what a comma splice was. You didn’t quite know the rules, but you knew the rules on an innate level. It’s also likely that you were precocious when it came to reading and writing, and, unlike your classmates, you could write your term paper the night before and still get an A. Somehow, quite naturally, you knew what a term paper should do, and you did it well, exceptionally well.

Chances are that you have taught, are teaching, or will teach a course that requires writing. In every course, there may be one or two students that fit this profile of the “natural” writer. The disjunction occurs when the “natural” writer is now the teacher of writing and believes that every student must be a “natural” writer as well.

To avoid this disjunction, I think a simple task that teachers can do from time to time is role-play: put yourself in your students’ shoes. Doing this with other faculty members, perhaps in a development seminar, while focusing on a specific objective (syllabus or assignment design, understanding a thesis statement, unraveling a work of literature) would be ideal. This is easier said than done, however. Many college instructors would rather, believe it or not, grade papers than role-play as their students. What can be an enlightening experience oftentimes is seen as a silly and sometimes torturous exercise. Many instructors simply cannot role-play as their students; they are unable to put themselves in their students’ shoes not out of shyness or lack of dramatic training, but out of a total disconnect from who their students are and what their students’ experiences are.

In order to most effectively teach students, I think we need to know or at least try to know who they are. We may have many divisions between ourselves and our students–knowledge, age, interests–but role-playing helps us to at least try to imagine who they are. Knowing who they are helps us to know how to close other gaps such as assignment design and what our students produce in response to our assignments, our comments and their revised assignments, our discussion questions and their responses. As unnatural as it may feel to imagine how our students, the majority of which aren’t “natural” writers, receive our teaching, role-playing might be one of the simplest and most effective ways to see how small changes in our teaching can lead to better results.

Formulating a “De-Clutter Plan” for Technology

Published
by
Jenny
on September 26, 2006
in E-mail and Technology
. 0 Comments

It seems as if every time I turn on the television, there’s a show on that promises to help me organize my clutter. Believing that our environment influences our ways of looking at and being in the world, the show promises to give me the tools and teach me the tricks that will ensure a clean living space that will give way to a “cleaner” mental space. Suddenly, I think to myself that I too can conquer the world if I can conquer my clutter.

Everyday, I must obsessively check two email accounts and, time permitting, I check six other email accounts. I say “must” because if I didn’t check these accounts frequently, the amount of email will reach an overwhelming magnitude. Each account has a purpose, and each account seems to be swimming in its own madness that doesn’t have a method. If only there were a show that promised to help me organize my web and computer clutter.

When we think about technology and Writing Across the Curriculum or Communication Intensive Instruction, we try to think of creative ways to infuse communication instruction with technology. We turn to blogs and email lists and discussion groups and services such as BlackBoard. Every addition adds to the bulk of our email inboxes and the sites we bookmark and visit everyday. With more technology comes more reading, more viewing, more commenting, more time in front of our computers, less time doing work that is–and, yes, this still exists–paper-based.

When I was teaching composition, I once got a paper from a student that was written entirely in the language of text messaging. Another student of mine tried desperately all semester to use her Sidekick in class by hiding it in her purse. She even tried to convince me that it was her electronic dictionary. At the CUNY WAC orientation in September, someone suggested that we get students to use more technology in the classroom by asking them to do an assignment in the form of a text message. I thought to myself: My students didn’t need help with using technology in the classroom–they needed help knowing when to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate uses of technology, how to organize their technology, how to streamline their technology, and how to keep technology from keeping them from non-technology based work that they still have to do.

I’m assuming that these students will grow up to be professionals, will enter into a life that demands eight or more email accounts, subscription lists, discussion groups, and more web-based services that have yet to be invented.

Technology has given us the tools to be creative in communication intensive instruction, but it hasn’t necessarily given us the tools to make our lives easier.

When I was teaching composition, I was told that integrating my students into academic life was part of my job; I was told that because the instructor is in many ways a liaison between the student and the college, I had to help them become academically responsible, even if this meant helping them learn simple things such as why they shouldn’t sleep in class, why they should come to class, why they should take notes, where they should go when they have a problem with registration or financial aid. At some colleges, there are services or orientation events that help students learn these skills.

I’m not advocating that we use less technology. As much as I bemoan the state of my inboxes, I love checking my email. I’m just thinking that sometime between getting my first email account and today, I missed a step.
If we ask our students and instructors to use more technology, to use technology creatively, to make technology-based communication part of the curriculum, do we also have a responsibility to provide them with skills to help them become more “technologically responsible?” Does the state of our inboxes affect our mental states? Would our academic lives be easier if our inboxes, bookmarks, and other technology-based communications were organized? What would a technology “De-Clutter Plan” look like?