Archive for the 'Acacademic Integrity' Category

Google Burn-out as Occupational Hazard

Published
by
Hillary
on July 22, 2008
in Acacademic Integrity, Blogs and Blogging, Higher Education, Pedagogy, Search Engines and literature
. 1 Comment

While imbibing Lorna Hutson’s introduction to Ben Jonson’s collected plays, I was intrigued by this passage about the thematic and stylistic differences between Shakespeare and Jonson:

“In fact, Jonson has a complex sense of human psychology, but his interest as a dramatist lies more in the psychology of habitual behavior than behavior in the transitional moments of life crisis for which Shakespeare’s plays are often metaphors. He is also interested in the way that human desires, anxieties and creative energies are affected by the material conditions of their communication.”

Jonson’s interest in these material conditions birthed some good stuff, like Epicoene, a play in which the character “Morose” develops a nervous reaction to the noise and congestion of London; he double-lines his walls, insulates his windows, seeks a silent wife, and even plans a silent wedding. While reading Morose’s comic antics, I was reminded of a recent posting on the blog Burnt Out Adjunct, who writes about the ‘Research = Google’ phenomenon that’s pitting frustrated professors against usually-clueless students in universities across the country. (World?) Maybe it’s all in a name, but suddenly, the familiar plight of poor Burnt Out seemed to strangely echo the desperate shutting-out attempts of Morose.

“Contemporary students come to college with a different set of expectations than they did even ten years ago,” Burnt Out notes. “These students are not agog at the level and breadth of information available to them. Rather, they expect to be able to, within a few key strokes, to gain access to whatever information they seek.” Cut to cranky professors trying to hold their research high ground, sputtering “but…but…” while the well-meaning libraries scramble to catalog information in new and easier and more searchable ways that do everything but deliver e-journals to students with a side of fries and a coke.

Perhaps for many of us though—especially those of us still in the slow drip of a doctoral program—both sides of the battlefield make sense. Sure, we grew up with Atari and eventually graduated to SuperNintendo, but many of us went to school before there was a computer in every classroom, and attended undergrad right around the time that card catalogs were transforming into still-lifes in the hallowed halls of our libraries. We know what Burnt Out knows—that “the Net does not cast the skein that one might assume.” And so while I’ve plenty of times found myself “just checking” the exact date of which Dumas was which on Wikipedia, I’m still made uncomfortable by a student relying on it as one of their sources for a speech or paper. (And it’s very easy to somehow dump on Wikipedia first; wisegeek.com and answers.com seem to be just as popular these days, and there are of course plenty others.) If only it were as simple as the use of pure plagiarism sites like dreamessays.com, but those kinds of offenses are the most easily detected and argued against.

Earning his moniker, Burnt Out ends his posting on a negative note: “So, committees will form, grants will be given and studies will recommend that individual professors seek to imbue a research skill-set into their objectives. And without a standard (either a collective standard (MLA) or an organizational approach (ie Google)), the Natives and the Profs will continue to lament just how odd, lazy, out-of-touch, etc. the other is.” I’m not ready to feel quite so despairing—perhaps because I think that imbuing a research skill-set can go a long way, depending on its implementation— but also because I’m somewhat wary that a collective standard issued by MLA will really connect to the heart of the problem (especially given the reality of the student population found at so many large universities, which seems to prohibit a one-size-fits-all approach from the get-go). And also because I wonder what the point of frowning in the face of the coming tide will really accomplish.

It raises an interesting question, to be sure: what part of the problem is just plain ol’ insistence on things being as we were taught? And how can we embrace the challenge of defending why an article on Walt Disney from the Journal of Popular Culture is preferred (and required) over one from Wikipedia? How do we rise to the task of communicating these reasons to our students in innovative and effective ways, rather than just putting a big “X” through wisegeek.com in their Bibliography? After all, as much as Morose tries escaping the noise, he’s the one who ends up looking like an absurd old man and unsympathetic spoiler—easily polarizing characterizations that risk getting in the way of communication most of all.

Sometimes plagiarism can make us laugh

Published
by
Jenny
on November 12, 2007
in Acacademic Integrity
. 0 Comments

In an attempt to declutter my life, I went through a box of old teaching materials–mainly old student papers that I didn’t know what to do with, hand-outs, and articles that I thought might prove useful again in the future.

I came across two things, however, that I couldn’t throw away because without such tactile evidence, I’m not sure anyone would believe me.

(I also just want to preface this with a statement on my views on plagiarism. I am not a witch-hunter or blood-hound when it comes to plagiarism. I do not fail my students. I do not give them F’s. I do not take plagiarism personally. Many of my students were students who needed a second chance in life, and I was happy to help them and not hold them back. I always gave them opportunities to correct their wrongs. In the second example below, however, the student adamantly denied having done anything wrong and chose not to redo his paper. I did fail that paper, but I didn’t fail him for the semester.)

The first item that I was unable to toss out was an essay on how to make Kool-Aid. That’s right. I was teaching a very basic composition class, and it was my first semester teaching. I hadn’t quite learned yet that there are ways to curb plagiarism in assignment design. My assignment was really bad–I simply asked my students to write an essay that explained how to do something, anything. One student, who was probably the worst student I had–he never came to class and didn’t seem to know how to write a complete sentence–turned in this marvelous gem. I, of course, handed it back to him with a print-out from the website stapled to his paper.

After class, he came up to me to say sorry, that he had written a paper, but he asked his cousin to type it up for him. She somehow ended up typing this Kool-Aid essay word for word.

My absolute favorite was from a student who wrote this letter to me when I stapled a copy of his source to his paper:

This letter is in regards to a paper I wrote on energy. Professor, I was very stunned and taken aback after being notified by you, that two lines in my paper should have been quoted from an already printed article. If I was aware that it was already in another article, I assure you, that I would have sited it. I am genuinely in shock and am having the most difficult time believing that lines that I sat and wrote on my own could have already been written up by some else. Ironically, I had not even seen the article, prior to your printing it out for me, and did not even visit the site the article is to be found on. To add to my dismay, my original sentences were, ‘As Congress ponders how the country can steer clear of a power disaster like the one that has affected California, many people consider that only science-fiction can offer a long-term solution–a resolution in which discoveries in hypothetical physics would lead to an innovative energy-producing expertise. The fuel for this technology, as they envision it, would be copiously accessible, secure, economical and uncontaminated.’ After I had revised it, I had changed a few words around and unbeknownst to me, it became the same words as Mr. Travis Norsen’s.[sic]

What gems do you have hiding in your filing cabinet?

Academic Integrity & Grades

Published
by
Jenny
on March 12, 2007
in Acacademic Integrity
. 0 Comments

At the Academic Integrity Conference at Baruch College on Friday, March 9, I attended a session called “Student Top Ten.” The goal of this session was to come up with a “top ten” of ways that students can “move the academic culture on their campus towards a culture that values integrity.” (This wording was taken from the conference program). The session’s participants included administrators from the CUNY system, a librarian, faculty, undergraduates, and graduate students from both Baruch and the Graduate Center.

Our attempts to come up with a “Student Top Ten” seemed to center on grading and what faculty could do to ensure that students weren’t being graded unfairly. There was also much talk about what faculty could do to help students discuss their grades with students more openly.

To dismiss any talk of grading while thinking of academic integrity, I asked why students are not valuing learning for learning’s sake, but the discussion circled back to grading. Perhaps it was my idyllic undergraduate years, spent amid the Blue Ridge mountains and lilac and dogwood trees, studying philosophy and liberal arts, that fostered a false sense of how others view learning. I always thought of learning as discovery, risk-taking, and creative thinking, but it seems as if some think of it as gaining an unfair advantage or finding ways to ensure an “A” in the class.

When I taught composition, I would always remind my students that grades were never assigned, but rather they were earned. I would be happy to talk to them about their strengths and weaknesses, but I would never discuss grades.

Grading, it seems, isn’t going to be done away with, at least not in the CUNY system. Given this, what might be some items to include in a Student Top Ten? How can we talk about academic integrity without circling back to grading?

Plagiarism in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Published
by
Jenny
on February 26, 2007
in Acacademic Integrity, Pedagogy and Plagiarism
. 6 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.

Outsourcing schoolwork

Published
by
Cristina
on May 5, 2006
in Acacademic Integrity and Technology
. 0 Comments

Rentacoder.com is a site where businesses or individuals can solicit bids for programming projects. According to this Wall Street Journal piece, many of the bidders are Indians and Eastern Europeans charging, at maximum, not much more than the cost of a monthly Metrocard.

It is therefore not surprising to find the following posting:

“I need help with 5 homework problems in Visual Basic 6.0. I am capable of doing these on my own, but I work very slowly and I really need time to devote to other classes before finals. So, it would be easier just to pay someone else to do them for me…. I need these done by Thursday May 4th by 5:00 P.M. Central Standard Time at the latest, but I’d be interested to know how much more it would cost to have these completed Wednesday (tomorrow) by 9:00 P.M.”

Of course it has always been possible to hire someone to do your schoolwork. It probably hasn’t been this easy, anonymous, and affordable, though. And why stop with programming projects? Developing countries produce underemployed political science or English PhDs as well; many barely clear $500/month teaching at state universities. Today’s plagiarist may find it quite affordable to hire scholars to write A or B-grade papers that pass plagiarism smell tests.

Should we be then integrating plagiarism education into every course? Aside from hammering in why plagiarism is unethical, teachers might take the time to explain what skills a particular project imparts and what the student therefore loses if he can’t be bothered with it. How have you dealt with this issue in your work? (On another note: some schools have surrendered to technology and have instead begun loosening standards on cheating, as this article describes.)

Plagiarism and Oral Presentations

Published
by
Jill
on February 6, 2006
in Acacademic Integrity, Oral Communication and Powerpoint and Presentations
. 6 Comments

I attended a seminar on plagiarism last week that actually raised NEW ideas about this issue. There was a great deal of information covered, but one question I had at the end was the relationship between plagiarism in written work and plagiarism in oral assignments. Although I eventually convince students of the importance of citing sources in papers, it seems that the ephemeral nature of presentations leaves them believing that it is less important to do so in those assignments. This is coupled with the fact that style sheets never deal with oral citation–and, yet, it seems more and more professors are assigning oral presentations in their classrooms (arts, science, business, etc.). Do you think there are different issues at stake related to plagiarism when dealing with presentations—particularly when students AREN’T using PowerPoint? Should we use different strategies with our students when teaching them about oral citation? I’ve thought about creating a “style sheet” for presentations that includes different examples of ways to note authors and sources. Does anyone out there already have such a tool?