Thread: Busted!
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Old 10-15-2007, 10:38 AM   #22
Iowa_Flames_Fan
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Thunderball View Post
I've never understood why people would plagiarize, especially at the university level.

I mean, its one thing if its one of those BS pass or fail homework assignments that just need to be done and aren't even marked. Its another thing if its actually being evaluated.

I know at Bishop Carroll, we had a small "assignment exchange" where we shared a pool of labs and other non-graded assignments. The mentality was if they didn't go to the trouble of grading it, why should we actually do it. We learned just as much reading over what someone else did.

When it comes to graded assignments, we always did our own and didn't plagiarize. When in doubt, footnote. University was different, everything submitted was graded, so again, we just did our own work.
I'm a Bishop Carroll Alum myself--or I would be if I had actually, er, graduated. But I remember that there was a culture of that kind of thing way back then too.

In fact, I find it just as puzzling when students plagiarize things like reading journals. Because there's so little to gain and so much to lose--at the University level, you could get kicked out of school--because you couldn't be bothered to spend half an hour writing your own reading response?

Sometimes I wonder if something a little Darwinian is at work here.
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