Busted!

[Thunderball]

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.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Thunderball

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.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by Cerebral

Yeah, one of my students took the information directly from Wikipedia. It leaves me scratching my head - does he honestly think I'm a complete and utter idiot?

On the flip side, I feel bad for him though as I understand the pressures associated with doing well in school. I have an unfortunate tendency to be a little more lenient when the cause of plagiarism is stress-related rather than shear laziness. I'm still a hard-ass when it comes to plagiarism though as it is simply unacceptable and a lot of students seem to have developed the mind-set that it's okay if you don't get caught.

I always give the student 0 in the case of plagiarism AND make them do the assignment again despite the fact that they won't get a mark for it.

I like the idea of where you make the student re do the assignment. Hopefully they learn their lesson from this.

Also, do you ask why they did it?

Btw, what subject do you teach?

[SaskaBushFire]

I think it is a little sad that you take joy in busting students, but you are doing the right thing. Part of writing a paper isn't showing that you can research or how much you know, but showing you can actually write that paper and commit the time necessary to completing the task. School is about gaining knowledge, but without the proper skills to harness that knowledge it is wasted.

Just.. be easy on the kid, I have never done this myself, but with 3 papers due in one week I was very tempted at one point, all I did was explain my situation to one of my profs and he gladly extended my deadline over the weekend. Claiming that he would much rather give me the extra three days then see dribble or copied work handed in.

[Thunderball]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

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.

Yeah, every so often, a group of students would go too far though. I remember in my Grade 12 year (yes, year 3, I graduated on time... barely), some guys came close to having a complete test bank. They obviously were caught. The small operations, like ours, were overlooked (cause they were harmless).

[llama64]

My rule of thumb when doing my History degree was to ask whether a given statement represented an opinion or conclusion. If so, who was responsible for the evidence that the conclusion was derived from? If you're an undergrad, chances are it's not yours so you better cite your source. Given that is the point in doing an essay, I never understood the point in plagiarizing.

And using Wikipedia as a source, either cited or not, is just a massive red flag that you didn't do any work. The only time I managed to get away with it was when I did a paper ON Wikipedia!

But when I did my programming courses, plagiarism was rampant and was a major problem for the teachers. But it usually evened out. The assignments were worth 1-2% and the accompanying quiz was worth up to 10%. Those that just handed in their friends work were burned big time on the quiz.

[llama64]

Originally Posted by Thunderball

Yeah, every so often, a group of students would go too far though. I remember in my Grade 12 year (yes, year 3, I graduated on time... barely), some guys came close to having a complete test bank. They obviously were caught. The small operations, like ours, were overlooked (cause they were harmless).

Haha, I barely squeezed through Carrol on time as well. Switched to All Year Round for my grade 12 year which ended up giving me an extra month to finish off Math 30.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by llama64

Haha, I barely squeezed through Carrol on time as well. Switched to All Year Round for my grade 12 year which ended up giving me an extra month to finish off Math 30.

Hey, I'm impressed you guys graduated at all!

I missed Calm 20 and Religion. Damn you Calm 20!!!!!1

[Phanuthier]

I’m currently a TA for an introductory math coarse at a local Collage, and you can see half the assignments are copied. But, coming from engineering where everyone works together from assignments, I really don’t go into serious investigation. The assignments are worth almost nothing anyways, and if you don’t do the assignments and you have no idea what your doing, you’ll probably pay for it on the exams. So whatever, work together, learn… if you don’t know why your doing, you’ll pay for it later.

Then again, I think Cerebral does history or poli sci or something, so papers have a different weighting.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Originally Posted by The Goon

As I finished university in '94, it never actually occurred to me how easy it would be to plagarize information from the internet. It must be incredibly widespread.

You kids today (shakes fist)! I had to use PaperClip as a word processor on my crappy 9-pin dot matrix printer which jammed every second page!

I can beat that. Bank Street Writer on the Apple II. Or the Coleco Adam Daisy wheel / power supply printer. Sounded like a Gatling gun.

Cerebral & other teachers - are there any consequences to busting them? A friend of mine in RD is sick of the administration not really dishing out any punishement for this. She gets to fail them for the assignment, but that's about it.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

I can beat that. Bank Street Writer on the Apple II. Or the Coleco Adam Daisy wheel / power supply printer. Sounded like a Gatling gun.

Cerebral & other teachers - are there any consequences to busting them? A friend of mine in RD is sick of the administration not really dishing out any punishement for this. She gets to fail them for the assignment, but that's about it.

It depends on the school/department. At Iowa, I had discretion to fail them for the entire class, though we were encouraged to only fail the assignment. I also had to report it, and it went into the permanent record: three strikes and you're expelled.

[Thunderball]

Originally Posted by llama64

Haha, I barely squeezed through Carrol on time as well. Switched to All Year Round for my grade 12 year which ended up giving me an extra month to finish off Math 30.

I had to take Pure Math 20 and 30 at night school, and Bio 30 in summer school. It wasn't so much that I didn't have time to do them, as it was that I was struggling to do well at them in the Bishop Carroll model, so I opted for more structure.

[llama64]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

Hey, I'm impressed you guys graduated at all!

I missed Calm 20 and Religion. Damn you Calm 20!!!!!1

I was down to the buzzer. With 2 days of school left I needed 5 credits to get my diploma. 4 hours of typing down in CTS and I managed to cover it

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by llama64

I was down to the buzzer. With 2 days of school left I needed 5 credits to get my diploma. 4 hours of typing down in CTS and I managed to cover it

I pretty much stopped trying when I found out I didn't need the high school diploma to start University.

I remember that my advisor was so confused as to why I wouldn't bother graduating--but I kind of figured that once I had an advanced University degree, no-one would ask where my high school diploma was.

[Thunderball]

Originally Posted by llama64

I was down to the buzzer. With 2 days of school left I needed 5 credits to get my diploma. 4 hours of typing down in CTS and I managed to cover it

Hah... I slacked so hard in March, April and May (cause Bio and Math were being taken care of outside of school), that I finished English 30 with 20 minutes to spare on the last day. Of course, I maintain that was planned... but it was a little closer than I wanted to admit.

[llama64]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

I pretty much stopped trying when I found out I didn't need the high school diploma to start University.

I remember that my advisor was so confused as to why I wouldn't bother graduating--but I kind of figured that once I had an advanced University degree, no-one would ask where my high school diploma was.

Heh yeah. Unfortunately my parents got all over my case about early acceptance (it was important or I wouldn't get into the UofC ) so I had to finish up.

I pretty much warn everyone about going through the BCHS program now. It's just not worth the hassle for kids who obviously don't have the willpower to push themselves through it. I probably would have benefited more from a traditional school structure.

In grade 4 we were assigned a book report to do. Two of my friends decided to do a report on whales. The funny part was that they used the same cover page and shared the same "research", but wrote different reports. The teacher threw a hissy fit (yes, in grade 4) and both were failed on the assignment. She saw the duplicated cover page and assumed it was just a copy. I hated that teacher.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by SaskaBushFire

Just.. be easy on the kid.

Oh, boo-hoo. The rest of us spent our days and night working our asses off to do things the right way, so if some kid gets caught cheating because he's lazy, damn straight he should be punished. That's the one thing I always hated....people only care about the idiot that cheats in this case...well, what about the rest of us who didn't? If they go easy on the cheaters, is that fair to us?

Cheaters need to learn to do the work themselves, or find a more fool-proof way to cheat. Either way, going easy on the kid won't do anyone any good.

[ernie]

When I was a TA at University for a third year course I had a student plagiarize a lab. I figured something was up as traditionally his labs were quite bad and they didn't seem to be improving. He wouldn't take my advice on how to improve and resented my for it for some reason. I was pleasantly surprised when it appeared he had finally taken my comments to heart and handed in an excellent lab. At least it looked very good when I briefly skimmed it and it was worth a hefty chunk of his overall lab mark.

When it came to marking the lab I was half way through the introduction and things started sounding a bit familiar. By the time I was part way through the results and discussion I knew why it seemed so damn familiar. He had copied MY lab from when I took the course as an undergrad 5 years earlier. He must have found it in the deparment student club...or at least a copy of it. It was word for word from start to finish.

Now though it is technically against the rules, I have no real problem with people using old labs or assignments to find answers to a question or two provided they use it as a resource and learn from it. In essence, take the answers, understand the reasons for the answer and phrase it in your own tone and writing style. Treat it as a trip to the library or a text book. (It's very obvious when someone simply copies something without that understanding).

Anyways, I gave the student a "0" and told him to see me. That was it. No other comments on the lab as I wanted to talk to him about it. Tell him it wasn't acceptable to plagiarize and that it will eventually come back to haunt him as this would. That was as far as i was going to take it. One big lab in a lab that he was bound to fail with his previous poor labs and this "0". I figured a failed course in his major was punishment enough (failed lab = failed course).

But no. Instead of coming to me to talk the bonehead talks to the professor of the course and says he has a problem with my "marking style". That I'm out to get him. I get called into the professors office for a meeting with the two of them. Unfortunately for the student I came prepared with a copy of my lab from when I was student for comparison AND the prof of the course was an old british tight ass who has no patience for plagiarists.

Kid went from looking smug on my arrival at the office to getting kicked out of university in 2 seconds flat.

True Story.

[Thunderball]

Originally Posted by ernie

When I was a TA at University for a third year course I had a student plagiarize a lab. I figured something was up as traditionally his labs were quite bad and they didn't seem to be improving. He wouldn't take my advice on how to improve and resented my for it for some reason. I was pleasantly surprised when it appeared he had finally taken my comments to heart and handed in an excellent lab. At least it looked very good when I briefly skimmed it and it was worth a hefty chunk of his overall lab mark.

When it came to marking the lab I was half way through the introduction and things started sounding a bit familiar. By the time I was part way through the results and discussion I knew why it seemed so damn familiar. He had copied MY lab from when I took the course as an undergrad 5 years earlier. He must have found it in the deparment student club...or at least a copy of it. It was word for word from start to finish.

Now though it is technically against the rules, I have no real problem with people using old labs or assignments to find answers to a question or two provided they use it as a resource and learn from it. In essence, take the answers, understand the reasons for the answer and phrase it in your own tone and writing style. Treat it as a trip to the library or a text book. (It's very obvious when someone simply copies something without that understanding).

Anyways, I gave the student a "0" and told him to see me. That was it. No other comments on the lab as I wanted to talk to him about it. Tell him it wasn't acceptable to plagiarize and that it will eventually come back to haunt him as this would. That was as far as i was going to take it. One big lab in a lab that he was bound to fail with his previous poor labs and this "0". I figured a failed course in his major was punishment enough (failed lab = failed course).

But no. Instead of coming to me to talk the bonehead talks to the professor of the course and says he has a problem with my "marking style". That I'm out to get him. I get called into the professors office for a meeting with the two of them. Unfortunately for the student I came prepared with a copy of my lab from when I was student for comparison AND the prof of the course was an old british tight ass who has no patience for plagiarists.

Kid went from looking smug on my arrival at the office to getting kicked out of university in 2 seconds flat.

True Story.

Good story. Social darwinism at its finest. The best part is that it was your lab. (I'm assuming for his sake that your lab in the department student club didn't have your name on it).

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by SaskaBushFire

I think it is a little sad that you take joy in busting students, but you are doing the right thing. Part of writing a paper isn't showing that you can research or how much you know, but showing you can actually write that paper and commit the time necessary to completing the task. School is about gaining knowledge, but without the proper skills to harness that knowledge it is wasted.

Just.. be easy on the kid, I have never done this myself, but with 3 papers due in one week I was very tempted at one point, all I did was explain my situation to one of my profs and he gladly extended my deadline over the weekend. Claiming that he would much rather give me the extra three days then see dribble or copied work handed in.

be easy on the kid? I've busted my ass going on 8 years of university now, and I haven't missed a deadline and done well. People who get "extended deadlines" piss me off too, and I'm not talking about people with legitimate circumstances (death, illness etc...) but people who were just too lazy to get their s**t done on time.

getting a degree/diploma is not your right, people have to earn it, if they're not willing to do the work, they shouldn't get the reward.