

Cheater Cheater - rafaelc
http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/personal_essays/cheater_cheater.php

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timcederman
Pretty self-righteous article.

When I was teaching information security, I literally had more than half of my
students turn in heavily plagiarized papers. It was pretty easy to spot
suspicious phrases, and Googling would always turn up the sources quickly.

It was actually quite overwhelming figuring out how to deal with it all - the
problem was if we gave no marks for that paper, or failed all the students, it
would've been pretty disastrous for the university. In the end, we had to
punish the most egregious plagiarism with no marks, and give partial marks for
the rest, trying to identify and give credit for the original work.

I had not one, but several students come and argue they should get their full
marks back, "for fulfilling the requirements of the assignment".

~~~
btilly
Here is a modest proposal.

Take some examples of varying severity. In front of the class say,

 _I have identified many examples of plagairism on the last assignment. Let me
show you some...

Then say, "I have identified more than X cases. If you think you may have been
one of them, let me know by email, and I'll let you redo the paper and ignore
your first submission.

Anyone that I have identified as a plaigairist who does not offer to redo your
paper will be failed. If you think you may have quoted too liberally from an
unacknowledged source, I would strongly recommend playing it safe and redoing
your paper._

Then on the next class come in, pick a random name out of the list of people
who have not reached you yet, call that person by name, and ask him or her if
he or she wishes to fail the course. After the kid says no, say, "Then are you
going to be redoing your paper?" Then to the rest of the class say, "If you
should redo the paper and haven't talked with me yet, I suggest doing so
soon."

I believe that once expectations are clearly enough set, most of the problem
will disappear fairly easily. As for the rest? I have absolutely no problem
with failing cheaters as fast as possible.

~~~
timcederman
Part of the problem is the time spent on administration (marking them,
tracking them, etc) for all the redone papers. Definitely the worst part of
teaching.

~~~
btilly
That is true.

But the hope is that if you do it right, you only have to do it once.

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ErrantX
I got accused of plagiarism in my first year of university. Turned out that I
had somehow left my computer account signed in and one of the class (basically
a dropout seizing the opportunity) grabbed a copy and submitted it.

It took me an absolute age to fix; at one point the tutor basically admitted I
must be telling the truth and "offered" me half the papers marks.... bah.

Also, I did an Engineering degree; lots of plagiarism going on there (most
engineers are pretty bad authors it seems :P). One major problem they had was
the huge section of Asian students who all hung out together (across years)
and basically shared/co-wrote all their work... I know one lecturer rejected
about 35% of the drafts in one course during the second year!

~~~
robryan
From my limited observations there seems to be a culture of work sharing among
foreign students. Some of it can probably be put down to lesser English
language skills, they feel a lot safer following anothers lead rather than
attempting to write something themselves from scratch.

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politicalist
When reading comments on articles like this, I wonder if I'm in the minority,
or whether people just don't want to get caught publicly supporting a social
taboo in front of potential customers and employers.

There's something degrading about it, and I've never done it, but I don't
particularly care if others cheat on homework. Many good teachers know that
grade systems cheat students out of serious educations. (And incentivize them
to become cheaters.) Yet few win enough power to teach as they think best and
neutralize this whole class of problems.

Coincidentally, I'm taking an ungraded class. Though I didn't really notice
until now. There is homework, but doing it is completely at our discretion. It
could only possibly work if we're self-motivated, and it works fine.

Come to think of it, it's unlikely that my viewpoint is shared by only a tiny
minority. After all, commenters here cite astonishingly high rates of
plagiarism, like "literally... more than half". (Not to mention the papers
which are so unoriginal that they might as well have been plagiarized.) Maybe
some enterprising hackers here wrote emacs plugins to help rephrase text, in
order to maximize the time they have to pursue important studies and projects.

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grandalf
I was accused of plagiarism my freshman year of college but it was completely
original. The prof believed me after I met with him and explained my thought
process.

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snissn

        I saw them baffled by what teachers said they wanted ([snip]), which often seemed 
        to mask what they really wanted (“elegantly analyze these stories and compose, 
        in formal prose, a well-supported argument that will not only engage the 
        ambiguities without resolving them but delight and surprise me”)
    

My essays would always concentrate on resolving ambiguities... this glib
comment sort of makes me wonder

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X-Istence
I post all of my papers online on my blog or other locations where they are
quickly picked up by Google and various other sources.

Turnitin is used by my professors and each and every time my papers would come
up as 100% plagiarised, if they then attempted to Google it they would come
across my website where I had posted the paper. After the first time of being
accused of plagiarism and me pointing out that the license attached to my work
did not allow Turnitin to use it for commercial purposes they started checking
by hand, never heard about it again.

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danbmil99
what a bunch of fucking crap. Plagiarism is theft, pure and simple. You know
when you're doing it, and it means you suck.

I am getting really sick of the moral relativism building up around cheating
and grades. It's a fucking nightmare. Schools should just flunk out the 40% or
50% who do this shit for a couple years, and people will get straight.

It completely devalues the work of people who actually do the work. Welcome to
the mediocratization of civilization.

~~~
td
Well, it's helpful to keep in mind the main goal here, which is providing
young people with an education (and providing society with educated young
people), not having the students produce brilliant original work (it's just a
school assignment, after all). Being a little more pragmatic, rather than
flunking half the students for a prolonged period, probably gets you further.

Of course students need to be thought that plagiarism is not ok, again the
question is how to teach them best. The threat of big punishment is not
necessarily an effective mean towards reducing "crime". The article also hints
at the fact that the cause of the plagiarism is not so much malice, as
difficult surcomstances, and a lack of knowledge/skill in students (though the
main example around which the article centers, may not give a strong argument
for this)

~~~
danbmil99
Ok, how about one warning (with 0 credit for that assignment) then expulsion?
Come on, college is supposed to be work, not just a frigging party. I get the
feeling people just don't care because they figure who gives a fuck, when I
get a job I'll just surf the net and cut & paste my way to a paycheck anyway.

Meanwhile, we are losing ground every year in the worldwide competition to
produce an educated workforce. You can't just assume every asscrack should get
a degree regardless of talent or even the willingness to try, just a little.

I still say the situation is pathetic, and we are right on track to become
another deposed colonial power like France or Britain.

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kgrin
I wonder - _is_ there an English class out there that focuses on "rewriting,
rephrasing, riffing, and appropriation as real tools of the writer’s trade"?

~~~
billswift
"If you copy from one person it's plagiarism; if you copy from many it's
research."

~~~
ars
Well obviously. I mean unless you literally copy every page of all those
authors, you are going to be picking and choosing sections, the action of
picking one sentence and not another is creative.

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tmsh
re: the plagiarism in king's thesis, it might be interesting to note that this
often happens among those who are gifted with speech-making. lincoln echoes so
clearly the ideas of pericles in thucydides' retelling of it -- perhaps the
most famous speech in america, but also the most famous speech in athens. nor
in his lifetime did he ever offer the connection as a basis. even obama a
couple of months ago was making that wayne gretzky quote about skating to
where the puck is going to be. did he or one of his speechwriters get this
from steve jobs? i don't know. but it happens all the time. harold bloom
argues that all great writers are essentially rewriting other great writers (a
map of misreading, etc.).

that's what's so vexing about plagiarism, esp. in teaching essays which are
mostly practices in rhetoric. on the one hand, yes, intellectual honesty is
very, very important. the cornerstone of reason, etc. but it's also not the
only cornerstone. and arguably, it isn't what's learned first.

in any type of broad stroke, it's much smarter to borrow from others'
rhetoric, and even ideas. in a way, you're giving yourself more to the ideas.
e.g., imagine if all metaphors were replaced with similes. similies are more
correct, have more of a 'cited' feeling, but they're also more limiting; they
give themselves less to the comparison.

and also some people are better at being synthetic with their thoughts rather
than analytical, scientific and precise. and frankly, this soft massaging of
sources is often more important in a leader, because they are leading a group
of people with more than one idea.

the problem with intellectual dishonesty is that you can lose everything. your
reputation, all of the energy in your work, etc. most people don't figure this
out until experiencing it first hand at some point in school. but that is
because, i think, we don't properly impress upon people what can happen. if
they had a better sense of the risks, i think the majority of cases would
disappear. as it is, it's usually touted in some boring handout or pamphlet
about an 'honor code', etc., in comic sans.

though some schools get it. the thing is to teach a student that it is always
better to never give up their honor in doing the right thing, no matter how
tired, etc. most students are insecure, because they don't know anything yet,
so they don't really think they have much to lose. so again, you have to build
up their commitment to themselves first...

~~~
balding_n_tired
Yes, but King's _thesis_ was not a speech, rather a paper of many pages on
Paul Tillich. (The religion departments will tell you that Tillich was
influenced by Heidegger; the philosophy departments will tell you that Tillich
copied great quantities with trivial alterations.)

~~~
tmsh
True. And although it took me like 3 days to respond. I would say that while
you're right about scholarship and a thesis, etc., it's funny how many, I
would consider, 'great' people end up not being scholars. How that dynamic
works.

On the other hand, Heidegger is probably considered to be a scholar. And he
plagiarized from Husserl like it was his business. So I guess in the long run,
truth crushed to earth will rise again. It's best to be honest as much as
possible. Always comes out in the end...

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drivebyacct
I read all of that. I have no idea why. The single paragraph on different
types of plagiarism and great writers who have plagiarized was nearly though
provoking, if I hadn't heard those examples before or been a student.

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tmsh
typical, williams.

