FYI

 

Rick Uttich

http://employees.oneonta.edu/uttichrm/

 

 

 

  <http://chronicle.com/> 

 

 

 

  <http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/> 

 

 


November 27, 2006


A Second Chance for Plagiarists
<http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/1735/a-second-chance-for-plagi
arists> 


Students who hand in papers with text copied from the Internet: Are they
unethical sneaks, or just young people confused by the wide-open nature
of the Web? Often they're the latter, some experts say. Now Pima
Community College is about to put that theory to the test.Instead of
suspending or expelling students found guilty of plagiarism, the Arizona
college will try to rehabilitate offenders by putting them through a
five-step "traffic school," reports the Tucson Citizen. The program
requires students to read articles about plagiarism, write a paper
explaining what they did wrong, and meet with a writing tutor to learn
about proper scholarly citations.That may sound lax to some professors,
but it makes sense: If the Internet has proved to be a haven for
term-paper mills, it has also swelled the ranks of thoughtless
plagiarists -- students who copy passages from Wikipedia without paying
much heed to what they're doing. --Brock Read Posted on Monday November
27, 2006 | Permalink
<http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/1735/a-second-chance-for-plagi
arists>  | 


Comments


1.      This sounds like a refreshing and novel approach to handling
both intentional and unintentional plagiarism at the undergraduate
level. Although unintentional plagiarism is not considered to be an
excuse, this alternative allows for a learning process to be engaged
while still fulfilling the goal of specific and general deterrence. 

I have run into plagiarism at the graduate level with electronic
sources. What is the efficacy of this approach at the level? In this
case, a student copied and pasted from websites other than Wiki. Should
we deal with plagiairsm the same way at the gradate level?

- Jenn    Nov 28, 07:33 AM    #
<http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/1735/a-second-chance-for-plagi
arists#c001122>  

2.      I agree with both of the previous comments. I understand the
need to give unintentional plagiarism the benefit of the doubt. However,
I can't help but wonder how intentional plagiarists are going to learn
from this approach. The seriousness may well be lost on them. And, who
shoulders the burden of this experience, especially those of us teaching
in community colleges where a standard 5/5 load can be overwhelming?

On another note, we, as instructors, need to be willing to revamp our
assignments to limit plagiarism. Based on my own experiences and those
of my graduate cohort, one of the topics that is not constructively
taught to graduate teaching assistants is how to recognize unintentional
versus intentional plagiarism, how to craft creative assigments that
minimize the possibilities, and how to model to our students proper
source attribution and documentation. And this problem has become
endemic not only among students, but also among administrators such as
college presidents as well.

- Nelly    Nov 28, 08:24 AM