h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am sure I'm going to murder one of my students before the end of the fall semester.

I was grading homework assignments last night- the first one was an opinion paper on whether hurricanes have gotten stronger, and if they can be blamed on global warming. There were some good ones, some not so good ones, and one that had the word "crap" in it. About midway through it, I came across a paper that looked... odd. There was a paragraph in it that began, "Late last month, a study was published in the journal Nature..." Reading on, I realized that study was published last year and got suspicious. So I googled.



I gave up after finding four straight paragraphs he copied and pasted from a website, put a zero in my gradebook, and emailed the prof. When he saw it this morning, he was as shocked as I was. After we did a little more research together, we found that the kid had written all of three words of the entire paper.

I wanted to throw the book at this kid- he was a junior, and he should have known better. The prof decided to call the advisor, give him a zero, and give him an extra assignment, an essay on honesty in society.

Wonder what websites he'll copy that from.

It really has become too easy, hasn't it? And assuming that no one can feed exactly the right combination of key words to a Google or Yahoo.

If I was in the position, and certain, ... that one would be out on his or her ear !!!

Yeah, that's just lazy...I'd have at least updated and changed it from month to year

one word...turnitin.com.

And make sure there's a letter in his file. And check your school's academic honesty policy!

Ahem...

Never get angery, just get even!

I would sit down with set pleb and just say
"now that we know about this and what your up to, we will have to check your work from now on with extra vidulance, and also any the course work you have all ready produced is now suspect, this is for the other students who now the whole tend to use their integratie and sheer hard work to get where they want to be in life, also do you think an employer would employ a person who is known to do this sort of thing"

or something along those lines...


RJR

And he was the guy that was caught out. How many of them get away with it, in this age of instant information?

When I used to review the Edited Guide, if I had any doubts about the content I would take one or two sentences at random and google the sentence enclosed in quotation marks. I used to find plagiarism quite often. How more likely is it in an academic context when students are under pressure to get papers in quickly?

Traveller in Time pattern decoder
"Take the last words of one sentence, the dot and the first words of the next sentence.

Chances of anything matching the near random sequence of words are very low, if it is a copy from the net you will get this single hit (or also the other copies).

>"in quotation marks. I used to find" taken from previous posting would be a good example to search for. "

That makes me so angry! Its people like that that ruin things for the rest of us! I live in constant fear that I will accidently forget to cite a sentence or two and then will fail or be kicked out of school or something.

Traveller in Time gambling
"Chances are someone quotes something without beeing aware of that.

As long as you give the reference for where it comes from it should be no problem. But that only counts for quotes, not 'entire' paragraphs of a work.

To copy or to quote that is the question ! (And I have no idea if this will be original or just another copy ). "

Hi Scandrea,

Well, that is so sad for both your student and yourself. Plagiarism is not acceptable, and yet many many people take ideas etc. and present them as their own.

I believe that providing one gives recognition to ones source then the more reading one can do the berter. But I remember that my topic of my Masters thesis which was on a particular subject in South africa was chosen as a topic by someone else as well. I said to this person

"Oh I did my Masters thesis on that topic" and this persons' reply was
"Well I am not going to read it".

I must admit that I was quite "hurt" as my thesis had received a deal of publicity and I thought that basically it would have been nice of this person to have consulted the work I had done - as I had done with my topic when I found the work which had been done on the topic before me.Strange though. I feel sorry for inventors. they have a tough time!!.

How is your grandmothernBobo?

Christiane AR1

Scan, had your student been in the UK he would simply be following the example of a senior politician (or his lackey) who did just that in a crucial report on the Iraq war!

Students are paying for their theses and essays to be written for them by someone via the Internet, and steps are being taken to ban mobile phones etc. in exam rooms.

I cannot see why anyone would gain satisfaction from passing through cheating, but it seems to be a growing problem.

Websailor

nothing to do with "satisfaction" through cheating but more to do with the fact that expences need to be paid back with interest, also theres a samll thing about "young english men" who on the whole decide to "buck the system and cheat!

I can't say I know what was going through his head... I mean, come on! He can't be that busy!

MR (good to see you again! ) and , thanks for the tips! I'll use them on my next grading assignment.

hello

Scan, I've been doing this for what, 3 years now, and I've discovered that plagiarism is seriously on the rise. And students are dorks about it. I mean, if they can find something on the internet, don't you think they would know that we, who have more specialized knowledge, can probably find it too, and faster?

Anyway, check to see if your school has a license for turnitin.com, which is a metasearch engine that students upload their papers to, and then you get reports with the precentage of information lifted from other sources, including (and this is the best part) papers turned in by other students (even in high school).

It's a lovely, lovely thing, and I highly recommend it. I'm pretty sure you have a license (most unis do) but it may be something your professor or department has never used.

Hm. Interesting.

I often find resources on the internet (I think most of my resources for the paper on John Donne I'm writing right now are from various online sources, for example), but I'd never simply copy&paste - even if I use most of the material, I at least try to put it my own way. To read and understand before I rewrite.
I cite sources too, though I might not cite everything if I used a lot of small ones.

And of course, because in most cases I find material that's only in English for papers that I'm writing in Hebrew, I would at least need to translate what I found.

So, I don't feel bad about what I do. Doesn't really seem like plagiarism.

I'd hope so, anyway...

I think that would all fall into the terms of research, study and interpretation, Lady P. Not at all what the hostess of this thread was relating to.

No, this was someone who was just too lazy to read.

I guess the student saw the prof- his story was that he was a transfer, and he felt he was in over his head. Still getting a zero, and I'm going to make sure the advisor is contacted, but... I dunno.

The story doesn't really matter, does it? Any reason can be brought up beforehand, dealt with - getting more help even. Which would actually raise the students esteem in others' view - how brave to admit not being perfect, and to do something about it!

There are so many reasons to be in over your head. Of course! We all are at times. But so much more the reason not to fake it... Have we forgotten that it's OK to be human, and need help? And to ask for help?


Milla - unforgiving and ready to forgive at once...