Every semester, I discuss plagiarism with my students. I give them handouts explaining what plagiarism is, I lecture them on it, I put "Don't Plagiarize!" on the assignment instructions. I do this when I hand out the assignments and in short little mini-lectures as the due date draws near. I even tell them the stories of my dumbest plagiarism cases: "Can you believe a student in a past class cut-and-pasted the Wikipedia article and thought I wouldn't notice??" We all laugh together over how dumb that was, and they agree they would never, ever do anything like that.
And then they do.
This semester I caught three. Three wiki papers. Of course it was easier than usual because they all used the same article. As usual, confusion and denial: "I didn't realize it! I made a mistake! I forgot to put the quotes in! Oops!"And then, my favorite: "This is impossible! I didn't even look at the internet! I've never even seen that article, ever!"
Yes, fellow Miserians, it is an end-of-the-semester miracle. MAGIC INTERNET RAYS traveled through the air and into my student's brain, causing him to reproduce, WORD-FOR-WORD, the wikipedia article on his topic. That's the only plausible explanation. Maybe we should alert the press. Or one of those cable shows that investigate amazing supernatural phenomena.
Meanwhile, I'm going to put tinfoil hats on next semester's syllabus, because otherwise this could become an epidemic.
I once gave my students an extra credit assignment on plagiarism. Write a paper describing how to avoid plagiarism. Every single student described exactly the steps to take to avoid plagiarism. (Wait...wait...wait) And guess what!!! Every single one of them plagiarized their paper. Every last one of them!
ReplyDeleteI once gave my students an extra credit assignment on plagiarism. Write a paper describing how to avoid plagiarism. Every single student described exactly the steps to take to avoid plagiarism. (Wait...wait...wait) And guess what!!! Every single one of them plagiarized their paper. Every last one of them!
ReplyDeleteDavid from Sesame Street is apparently a self-plagiarist.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Double-posting of comments seems to happen often enough that I suspect that blogger is at least partly to blame, but it's still amusing on this particular post.
DeleteThis year I had a student submit a journal (part of a participation assignment) that included an impassioned diatribe against students who plagiarize -- that was itself plagiarized.
DeleteThere's a study out there on academic misconduct amongst business students that reports a similar phenomenon. As part of the research, students were asked to write a short paper about plagiarism. A number of the submitted papers were plagiarized.
Well, sometimes it's true that they didn't plagiarize wikipedia, at least not directly. Many of the "homework help"/"help with research" sites on the internet plagiarize wikipedia, and students who plagiarize from them may not be aware of where the content originally came from. Still, that's not exactly a valid defense.
ReplyDeleteI ran across the website of a paper-writing service recently that promised "100% plagiarism-free guarantee" -- of course, that only holds until the student plagiarizes the "background research" paper (s)he buys from them wholesale.
I strongly suspect that the "I never even saw the article!" student really was genuinely surprised-- he most likely got the paper from a friend who neglected to tell him it was already stolen. Clueless. And as Snarky says, not malicious, just lazy and careless. Really a likeable, good-natured student, which makes it even more frustrating.
DeleteMy favorite case was a student who at least had the good graces to admit it was a fair cop:
DeleteRAG: So where did you get the assignment you copied?
Clueless Clara: From Dubious Donna. She gave it to me as a model to work from. She asked me not to hand it in.
RAG: But you handed it in anyway.
CC: Yes
RAG: What about Mendacious Mickey? He handed in the same assignment too?
CC: I passed the assignment on to him as a model. I asked him not to hand it in.
RAG: But he handed it in anyway.
CC: Yes.
RAG [Facepalm!]
I don't think they think you're stupid. I don't think they think. Many of them seem incapable of generalizing information, which means they don't connect our constant "don't plagiarize" talks with their own work. Or at least, they aren't keeping the definition of plagiarism and all our discussions about how NOT to do it in mind when they "write" their papers. It's carelessness and laziness, not maliciousness (for the most part). Not that that makes it any better, really.
ReplyDeleteSorry, while the Wiki trio is a good ... and I had a student back in the Dark Ages of Encarta ('memba that?) who printed out one of their articles but (!) had the foresight to cut the copyright notice off the last page so he -- literally -- wait for it --- passed in two and two-thirds pages.
ReplyDeleteBut the supreme uber snowflakiest of them all?
The student who cribbed MY dissertation!
Yup, thought that looked familiar!
That is a weird feeling, isn't it? It's like getting your car stolen. You eyes say to your brain, "Something's seriously not right here. What is it?" Your brain replies to your eyes, "Come on, that can't be right. Would you please check it again?" Your eyes and brain then scream in unison, "AAAAAAAAIIIIEEEEE!!!!!"
DeleteWhy do students plagiarize? As Bertrand Russell noted, "Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so." It's easier to plagiarize than to write a paper yourself, so they do so. As with most crime, they're emboldened when they think they can get away with it: if they were sure they'd be caught, they wouldn't try it.
ReplyDeleteI blame Tom Lehrer....
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/RNC-aj76zI4
I once gave an assignment where students had to code a page in html. As I was marking papers, I checked back to a previous paper where I recalled a similar error... and lo and behold they were the same. The student claimed it was html code! How could I tell it was copied. Including the typos, apparently.
ReplyDeleteI bring fire and brimstone for lazy cheaters that straight copy-paste. But it's a bit sad that I feel like passing a student who at least put some effort into cheating.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of bad mojo around any kind of "anonymous" name. Might you be a sweetheart and use a different moniker on the site? Sorry to be a pisser, but we're trying to keep non-names down. Thanks so much.
DeleteCM Moderator
One of my students left the links in her final paper this year. However, she did change all the words that she could safely throw into a thesaurus, so I think that she thought it was "paraphrasing". Clearly, I need to more effectively redefine paraphrasing.
ReplyDeleteI had two students in a class of 22 submit identical lab reports. I divided and interrogated and reported to the dean and the chair. The dean and chair followed up with interrogations of their own. The one who copied said "He didn't mean for me to copy. I just needed the format, but I copied it anyway." Honor amongst thieves I guess. The chair decided that if it could be proven that the "author" didn't intend for the copier to copy, that the copier would get a zero and the "author" would have to write a new report. The author said he had an e-mail that would prove it was just to show him the format. This is where my chair is a genius. I was protesting that the syllabus included the format and that there was no need for the author to send a written report for the format, and how could an e-mail prove that anyway? And what did it say? The chair just waved me off and said "Let's wait for him to come down here and show us this e-mail."
ReplyDeleteHe pulled up a message and quickly turned to face me and argue while I read it over his shoulder. I said "Ok, thanks, just print that so we have proof." While it printed on the chair's printer, the weasel noticed he'd pulled up the wrong e-mail. It said "It was only $15, I put it on my credit card, so just get me back on Fri nite, ok? And make sure you change some of the words so she doesn't notice."
Beautiful!
DeleteI had one this term hand in a book review, but at the end of the paper, after the bibliography, there were the copy/pasted fragments (with highlighting!) from academic journal reviews the student had been using as cheat-sheet material instead of reading the book....
I just examined a PhD dissertation here in FarFlungColony where the student plaigiarized my article based on MY dissertation - I know this because they cited articles that come from consultants (that I had obtained by tracking down and writing to those people while living in the US 20 years ago). I have asked them to tell me all about these interesting references at their oral exam - can't wait ;-)
ReplyDeleteOh, oh, oh, please follow up and tell us what happens!
DeleteThat shit crayyyyyyyyyy!
DeleteOh yes! Do tell us what happens!
Delete