Wednesday, October 24, 2012

More plagiarism questions haunt UNC-Chapel Hill. From NewsObserver.com.

by Dan Kane

Do you need,
like, citations?
As the spring 2011 semester wound to a close, UNC-Chapel Hill football player Erik Highsmith had nothing to show for the blog students were supposed to contribute to for a communications class, his instructor said. The blog accounted for 30 percent of a student’s grade.

Highsmith wrote two posts in seven days. The first was about poultry farming, the second about people and pets.

Very little of either post was in his own words.

The first entry was virtually identical to a passage on an education website written by four 11-year-olds for their peers. The second mirrored much of an essay someone posted on Urch.com, a website that helps people prepare for the SAT, GRE and other college entry exams.

Instructor J. Nikol Beckham said she spotted the plagiarism and reported it to the academic support program for student athletes. By then, an NCAA investigation had turned up numerous examples of a tutor providing improper help to football players, and Beckham was concerned the plagiarism went beyond Highsmith and her class.

“I suggested that they consider that this isn’t an isolated incident,” she said, “and I expressed my disappointment considering everything that had been going on for the last year. And I received a great deal of assurances that it would be handled.”

The four investigations into academic fraud at UNC-CH are largely focused on classes within the African and Afro-American Studies Department that never met. But another theme is also emerging as more becomes known about the school work: football players cutting and pasting from various sources to fulfill written assignments.

In Highsmith’s case, Beckham said someone at the academic support program told her they would talk to the student, “but after that, I never heard anything.” She has since left the university to teach at a community college in central Virginia.

Highsmith, a senior wide receiver from Vanceboro, declined to be interviewed, according to Steve Kirschner, an associate athletic director for communications at UNC-CH. Highsmith played every game last season, except for one in which he was held out for an injury.



FULL ARTICLE.

1 comment:

  1. "The first entry was virtually identical to a passage on an education website written by four 11-year-olds for their peers."

    Which means that it's still written at a level above that of the football players here at Podunk CC.

    ReplyDelete

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