Education, writing, and cheating

[Ollie123]

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A friend of mine just pointed me towards this article:
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/

Thought others might be interested as well. It was perhaps disturbing, but not surprising to me. I'm TAing for the first time right now, and can honestly say I have been truly horrified at what I see...even from students that are doing well (i.e. "above-average" ones), let alone from those that are doing badly. I make no claims to be the best writer....it was always my worst subject when I was younger. However, when I see what my current students are producing it is mortifying...college essays that are written at the middle school level. How does this happen? Why are they allowed to graduate high school? Or middle school even?

Yet at the same time, I can understand why its not always possible. I'm teaching a 200-seat senior-level course next semester and don't get a TA. I cannot grade 200 term papers, especially when half of them would be an incoherent string of sentence fragments. I'd want to provide feedback on writing, but at the same time I feel like a 400-level college course is not the time to be teaching grammar. If I wanted to explain when commas were appropriate, I would have gone into education.

I know we have a fair number of folks on an academic-track here. We are the ones who will be dealing with this in the years to come, and I suspect it will get worse rather than better. I'm interested to hear what ideas people have for turning it around and improving things.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

I've been incredibly disappointed by some of the papers I've had to grade. I can't believe students are allowed to graduate HIGH SCHOOL (let alone college) with such a poor understanding of syntax, punctuation, etc.

 

[KillerDiller]

I have been thinking of this a lot since I started teaching this semester. I do require students to do some writing. However, I feel like I can't take off points for poor writing, because I didn't build that into the point structure of the assignments. Next semester maybe. For now I'm trying really hard not to pass the buck and have been referring students to the campus writing center left and right.

 

[Existenz]

lots of younger students, who grew up with the internet and google, take for granted that the things they search are not proprietary. They copy and paste at will and assume that googling something without citation is legitimately ok.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

lots of younger students, who grew up with the internet and google, take for granted that the things they search are not proprietary. They copy and paste at will and assume that googling something without citation is legitimately ok.

This is exactly why, at the beginning of the two classes I taught, I spent probably half of my first lecture explicitly addressing plagiarism (e.g., what is and isn't acceptable, when citation is and isn't necessary, what the consequences are, etc.). I was fortunate in that it never ended up being an issue for me, but I did hear quite a few stories from peers who had students turning in identical papers.

 

[Ollie123]

Yeah, I still find it hard to believe its possible to "not get it" that those things are plagiarism given that every single class I've seen has emphasized it. I'm not sure I buy that it is done out of ignorance more than a tiny, tiny percentage of the time.

One suggestion that some people made is structuring assignments that make plagiarism more difficult, but I can see advantages and disadvantages to this. At least at the college level, I actually think its important to allow a great deal of freedom in writing assignments. Vague assignments (i.e. write a review paper on a topic relevant to the class) are the ones that allow students the most freedom to explore, and I think the good students actually benefit the most from it. After all, if you actually go into the field that is closer to what you will be doing. Yet that is probably the easiest type of assignment to plagiarize. Not giving assignments like that seems like catering to the lowest common denominator, which I think happens far too much in education already.

A friend of mine in another department got a (graduate) assignment where she was not allowed to use sources outside of what was used in class...presumably to avoid plagiarism. I find that ludicrous at the graduate level, even if it does achieve the purpose of making it more difficult to plagiarize. Its not a good habit to get into, and even by undergrad its important that people realize that no class can possibly teach you everything about a topic and its important to be able to look into things yourself.

 

[loveoforganic]

My health psych professor (senior level writing class) said one student copy pasted an entire wiki article without taking out the links. Beyond the lack of integrity, the stupidity of thinking there was even the remotest chance of getting away with it...?

 

[cara susanna]

The author of that article just comes across as so... ugh. That's the only word I have for it.

 

[deleted176373]

Wow, I am no great writer, but I can't imagine paying someone to write for me.

Mark

 

[erg923]

Wow, count me as ignorant because I had no ideas that stuff existed. I particularly liked the business student who paid for a paper about unethical business practices and trade liberalization. The author appears to be a master of rationalization though🙄

My father always told me that with all the time people spend on cheating preparation and/or ensuring they dont get caught at cheating they could have actually done the assignment (or studied) and actually learned something. And the risk, my god. I wonder about the frontal lobe integrity of some of these people.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

I wonder about the frontal lobe integrity of some of these people.

You know when you are a grad student when....

 

[FadedC]

A friend of mine in another department got a (graduate) assignment where she was not allowed to use sources outside of what was used in class...presumably to avoid plagiarism. I find that ludicrous at the graduate level, even if it does achieve the purpose of making it more difficult to plagiarize. Its not a good habit to get into, and even by undergrad its important that people realize that no class can possibly teach you everything about a topic and its important to be able to look into things yourself.

Hmm I had a class that gave assignments like that, where we were only supposed to use sources that had been assigned as part of the class. The teacher's reasoning had nothing to do with plagarism though. She just wanted to guard against people writing lots of unnecessary things to appear smart in what was intended to be a very focused assignment.

There are a couple teachers in my program who take it upon themselves to make sure that all grad students have apropriate writing skills. I don't know how bad anyone's paper really is because I don't read them, but I have seen several students assigned to spend some time in writing workshop. The ones I've seen have always been MA/specialist degree students rather then PhD though.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

Wow, count me as ignorant because I had no ideas that stuff existed. I particularly liked the business student who paid for a paper about unethical business practices and trade liberalization. The author appears to be a master of rationalization though🙄

My father always told me that with all the time people spend on cheating preparation and/or ensuring they dont get caught at cheating they could have actually done the assignment (or studied) and actually learned something. And the risk, my god. I wonder about the frontal lobe integrity of some of these people.

In actuality, I'd say the chances of getting caught using a pay-for-product system like that mentioned above is pretty slim. Universities are VERY hesitant to label students as cheaters/plagiarizers because of potential liability issues. Even something like copying another student's entire essay or copying-and-pasting straight from Wikipedia would likely only lead to a warning in many instances. With an original essay, it's even shiftier, as how is the university supposed to definitively prove that the student didn't write it himself/herself? Frustrating for sure, yeah.

Edit: Mind you, the situation changes significantly when you begin discussing graduate students, though. We're definitely held to a higher standard than undergraduates in terms of academic integrity.

 

[PrisonPsych]

Don't get me started on the "quality" of most undergraduate writing. I'm in the middle of grading my students' term papers and am trying really really hard to stick to my rubric instead of slapping 'FAIL' on them. Upper-level psych class, too. Apparently they've made it this far without ever hearing about APA formatting...

 

[AcronymAllergy]

Don't get me started on the "quality" of most undergraduate writing. I'm in the middle of grading my students' term papers and am trying really really hard to stick to my rubric instead of slapping 'FAIL' on them. Upper-level psych class, too. Apparently they've made it this far without ever hearing about APA formatting...

I ran across quite a few creative styles of citing and formatting myself when I taught a couple years back. And yep, mine was also an upper-level psych class, although to the students' credit, it was an elective that didn't have any psych pre-reqs. Thus, I had quite a few non-psych majors enrolled.