Sunday, November 3, 2013

Plagiarism

There's so much to say on this subject, but I'm going to begin with what others are saying about students plagiarizing even when we are, we think, proctoring:


Here's another issue. You may say that I was asleep at the wheel, but for once, I didn't constantly circulate during an in-class writing assignment in my 120 class. I knew there was a danger of students finding copious amounts of information on the Internet, which is why I assigned the topic in class. I was really surprised when one rather weak student sitting by the wall at the back handed in a wonderful paper. When I typed it into google, there it was, with some carefully added errors, of course.
These students are practiced in the art of using cell phones without it being detected. If this can happen in a classroom of 25 students, how many of the students in those large rooms we use for the finals will try the same thing?
I know it may be logistically impossible, but I do think it's more appropriate for us to monitor our own sections of finals.
Caroline



Caroline,

Here's a recent incident from one of my courses.

During an in-class writing, I noticed one (struggling) student spending lots of time looking up words in a Longman dictionary. I got a bit suspicious, so I asked to see her dictionary. She was very reluctant to give it to me, which was a bit of a tip off. I thumbed through the dictionary and found most of the essay  pre-written onto a couple of dictionary pages. A+ for ingenuity! I'm not sure what can be done about this technique.

Curt



I have had two incidences of plagiarism so far this year.. I search the internet and found the source: sample toefl essays and the Mayo Clinic. Gave them F, a copy of source material, and an official warning, downloaded from forms on Insight. I resent mightily the time wasted tracking down the source material of these miscreants.  Hadn't heard of the Google Translate strategy; thanks. Will watch for that. BYW, at one time before I left for editing jobs, I bought Turnitin with my own dime. It would be great if the department provided that. It was very helpful and saved time.

 



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