Evidential Post #4

Evidential Post #4 Ed Wesly

The problem of plagiarizing via the web is just way too easy, and many students take advantage of the ease of Google research to turn in papers that are so obviously not theirs. My colleague across the aisle from me at Harrington College of Design will go the extra nine yards to check, especially if the assignment is radically different from anything that she had received from the student previously.

The way she checks is how the students usally and simply get the material; Google it. She’ll Google the topic, and like in a case that just happened last sememster, the plagiarized source is usually in the top 5 hits. There are software programs designed to do the checking for you, especially easy if the paper is received in electronic format. This site gives a ton of them:
http://www.web-miner.com/plagiarism#tools

What happened to the student? According to the Student Handbook, anyone caught plagiarizing not only fails the assignment, but the class! Although this sounds harsh, it is a not uncommon view, viz. this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education:
http://chronicle.com/jobs/2002/05/2002051401c.htm

The author discusses his history with the problem, and came up with these possible solutions:
1. Fail her for the course?
2. Fail the paper but allow her to remain in the course, on the condition that she signs an acknowledgment of the plagiarism that will remain in her file until graduation?
3. Give her the opportunity to rewrite the paper, and penalize the final grade by a full letter?
Being the nice guy that I am, I would go with option 3, since that makes it more work for the student, since they do have to do the research and learn the lesson to be learned there. It might also be acknowledged that it’s like the punishment of writing lines and lines of “I will not…”, a fair trade for not having the stigma of being a plagiarist and the failure F grade hanging over their academic and job heads. (This will go down in your permanent record.)