Bob Jensen's Threads on Plagiarism Detection
and Exam Cheating
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Cartoon from Teachable Moments ---
http://insidehighered.com/views/teachable_moments/cartoon0406
Where to Begin in When Trying to Detect Plagiarism
Comparison of Plagiarism Detection Tools ---
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/SER07017B.pdf
"Plagiarism Detection: Is Technology the Answer?" at the 2007 EDUCAUSE
Southeast Regional Conference, Liz Johnson, Board of Regents of the University
System of Georgia, provided a chart comparing seven plagiarism detection tools:
Turnitin, MyDropBox, PAIRwise, EVE2, WCopyFind, CopyCatch, and GLATT.
Combating Plagiarism: Is the Internet
Causing More Students and Ministers to Copy
Where is the line of ethical responsibility of using online services
to improve writing?
Market for Admissions Test Questions and Admissions Essay "Consulting"
Should a doctoral student be allowed to hire an editor to
help write her dissertation?
If the answer is yes, should this also apply to any student writing a course
project, take home exam, or term paper?
This service from Google Answers is disturbing.
The Center for Academic Integrity (CAI)
Cheating Issues Somewhat Unique to Distance
Education
Huge Cheating
Scandals at the University of Virginia, Ohio, Duke, and Other Universities
Cheating
Across Cultures
Plagio-riffing
New Kinds of Cheating
Old Kinds of
Cheating
Did Sir Isaac Newton and
Gottfried Leibnitz Plagiarize?
Social/Cultural Construction of Cheating
Ghost Students on
Campus
Professors Who Let Students Cheat
Professors
Who Plagiarize
Professors Who Fabricate Research Outcomes
Celebrities Who Plagiarize/Cheat
Media Sources Who Let Journalists Cheat and Go Unpunished
for Cheating
Plagiarism Goes Unpunished in the Liberal Press
In Defense of Cheating
MBAs most likely (among graduate students) to cheat and
make their own rules
54% of Accounting Students Admit to Cheating
Academic Fraud for Athletes
Scientists Behaving Badly
Copyright Issues and Concerns
Also see
The U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act Undermines Public Access and
Sharing
(Included Copyright Information and Dead Link Archives)
Copyright and
Deep Linking
100 Cases of Cheating at the University of Virginia
Where to Begin in When Trying to Detect Plagiarism
Adventures in Cheating: A guide to Buying
Term papers and Dissertations Online (What's a "virgin prostitute?" in this
context?)
Plagiarism and 'Atonement'
Catching Cheaters with Their Own Computers
Guidelines for Copyrighted Material at Websites,
Blackboard, and WebCT
Center for Academic Integrity ---
http://www.academicintegrity.org/
Threads on the
P2P, PDE, Collaboration, and the Napster/Wrapster/Gnutella/Pointera/FreeNet/BearShare/KaZaA/ ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/napster.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on assessment at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on controlling online cheating ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnsiteVersusOnline
Bob Jensen's threads on onsite versus onsite assessment ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnsiteVersusOnline
January 6, 2006 message from Carolyn Kotlas
[kotlas@email.unc.edu]
NEW JOURNAL COVERING PLAGIARISM IN THE
UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY
The recently-launched, refereed INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL FOR EDUCATIONAL INTEGRITY [ISSN 1833-2595] intends to provide a
forum to address educational integrity topics: "plagiarism, cheating,
academic integrity, honour codes, teaching and learning, university
governance, and student motivation." The journal, to be published two times
a year, is sponsored by the University of South Australia. For more
information and to read the current issue, go to
http://www.ojs.unisa.edu.au/journals/index.php/IJEI .
Update Messages
Candidates attempting to cheat in an exam by writing
on a part of their body must be reported to the chief invigilator immediately.
Please speak to an exam attendant who will contact the student administration
office. Keep the students under close observation to ensure that they do not
attempt to erase the evidence. The chief invigilator will arrange for a member
of staff with a camera to come to the exam room to photograph the evidence to
present to the examinations offences panel.
Signs on the walls of Student Administration Office at Queen Mary College in
London, as reported by Abbott Katz, "Inside Higher Ed, May 31, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/05/31/katz
A World Class Athlete With World Class Ethics That Will Impact Upon Future
Generations
He speaks his mind --- and apologizes later.
He loves to party --- and doesn't care about winning. Yet Bode Miller
is poised to strike Olympic gold. On the slopes with skiing's bad
boy,.
Bill Saporito. As written on the cover of Time Magazine, January 23,
2006 ---
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1149374,00.html
Jensen Comment
Bode Miller is the best of the best in a sport where winners are determined
by hundredths of a second on a stop watch. His picture is on the cover
of the January 23, 2006 edition of Time Magazine. Although he's
relatively unknown in his home country (U.S.A.), he's been an established
hero in Europe where crowds chanted "Bode, Bode, . . . ." while he was on
his way to winning the 2005 World Cup. He's poised to become the Gold
Medal hero in the 2006 and obtained recent U.S. notoriety due to a recent
interview on Sixty Minutes (CBS television) in which he admitted that having
fun is more important than winning and that he sometimes partied too much
when skiing including a few instances when he was a bit tipsy or hung over
when crashing down the slope at over 80 miles per hour.
Chagrined media analysts questioned whether the partying and outspoken
Bode Miller was really a role model for our young people. I contend
that he is largely do to some things buried in the article in Time
Magazine. After discussing his partying and independent nature, the
article goes on to explain how Bode more than any other skier in history
made a science out of the sport. Most of his life has been spent
studying and experimenting with every item of clothing and equipment, every
position for every circumstance on the slopes, and the torques and forces of
every move under every possible slope condition. That sort of makes him my
hero, but what really makes him my hero is the following quotation that
speaks for itself:
Last year, after tinkering with his boots, he
discovered that inserting a composite --- as opposed to aluminum or
plastic --- lift under the sole gave him a better feel on the snow and
better performance. Then he did something really crazy, he shared
the information with everyone, including competitors. His
equipment team flipped, but in the Miller school of philosophy this
makes complete sense. Otherwise, he says, "I'm maintaining an
unfair advantage over my competitors knowingly, for the purpose of
beating them alone. Not for the purpose of enjoying it more or
skiing better. To me that's
ethically unsound."
One has to be reminded of the famous poem painted on the wall of my old
Algona High School gymnasium:
For when the Great Scorer comes
To write against your name.
He marks -- not that you won or lost --
But how you played the game.
Grantland Rice ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grantland_Rice
Setting a bad example for its students: Plagiarized from Alabama
A&M University
A federal judge on Friday blocked the Southern
Association of Colleges and Schools from revoking the accreditation of Edward
Waters College while the institution pursues a due process lawsuit against the
association. In December, the regional accrediting group said that it had
revoked the Florida college's accreditation, citing documents Edward Waters
officials had submitted to the association that appeared to have been
plagiarized from Alabama A&M University, another historically black
institution.
Doug Lederman, "Staying Alive," Inside Higher Ed, March 14, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/insider/staying_alive
"Tolerance of Cheating: An Analysis Across Countries" --- http://www.indiana.edu/~econed/pdffiles/spring02/magnus.pdf
Bob Jensen's threads on P2P file sharing are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/napster.htm
Forwarded by Chris Nolan on August 28, 2003
With a new academic year starting, I wanted to remind
everyone of the following comprehensive webliography on plagiarism. Each entry
is annotated, and each entry represents a document that is available on the
Web:
http://www.web-miner.com/plagiarism
This Web site also has other guides to ethics issues
on topical areas that you might wish to share with faculty in other
departments on your campus:
Anthropology Ethics: http://www.web-miner.com/anthroethics.htm
Art Ethics: http://www.web-miner.com/artethics.htm
Bioethics: http://www.web-miner.com/bioethics.htm
Business Ethics: http://www.web-miner.com/busethics.htm
Ethics Case Studies: http://www.web-miner.com/ethicscases.htm
History Ethics: http://www.web-miner.com/historyethics.htm
Journalism Ethics: http://www.web-miner.com/journethics.htm
Research Ethics: http://www.web-miner.com/researchethics.htm
Sociology Ethics: http://www.web-miner.com/sociologyethics.htm
Bernie Sloan
Senior Library Information Systems Consultant, ILCSO
University of Illinois Office for Planning and Budgeting
616 E. Green Street, Suite 213
Champaign, IL 61820
Phone: (217) 333-4895
Fax: (217) 265-0454
E-mail: bernies@uillinois.edu
Combating
Plagiarism: Is the Internet Causing More Students to Copy --- http://library.cqpress.com/images/cqres/pdfs/color/cqr20030919C.pdf
This is a very comprehensive CQ
Researcher edition dated September 19, 2003
THE ISSUES
775 Has the Internet
increased the incidence of plagiarism among students?
Should teachers use
plagiarism-detection services?
Are news organizations
doing enough to guard against plagiarism and other types of journalistic
fraud?
BACKGROUND
782 Imitation Encouraged
Plagiarism had not always
been regarded as unethical.
784 Rise of Copyright
Attitudes about
plagiarism began to change after the printing press was invented.
785 'Fertile Ground'
Rising college
admissions in the mid-1800s led to more writing assignments--and more chances
to cheat.
786 Second Chances
Some journalists who were
caught plagiarizing recovered from their mistakes.
CURRENT SITUATION
787 Plagiarism and Politics
Sen. Joseph Biden,
D-Del., is among the politicians who got caught plagiarizing.
787 'Poisonous Atmosphere'
Some journalists say news
organizations overreacted following the Jayson Blair affair.
788 Action by Educators
U.S. schools have taken a
variety of steps to stop plagiarism.
OUTLOOK
790 Internet Blamed
Educators and journalists
alike say the Internet fosters plagiarism.
SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS
776 College Students Consider
Plagiarism Wrong
Ninety percent view
copying as unethical.
777 How much Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is probably on
the rise, although it appears to have remained stable over the past 40 years.
779 Confronting Plagiarism Poses Risks
Students sometimes
challenge teachers who accuse them.
783 Chronology
Key events since 1790.
784 Rogue Reporter at The New York
Times
Jayson Blair didn't
fool everybody.
789 At Issue
Should educators use
commercial services to combat plagiarism?
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
792 For More Information
Organizations to contact.
793 Bibliography
Selected sources used.
794 The Next Step
Additional articles from
current periodicals.
Question
Have you considered asking your students to turn in two term papers
simultaneously, one of which is mostly plagiarized and one that is pledged
to be not plagiarized in any way with proper citations?
"Winning Hearts and Minds in War on
Plagiarism," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, April 7, 2008 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/07/plagiarism
That’s what Kate Hagopian, an instructor in the
first-year writing program at North Carolina State University, does. For one
assignment, she gives her students a short writing passage and then a prompt
for a standard student short essay. She asks her students to turn in two
versions. In one they are told that they must plagiarize. In the second,
they are told not to. The prior night, the students were given an online
tutorial on plagiarism and Hagopian said she has become skeptical that
having the students “parrot back what we’ve told them” accomplishes
anything. Her hope is that this unusual assignment might change that.
After the students turn in their two responses to
the essay prompt, Hagopian shares some with the class. Not surprisingly, the
students do know how to plagiarize — but were uncomfortable admitting as
much. Hagopian said that the assignment is always greeted with
“uncomfortable laughter” as the students must pretend that they never would
have thought of plagiarizing on their own. Given the right to do so, they
turn in essays with many direct quotes without attribution. Of course in
their essays that are supposed to be done without plagiarism, she still
finds problems — not so much with passages repeated verbatim, but with
paraphrasing or using syntax in ways that were so similar to the original
that they required attribution.
When she started giving the assignment, she sort of
hoped, Hagopian said, to see students turn in “nuanced tricky
demonstrations” of plagiarism, but she mostly gets garden variety copying.
But what she is doing is having detailed conversations with her students
about what is and isn’t plagiarism — and by turning everyone into a
plagiarist (at least temporarily), she makes the conversation something that
can take place openly.
“Students know I am listening,” she said. And by
having the conversation in this way — as opposed to reading the riot act —
she said she is demonstrating that all plagiarism is not the same, whether
in technique, motivation or level of sophistication. There is a difference
between “deliberate fraud” and “failed apprenticeship,” she said.
Hagopian’s approach was among many described at
various sessions last week at the
annual meeting of the Conference of College
Composition and Communication,
in New Orleans. Writing instructors — especially those
tasked with teaching freshmen — are very much on the front lines of the war
against plagiarism. As much as other faculty members, they resent plagiarism
by their students — and in fact several of the talks featured frank
discussion of how betrayed writing instructors feel when someone turns in
plagiarized work.
That anger does motivate some to use the software
that detects plagiarism as part of an effort to scare students and weed out
plagiarists, and there was some discussion along those lines. But by and
large, the instructors at the meeting said that they didn’t have any
confidence that these services were attacking the roots of the problem or
finding all of the plagiarism. Several people quipped that if the software
really detected all plagiarism, plenty of campuses would be unable to hold
classes, what with all of the sessions needed for academic integrity boards.
While there was a group therapy element to some of
the discussions, there was also a strong focus on trying new solutions.
Freshmen writing instructors after all don’t have the option available to
other faculty members of just blaming the problem on the failures of those
who teach first-year comp.
What to do? New books being displayed in the
exhibit hall included several trying to shift the plagiarism debate beyond a
matter of pure enforcement. Among them were
Originality, Imitation, and Plagiarism: Teaching
Writing in the Digital Age,
just published by the University of Michigan (and
profiled on
Inside Higher Ed), and
Pluralizing Plagiarism: Identities, Contexts,
Pedagogies, released in February by
Boynton/Cook.
Like Hagopian, many of those at the meeting said
that they are focused on trying to better understand their students, what
makes them plagiarize, and what might make them better understand academic
integrity. There wasn’t much talk of magic bullets, but lots of ideas about
ways to better see the issue from a student perspective — and to find ways
to use that perspective to promote integrity.
Continued in article
A Clever Way to Punish and Prevent Plagiarism
"Traffic School for Essay Thieves," by Paul D. Thacker, Inside Higher Ed,
November 29, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/29/plagiarism
Having grown weary of punishing students for
plagiarizing and advising other professors to fail them, too, Meg Files said
that she had an epiphany during a random chat with a colleague at Pima
Community College’s West Campus. The professor explained that he had
recently gone to traffic school after receiving a ticket and that the course
had actually improved his driving.
“So I thought, ‘Why can’t we have a parallel
program for plagiarism?’ ” said Files, who chairs Pima’s English/journalism
department.
Seizing on the idea, Files created a “traffic
school for plagiarism,” aimed at altering the campus’s focus on catching and
punishing students for turning in essays they didn’t write. Now students can
seek academic rehabilitation instead of punishment by participating in a
plagiarism program that contains five steps:
- Write a detailed, self-exam on “Why I
plagiarized.”
- Read case studies of plagiarism. (Files said
that many of the examples cover cases of professional journalists fired
from their jobs.)
- Write a paragraph defining plagiarism.
- Meet with a tutor to discuss proper citation
etiquette and complete a short worksheet on citations.
- Meet with a faculty committee to talk about
how to avoid plagiarism and lessons learned.
Files, who will be overseeing the program, said
that it is too early to tell whether it will be successful. Only a few
students have elected to sign up, and none have yet finished.
“My reaction is, good for them,” said Donald L.
McCabe, founding president of the
Center for Academic Integrity. McCabe, a professor
of management and global business at Rutgers University, called Pima’s
approach a good policy that cuts down the middle between two extremes:
excessively punishing students for literary piracy, or ignoring them. McCabe
said that his own research finds that plagiarism is slightly more common
today than in previous decades and that honor codes help curb the problem.
However, current policies at most educational
institution revolve around detection and punishment. A number of
universities now use online products such as
Turnitin.com
to scan essays for stolen text.
While catching students and then failing them for
copying does help to reduce plagiarism, McCabe said that it probably doesn’t
provide the best results and may just teach students to be more careful when
they cheat. “Now we are just teaching students how to avoid detection,” he
said.
Instructing students how to correctly reference
other work and instilling a sense of academic integrity in them is
difficult, McCabe said, but is the best way to dissuade students from
plagiarizing.
“I like the focus — the remedial aspect instead of
just playing gotcha,” said John P. Lesko, editor of
the new scholarly
journal, Plagiary. Lesko pointed out that some
students may not even know that plagiarism is a bad thing, and that copying
is considered normal in some countries.
He noted that Carolyn Matalene, now professor
emeritus of English language and literature at the University of South
Carolina, noticed in the 1980s that
students in China regularly pilfered lines from
published pieces. “She found that copying was actually encouraged so that
you would learn like the masters,” he said.
Files said that cultural differences in defining
plagiarism also drove her develop the new program. “In some cultures,
plagiarism isn’t bad,” she said. But she also found that the current
policies at her institution were not going far enough. In the past, Pima
tried to curb plagiarism by assigning original topics, which makes it more
difficult for students to purchase an essay, and by emphasizing the writing
process—outlining, drafting, revising—over delivering a finished product.
Finally, faculty have been encouraging students to be confident and proud of
their own writing. She calls these steps “prevention” and the new program a
“cure” once plagiarism is found.
“I think it’s a worthwhile effort, but the
motivation to plagiarize is huge,” said Colin Purrington, associate
professor of evolutionary biology at Swarthmore College. Purrington became
so concerned about the growing problem with plagiarism that he put up a
complete Web site to address the issue a couple of
years ago.
One of the resources he cites as a deterrent
against plagiarism is an
essay that a Swarthmore student wrote as a
disciplinary measure after getting caught. The essay reads: “Plagiarism is
undisputedly, a most egregious academic offense. Unfortunately, I found that
out the hard way. I cannot even begin to describe how unpleasant the
experience was for me.”
On his Web page, Purrington notes that the essay is
nicely written and urges instructors to hand it out to students to generate
discussion. But he also notes with some chagrin: “That person got caught
again some years later.”
Question
who were at least two famous world leaders who plagiarized doctoral theses?
Answer
Two that I know of off the top of my head are
Martin Luther King and
Vladimir Putin. Doubts are raised that Putin ever read his thesis that
plagiarized from a
U.S. textbook. Iran's President Ahmadinejad allegedly plagiarizes, although
I don't know if he plagiarized in his doctoral thesis ---
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2006/10/ahmadinejad_i_h.html
Harvard Novelist Says Copying Was Unintentional
Kaavya Viswanathan, the Harvard sophomore accused
of plagiarizing parts of her recently published chick-lit novel,
acknowledged yesterday that she had borrowed language from another writer's
books, but called the copying "unintentional and unconscious." The book,
"How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life," was recently published
by Little, Brown to wide publicity. On Sunday, The Harvard Crimson reported
that Ms. Viswanathan, who received $500,000 as part of a deal for "Opal" and
one other book, had seemingly plagiarized language from two novels by Megan
McCafferty, an author of popular young-adult books.
Dinitia Smith, "Harvard Novelist Says Copying Was Unintentional," The New
York Times, April 25, 2006 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/books/25book.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Her Publisher is Not Convinced
A day after Kaavya Viswanathan admitted copying parts
of her chick-lit novel, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life,"
from another writer's works, the publisher of the two books she borrowed from
called her apology "troubling and disingenuous." On Monday, Ms. Viswanathan, in
an e-mail message, said that her copying from Megan McCafferty's "Sloppy Firsts"
and "Second Helpings," both young adult novels published by Crown, a division of
Random House, had been "unintentional and unconscious." But in a statement
issued today, Steve Ross, Crown's publisher, said that, "based on the scope and
character of the similarities, it is inconceivable that this was a display of
youthful innocence or an unconscious or unintentional act." He said that there
were more than 40 passages in Ms. Viswanathan's book "that contain identical
language and/or common scene or dialogue structure from Megan McCafferty's first
two books."
Dinitia Smith, Publisher Rejects Young Novelist's Apology," The New York
Times, April 26, 2006 ---
Click Here
April 27, 2006 reply from Linda Kidwell, University of Wyoming
[lkidwell@UWYO.EDU]
Unlike the purchase/pooling debate or derivatives,
this one is something I know a fair bit about!
First, Harvard does not have an honor code, though
they debated one in the 1980s. Nor does Harvard belong to the Center for
Academic Integrity, despite the fact that most of the other Ivy Leagues, all
the seven sisters except Radcliffe, and over 390 universities (including a
few in Canada and Australia) do. That being said, the Harvard BUSINESS
School does have a code, voted in overwhelmingly by its own students several
years ago.
There is a tremendous variety in scope of honor
codes. Some address only academic issues while others have broader coverage.
I remember my senior year at Smith two fellow seniors were expelled during
their final semester for putting sugar in the gas tank of another student.
This was adjudicated under the honor code there. However other campuses
would handle such a thing through their students affairs or residence life
departments (or of course the police could be called in).
For those unfamiliar with honor codes, Melendez,
McCabe & Trevino, and my papers have used these criteria for an honor code:
1. unproctored exams
2. some kind of signed pledge that students will not cheat
3. a peer judiciary
4. reportage requirements, i.e., students should not tolerate violations
of academic integrity and have an obligation to report them
Any one or a combination of these criteria must be
in place for a true honor code. McCabe's research has shown that honor codes
cut cheating about in half.
The clearing house, if you will, for honor codes in
place in the U.S. is the Center for Academic Integrity, at
www.academicintegrity.org
Now back to Bob's question, pretending it took
place at a university with an honor code. Did this plagiarism take place in
the context of coursework? I believe the answer in this case is no.
Therefore it would depend on whether the honor code was written to encompass
activities outside of class. Some codes would capture this incident under
the general category of behavior that brings disrepute to the university
(all sorts of things, including well-known athletes that behave in a drunken
manner in public, debate teams that trash a hotel room, you name it). Others
would have no jurisdiction in this case because it did not take place in
class, nor did she do it as part of an organized university group or
function.
Honor codes are a wonderful thing if students are
socialized into accepting them early. They can really make cheating a major
social gaffe, such that many students who might cheat elsewhere wouldn't
take the risk. Perhaps this woman would not have committed this plagiarism
if she had been at a university with an honor code culture. I still remember
how unnerved I was (and perhaps how naive) when I was first a teaching
assistant at LSU. I couldn't believe all the precautions, including leaving
bags at the front, removing hats, spacing people apart, requiring photo
identification on their desks, pacing the rows, etc. I had never even been
proctored during an exam before, so it was really a culture shock!
I could go on and on, as this is a favorite topic
of mine, but I'll save more for another day. :-)
Linda Kidwell
March 3, 2006 message from Carolyn Kotlas
[kotlas@email.unc.edu]
SCHOLARLY JOURNAL ON PLAGIARISM
In January the University of Michigan Scholarly
Publishing Office launched a refereed online journal, PLAGIARY. The purpose
of the journal is "to bring together the various strands of scholarship
which already exist on the subject, and to create a forum for discussion
across disciplinary boundaries." Papers in the first issues include:
-- "The Google Library Project: Both Sides of the
Story"
-- "Copy This! A Historical Perspective On the Use
of the Photocopier in Art"
-- "A Million Little Pieces of Shame"
Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism,
Fabrication, and Falsification [ISSN 1559-3096] is available free of charge
as an Open Access journal on the Internet at
http://www.plagiary.org/
. For more information contact: John P. Lesko, Editor,
Department of English, Saginaw Valley State University, University Center,
MI 48710 USA; tel: 989-964-2067; fax: 989-790-7638; email:
jplesko@svsu.edu
"Technology and Plagiarism in the University: Brief Report of a Trial in
Detecting Cheating," Diane Johnson et al., AACE Journal 12(3),
281-299 --- http://www.aace.org/pubs/AACEJ/dispart.cfm?paperID=24
This article reports the results of a trial of
automated detection of term-paper plagiarism in a large, introductory
undergraduate class. The trial was premised on the observation that college
students exploit information technology extensively to cheat on papers and
assignments, but for the most part university faculty have employed few
technological techniques to detect cheating. Topics covered include the
decision to adopt electronic means for screening student papers, strategic
concerns regarding deterrence versus detection of cheating, the technology
employed to detect plagiarism, student outcomes, and the results of a survey
of student attitudes about the experience. The article advances the thesis
that easily-adopted techniques not only close a sophistication gap associated
with computerized cheating, but can place faculty in a stronger position than
they have ever enjoyed historically with regard to the deterrence and
detection of some classes of plagiarism.
"Stolen Words," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, January 25,
2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/01/25/mclemee
But the topic of plagiarism itself
keeps returning. One professor after another gets caught in
the act. The journalists and popular writers are just as
prolific with other people’s words. And as for the topic of
student plagiarism, forget it — who has time to keep up?
It was not that surprising, last fall,
to come across the call for papers for a new scholarly
journal called Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in
Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification. I made a
mental note to check its
Web site
again — and see that it began publishing this month.
One study is already available at
the site: an analysis of how the federal Office of Research
Integrity handled 19 cases of plagiarism involving research
supported by the U.S. Public Health Service. Another paper,
scheduled for publication shortly, will review media
coverage of the Google Library Project. Several other
articles are now working their way through peer review,
according to the journal’s founder, John P. Lesko, an
assistant professor of English at Saginaw Valley State
University, and will be published throughout the year in
open-source form. There will also be an annual print edition
of Plagiary. The entire project has the support of
the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of
Michigan.
In a telephone interview, Lesko
told me that research into plagiarism is central to his own
scholarship. His dissertation, titled “The Dynamics of
Derivative Writing,” was accepted by the University of
Edinburgh in 2000 — extracts from which appear at his Web
site
Famous Plagiarists, which he says
now gets between 5,000 and 6,000 visitors per month.
While the journal Plagiary
has a link to Famous Plagiarists, and vice versa, Lesko
insists that they are separate entities — the former
scholarly and professional, the latter his personal project.
And that distinction is a good thing, too. Famous
Plagiarists tends to hit a note of stridency such that, when
Lesko quotes Camille Paglia denouncing the
poststructuralists as “cunning hypocrites whose tortured
syntax and encrustations of jargon concealed the moral
culpability of their and their parents’ generations in Nazi
France,” she seems almost calm and even-tempered by
contrast.
“It seems that both Foucault and
Barthes’ contempt for the Author was expressed in some
rather plagiaristic utterances,” he writes, “a parroting of
the Nietschean ‘God is dead’ assertion.” That might strike
some people as confusing allusion with theft. But Lesko is
vehement about how the theorists have served as enablers for
the plagiarists, as well as the receivers of hot cargo.
“After all,” he writes, “a
plagiarist — so often with the help of collaborators and
sympathizers — steals the very livelihood of a text’s real
author, thus relegating that author to obscurity for as long
as the plagiarist’s name usurps a text, rather than the
author being recognized as the text’s originator. Plagiarism
of an author condemns that author to death as a text’s
rightfully acknowledged creator...” (The claim that Barthes
and Foucault were involved in diminishing the reputation of
Nietzsche has not, I believe, ever been made before.)
To a degree, his frustration
is understandable. In some quarters, it is common to recite
– as though it were an established truth, rather than an
extrapolation from one of Foucault’s essays – the idea that
plagiarism is a “historically constructed” category of
fairly recent vintage: something that came into being around
the 18th century, when a capitalistically organized
publishing industry found it necessary to foster the concept
of literary property.
A very interesting argument to be
sure — though not one that holds up under much scrutiny.
The term “plagiarism” in its
current sense is about two thousand years old. It was coined
by the Roman poet Martial, who complained that a rival was
biting his dope rhymes. (I translate freely.) Until he
applied the word in that context, plagiarius had
meant someone who kidnapped slaves. Clearly some notion of
literary property was already implicit in Martial’s figure
of speech, which dates to the first century A.D.
At around the same time, Jewish
scholars were putting together the text of that gigantic
colloquium known as the Talmud, which contains a passage
exhorting readers to be scrupulous about attributing their
sources. (And in keeping with that principle, let me
acknowledge pilfering from the erudition of Stuart P. Green,
a professor of law at Louisiana State University at Baton
Rouge, whose fascinating paper “Plagiarism, Norms, and the
Limits of Theft Law: Some Observations on the Use of
Criminal Sanctions in Enforcing Intellectual Property
Rights” appeared in the Hastings Law Review in 2002.)
In other words, notions of
plagiarism and of authorial integrity are very much older
than, say, the Romantic cult of the absolute originality of
the creative genius. (You know — that idea Coleridge ripped
off from Kant.)
At the same time, scholarship on
plagiarism should probably consist of something more than
making strong cases against perpetrators of intellectual
thievery. That has its place, of course. But how do you
understand it when artists and writers make plagiarism a
deliberate and unambiguous policy? I’m thinking of
Kathy Acker’s novels, for example.
Or the essayist and movie maker Guy Debord’s proclamation in
the 1960s: “Plagiarism is necessary. Progress demands it.”
(Which he, in turn, had copied from the avant-garde writer
Lautreamont, who had died almost a century earlier.)
Why, given the potential for
humiliation, do plagiarists run the risk? Are people doing
it more, now? Or is it, rather, now just a matter of more
people getting caught?
Given Lesko’s evident passion
on the topic of plagiarism as a moral transgression –
embodied most strikingly, perhaps, in his color-coded
War on Plagiarism Threat Level Analysis
– I had to wonder if the doors of [ital]Plagiary[ital]
would be open to scholars not sharing his perspective.
Was it worth the while of, say, a
Foucauldian to offer him a paper?
“It may be that I’m a bit more
conservative than some scholars,” he conceded. But he points
out that manuscripts submitted to Plagiary undergo a
double-blind review process. They are examined by three
reviewers – most of them, but not all, from the journal’s
editorial board.
There is no ideological or
theoretical litmus test, and he’s actively seeking
contributions from people you might not expect. “I’m willing
to consider articles from plagiarists,” he said.
That’s certainly throwing the door
wide open. You would probably want to vet their work pretty
carefully, though.
Cheating then versus now
What this means in evaluative practice is not only that
the opportunities to cheat (just to continue to use this word) are enormously
expanded. The nature of cheating itself changes accordingly — to the despair of
every teacher, beginning with those who teach freshman composition. The very
fact that “plagiarism” must be carefully defined there defers to the absence of
what the dean in (the movie) School Ties
refers to as a vacuum. (Could cheating even be punished — in his terms — if one
has to begin by defining it?) It also testifies to the near-impossibility of
judging a paper on SUV’s or gay marriage or God-knows-what that has been cobbled
together out of Internet sources whose fugitive presence, sentence by sentence,
is almost undetectable. Furthermore, to the student these sources may well be
almost unremarkable, with respect to his or her own words. What is this business
of one’s “own words” anyway? What if the very notion has been formed by CNN? How
not to visit its site (say) when time comes to write? Most students will be
unfamiliar with a theoretical orientation that questions the whole idea of
originality. But they will not be unaffected with some consequences, no less
than they are unaffected by, say, the phenomenon of sampling and remixing as it
takes place in popular culture, especially fashion or music. “Plagiarism”
has to contend with all sorts of notions of imitation, none of which possess any
moral valence. Therefore, plagiarism becomes — first, if not foremost — a matter
of interpretive judgment. Cheating, on the other hand, is not interpretive in
the same way (and, in the world of (the movie)
School Ties, not “interpretive” at all). No wonder, in a sense, that test
gradually has had to yield to text. It is almost as if the vacuum could not
hold. By the present time, the importance of determining grades (in part if not
whole) by means of papers acquires the character of a sort of revenge of popular
culture — ranging from cable television to rap music — upon academic culture.
Terry Caesar, "Cheating in a Time of Extenuating Circumstances," Inside
Higher Ed, July 8, 2005 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/07/08/caesar
Jensen Comment: The 1992 movie School Ties focuses on cheating
brought to light by an honor code that requires students to report seeing other
students cheat. It also focuses on education at a time when cheating was
more severely punished, usually by expulsion from school. In most colleges
today, first-time offenders who get caught are generally placed on some type of
probation. At the same time most schools have modified their honor codes
in this litigious society such that students are no longer required to report
observed cheating of other students. Many instructors view reporting of
cheating as becoming too much of a hassle in terms of time and trouble when the
student will not be severely punished in any case. This leads to greater
risk taking on the part of some students when it comes to cheating. They
are less likely to be detected and, if detected for the first time, the
punishments are negligible relative to the rewards. Such risk taking
continues on when they are tempted to cheat as executives in business/government
and the temptations to siphon off millions of dollars are great.
From T.H.E.
Newsletter on November 17, 2004
With the crunch of midterms, finding time to write
that history paper or analyze that Shakespeare poem may seem like an
impossible feat.
But students will want to think twice before running
to the Internet to download a paper in times of desperation, as UCLA renewed
its license this year for the commonly used online anti-plagiarism service,
Turnitin.com…
For the full story, visit: http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=30809
Ministers should learn that it is much more acceptable if attribution of
source material is given up front
Glenn Wagner was a successful mega-church pastor in
Charlotte, N.C., until one of his elders heard a sermon on the radio that was
identical to one he had heard from the pulpit. Mr. Wagner confessed that he had
been preaching other people's sermons off and on for two years, including some
he broadcast on Christian radio. He resigned from his ministry last fall. A
similar case occurred after members of the National City Christian Church in
Washington, D.C., found on the internet sermons that Alvin O'Neal, moderator of
the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and a celebrated preacher in that
denomination, had preached. Mr. O'Neal apologized for his actions and remains in
his ministry. A number of lesser-known ministers across the country have also
been caught stealing sermons. Sometimes it makes the newspapers, but other times
congregations or denominations handle the matter quietly.
Gene Edward Veith, "Word for word RELIGION: More and more pastors lift entire
sermons off the internet—but is the practice always wrong?" World Magazine,
April 22, 2005 ---
http://www.worldmag.com/subscriber/displayarticle.cfm?id=10576
Question
Where are your students going for help with term paper assignments?
Answer
One place might be the "Term Paper Research Guide" at http://www.findarticles.com/p/page?sb=articles_guide_termpaper&tb=art
"Hi-tech answer to student cheats," BBC News, June 30, 2004
--- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/tyne/wear/3852347.stm
New measures to help detect cheating students are being
demonstrated at a conference in Newcastle.
A survey of around 350 undergraduates found nearly 25%
had copied text from another source at least once.
A new service that can scan 4.5 billion web pages is
now online so that lecturers can check the originality of the work submitted
by students.
The software is being demonstrated at a meeting of
the Plagiarism Advisory Service at Northumbria University.
'Originality report'
Student Tom Lenham said of the statistics:
"That's a pretty modest interpretation of the situation at the moment.
"From my own experience and that of fellow
students, it's a lot higher than that because it is not drummed into our heads
from the start.
"Only more recently have we been told how to use
the internet for referencing."
The Plagiarism Advisory Service says cheating is not
a new phenomenon but the internet has led to concerns within the academic
community that the problem is set to increase dramatically.
The service manager Fiona Duggan said: "The
software has four databases that it checks students' work against and produces
an originality report which highlights where it has found matches.
"It demonstrates where the student has lifted
text from, and it also takes you to the source where the match was
found."
The software has been developed in the USA and the
Plagiarism Advisory Service hopes it will go some way to stamping out the
practice.
Ms Duggan said: "There are other things that can
be done, like the way you set assignments so each student has something
individual to put into the assignment so it is not so easy to copy."
Questions
Should a doctoral student be allowed to hire an editor to help write her
dissertation?
If the answer is yes, should this also apply to any student writing a course
project, take home exam, or term paper?
Answer
Forwarded by Aaron Konstam
"Academic Frauds," The Chronicle of Higher Education, November
3, 2003 --- http://chronicle.com/jobs/2003/11/2003110301c.htm
Question (from "Honest John"): I'm a
troubled member of a dissertation committee at Private U, where I'm not a
regular faculty member (although I have a doctorate). "Bertha" is a
"mature" student in chronological terms only. The scope of her
dissertation research is ambiguous, and the quality of her proposal is
substandard. The committee chair just told me that Bertha is hiring an editor
to "assist" her in writing her dissertation. I'm outraged. I've
complained to the chair and the director of doctoral studies, but if Bertha is
allowed to continue having an "editor" to do her dissertation,
shouldn't I report the university to an accreditation agency? This is too big
a violation of integrity for me to walk away.
Answer: Ms. Mentor shares your outrage -- but first,
on behalf of Bertha, who has been betrayed by her advisers.
In past generations, the model of a modern
academician was a whiz-kid nerd, who zoomed through classes and degrees, never
left school, and scored his Ph.D. at 28 or so. (Nietzsche was a full professor
at 24.) Bertha is more typical today. She's had another life first.
Most likely she's been a mom and perhaps a
blue-collar worker -- so she knows about economics, time management, and child
development. Maybe she's been a musician, a technician, or a mogul -- and now
wants to mentor others, pass on what she's known. Ms. Mentor hears from many
Berthas.
Returning adult students are brave. "Phil"
found that young students called him "the old dude" and snorted when
he spoke in class. "Barbara" spent a semester feuding with three
frat boys after she told them to "stop clowning around. I'm paying good
money for this course." And "Millie's" sister couldn't
understand her thirst for knowledge: "Isn't your husband rich enough so
you can just stay home and enjoy yourself?"
Some tasks, Ms. Mentor admits, are easier for the
young -- pole-vaulting, for instance, and pregnancy. Writing a memoir is
easier when one is old. And no one under 35, she has come to suspect, should
give anyone advice about anything. But Bertha's problem is more about academic
skills than age.
Her dissertation plan may be too ambitious, and her
writing may be rusty -- but it's her committee's job to help her. All
dissertation writers have to learn to narrow and clarify their topics and pace
themselves. That is part of the intellectual discipline. Dissertation writers
learn that theirs needn't be the definitive word, just the completed one, for
a Ph.D. is the equivalent of a union card -- an entree to the profession.
But instead of teaching Bertha what she needs to
know, her committee (except for Honest John) seems willing to let her hire a
ghost writer.
Ms. Mentor wonders why. Do they see themselves as
judges and credential-granters, but not teachers? Ms. Mentor will concede that
not everyone is a writing genius: Academic jargon and clunky sentences do give
her twitching fits. But while not everyone has a flair, every academic must
write correct, clear, serviceable prose for memos, syllabuses, e-mail
messages, reports, grant proposals, articles, and books.
Being an academic means learning to be an academic
writer -- but Bertha's committee is unloading her onto a hired editor, at her
own expense. Instead of birthing her own dissertation, she's getting a
surrogate. Ms. Mentor feels the whole process is fraudulent and shameful.
What to do?
Ms.Mentor suggests that Honest John talk with Bertha
about what a dissertation truly involves. (He may include Ms. Mentor's column
on "Should You Aim to Be a Professor?") No one seems to have told
Bertha that it is an individual's search for a small corner of truth and that
it should teach her how to organize and write up her findings.
Moreover, Bertha may not know the facts of the job
market in her field. If she aims to be a professor but is a mediocre writer,
her chances of being hired and tenured -- especially if there's age
discrimination -- may be practically nil. There are better investments.
But if Bertha insists on keeping her editor, and her
committee and the director of doctoral studies all collude in allowing this
academic fraud to take place, what should Honest John do?
He should resign from the committee, Ms. Mentor
believes: Why spend his energies with dishonest people? He will have exhausted
"internal remedies" -- ways to complain within the university -- and
it is a melancholy truth that most bureaucracies prefer coverups to
confrontations. If there are no channels to go through, Honest John may as
well create his own -- by contacting the accrediting agencies, professional
organizations in the field, and anyone else who might be interested.
Continued in the article.
Why not hire Google to write all or parts of her
dissertation dissertation? (See below)
November 3, 2003 reply from David R. Fordham [fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
Bob, there are two very different questions being
addressed here.
The first deals with the revelation that “her
dissertation research is ambiguous, and the quality of her proposal is
substandard”.
The editing of a manuscript is a completely different
issue.
The ambiguity of the research and the flaws with the
proposal should be addressed far more forcefully than the editing issue!
Care should be used to ensure that the editor simply
edits (corrects grammar, tense, case, person, etc.), and isn’t responsible
for the creation of ideas. But if the editor is a professional editor who
understands the scope of his/her job, I don’t see why editing should be an
issue for anyone, unless the purpose of the dissertation exercise is to
evaluate the person’s mastery of the minutiae of the English language (in
which case the editor is indeed inappropriate).
Talk about picking your battles … I’d be a lot
more upset about ambiguous research than whether someone corrected her
sentence structure. I believe the whistle-blower needs to take a closer look
at his/her priorities. A flag needs to be raised, but about the more important
of the two issues.
David R. Fordham
PBGH Faculty Fellow
James Madison University
Where is the line of ethical responsibility of using online services
to improve writing?
June 23, 2006 message from Elliot Kamlet
[ekamlet@STNY.RR.COM]
Is it just me or is there a lack of, at least,
shame.
http://www.thepaperexperts.com/aboutus.shtml
Elliot Kamlet
Binghamton University
June 23, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Elliot,
I suspect that paying to have your writing edited, revised, and
translated is as old as writing itself. Networking technology has simply
made it faster, easier, and in many instances cheaper. What is a
problem is that a student who writes very badly may never be discovered
in college if writing is required only for assignments outside the
classroom. This speaks in favor of essay examinations along the way.
There is certainly nothing illegal about an
editing service, and it would be tough to say outside editing is
unethical except for assignments that require or request that the
author's work must be entirely in his/her own words.
Of course this particular service in Canada may entail both editing
and translating (from Canadian into English) --- just kidding.
If such a service also adds new content, then the ethical issues are
very clear since the author might take credit for the new content where
credit is not due. The author also takes a chance that the new content
might be plagiarized.
I had a student some years ago that submitted a term paper that was
plagiarized entirely from three separate sources (that I found with a
Google search). In dealing with the student and his parents, I
discovered that he was not aware that his AIS paper was plagiarized. He
was a young CEO of one of his father's AIS companies. He (my student)
hired one of his employees to write the paper. The employee actually
plagiarized the work to be submitted in the name of my student.
The question in this case is what is worse --- plagiarizing from
published sources or hiring the writing of the term paper? In either
case, the rule infraction would get the student an F from me and a
report of the incident to the Academic Vice President of the University.
Interestingly, the student approached me about five years later and
asked if the time limit on his F grade had expired. He wanted to submit
a new paper. I told him that F grades do not expire even after
graduation.
Bob Jensen
June 23, 2006 reply from Ruth Bender
[r.bender@CRANFIELD.AC.UK]
And for $62.65 you can buy "Plagiarism and
Academic Integrity"
"Plagiarism is a constant concern in the
academic world particularly in areas that involve a lot of research or
term paper writing, such as English Literature. The Internet seems to be
making plagiarism easier as are companies that specialize in academic
research writing for hire. However, several experts believe that most
plagiarism takes place because students do not fully understand how to
perform proper scholarly research and integrate it into their own
material. In the end, plagiarism seems to stem more from a lack of
knowledge rather than a plot to undermine education."
Pages: 7
Bibliography: Content-Di source(s) listed
Filename: 22017 plagiarism and Academic
Integrity.doc
Price: US$62.65
Ruth Bender
Cranfield School of Management
UK
June 23, 2006 reply from Joseph Brady
[bradyj@LERNER.UDEL.EDU]
Years ago I too thought that dishonesty was
caused by a lack of knowledge. The cure: tell students the general rule
(don't take credit for the work of others) and how that rule applies in
your course (give specific examples of how students could trip up). I
work hard at the cognitive factor, going so far as to give a *quiz* on
our honesty rules, in the first week of classes.
Experience can be a cruel teacher. I now think
that most students are dishonest because it's easy to be dishonest and
easy to get away with dishonesty. The problem is not a cognitive one.
It's an ethical one, having a grounding in what is culturally acceptable
at an institution.
It's not a problem in just English 101.
Plagiarism is a serious issue in any course that involves
computer-generated files. It's easy in any MIS or AIS course to copy
someone else's application program and make some simple modifications to
avoid detection. Students learn this right away. Actually, they have
know this since high school or even earlier.
My primary concern as an educator is: are
students learning? Surely this is obvious: those who are copying, are
not learning. If only the small minority of students were at fault, I
would not worry so much. But I think the problem is worsening rapidly.
It's now possible to reach a tipping point: most of the class copying
most of the time, so that not much is learned by the end of the
semester. I actually had a section that came pretty close to that status
last semester.
Students will not police themselves, at least
not here, so I do not have a solution for the problem. It would be nice
to have a utility (like turnitin.com) that would answer the question:
"Was the contents of this Excel/Access/VB/etc file copied or imported
from some other file?" You can no longer get the answer to that question
reliably using Windows time stamping. One of my summer To-Do's is to
write that program in VB, but I'll have to learn a lot about Windows
file structures to do that, and I'll probably not have time to get to
it.
Joe Brady
University of Delaware
June 25, 2006 reply from Robert Holmes Glendale College
[rcholmes@GLENDALE.CC.CA.US]
It is inconceivable to me that anyone who has
reached the college level would not know that copying a paper from any
source (Internet, friend or ?) is cheating. When I hear the "I didn't think
it was wrong" defense I assume I am talking to a liar as well as a cheater.
June 25, 2006 reply from Henry Collier
[henrycollier@aapt.net.au]
I am more than a little vexed with this:
It is inconceivable to me that anyone who has
reached the college level would not know that copying a paper from any
source (Internet, friend or ?) is cheating. When I hear the "I didn't
think it was wrong" defense I assume I am talking to a liar as well as a
cheater.
There’s more than one cultural bias illustrated in
the quote. Not everyone, fortunately, is embedded in the narrow and biased
views of the writer.
Henry
June 26, 2005 reply from Bob Jensen
Throughout the world in modern times I think borrowing works without
proper citation is considered unethical. In some parts of the world such as
Germany there was (and possibly still is) an exception made for students
where the work of the student was viewed as the work of the professor. I'm
not certain about this exception in modern times, but some professors in the
past purportedly put their names on entire books written by students without
even acknowledging the students. Presumably these professors also kept the
book royalties with clear consciences. I think this practice was more common
in the physical sciences.
A exception which does still exist in modern times arises when a noted
professor, often a senior researcher from a highly prestigious university,
lends his/her name to a textbook to improve its marketing potential. I know
of one instance in an accounting textbook with four authors where one of the
authors wrote over 90% of the material and the other authors mostly lent
their names and affiliations. I know of other instances where a senior
professor from a huge program did very little of the writing of the textbook
but greatly increased the chances that his university would provide sales of
over 1,000 copies of the book each year. Such marketing ploys might be
viewed as deceptive, although can it be called plagiarism when the principal
author of possibly 100% of the writing encourages someone else to share in
the "authorship credit?"
Something similar happens for journal articles to improve their chances
for publication in a leading journal. There is also the even more common
happening where one author who writes poorly did the research and wrote a
very rough first draft. Then a highly skilled writer who does little or no
research anymore performs a great editing service and receives full credit
as a partner in the research. In this case the paper's editor may be getting
far more credit for the "research" than is deserving.
See how complicated the question of authorship ethics becomes.
Bob Jensen
June 26, 2006 reply from David Fordham, James Madison University
[fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
>June 26, 2005 reply from Bob Jensen
>Throughout the world in modern times I think
borrowing works without proper citation is considered unethical.
Bob, while this might hold true for academic work,
it certainly does not seem to apply to the journalistic world, does it?
(Think: WV Coal Mine Disaster; Think: Hurricane Katrina at the New Orleans
Stadium; Think: any one of hundreds of other media screwups in the past few
months where so-called "news" media reported a story as though the reporter
were reporting first-hand facts when in reality the reporter was "copying"
from an unreliable (and false) source, -- all without proper citation.
And in some instances, a few journalists are so
unethical that they even go so far as to try to HIDE their sources and keep
them secret! Talk about lack of proper attribution! Some even claim a
constitutional right to do so! ;-)
And no, the citation of "a reliable source" is not
proper citation; if you think it is, just try getting one of those past ANY
reviewer for any decent journal! I can see it now: a bibliography containing
sixteen entries of "A reliable source", "ibid".
On another note, I have it "from a reliable source"
that in times past, (specifically the 16th century art world), it was not
considered wrong to borrow works from other people without attribution. (My
source here is the art curator at the Rubens House museum in Antwerp,
Belgium.) Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyke, and most of the other great
"masters" of the art world back then ran studios to train young artists in
the guild craft. The master would sketch a scene, the young artist would
paint it, the master might touch up a little here and there, and ultimately
would sign it, giving the student no recognition or attribution whatsoever.
With the master's signature, the piece would sell handsomely, the master
would pay the student a cut, and keep the rest. This was a widely known, and
perfectly acceptable, practice of the day. There are dozens of Van Dykes,
Rembrandts, Rubens, and other great works which show very little evidence of
ever being touched by the person who signed the painting. Everyone of the
day actually knew it, but it was an acceptable practice as long as the
student was a student of the master. It was the master's name which sold the
painting. Marketing, marketing.
Of course, to be realistic, I tend to agree with
Robert Holmes. Most of the college students I encounter these days do know
perfectly well that what they are doing is wrong in most cases, but plead
ignorance and invoke the "cultural victim" mentality when caught. And when I
do have the occasional student from another culture, I make an extra effort
to clarify what is and is not acceptable. (I don't know what the culture is
in Ghana, for example, but when caught, my Ghana student admitted knowing
she had violated the honor code, in addition to violating the instructions
clearly printed on the assignment.)
But as Carol pointed out, the chase, the hunt, the
hiding, is all part of the game which some students see as being part of the
"essence" of preparing for the real world: college.
signed,
---
(um, you were expecting a real signature here?)
---
The gadfly from JMU An unnamed source...
June 26, 2006 reply from Bernadine and Peter Raiskums
[berna@GCI.NET]
In the doctoral program I am now pursuing on-line
through Capella, the learners are provided with access to mydropbox.com and
encouraged to submit their draft papers "to help with citation issues and
improper source referencing. After submission, mydropbox.com will generate a
plagiarism report within 24 hours ... for your personal use." I found the
report to be very interesting in that it picked up something that had been
published in a rather obscure journal which I had written myself last year!
Bernadine Raiskums, CPA, M.Ed. in Anchorage
The home page for mydropbox.com is at
http://www.mydropbox.com/
Market for Admissions Test Questions and Essay "Consulting"
"In Lawsuit, College Board Accuses Company of Circulating
Copyright-Protected SAT Questions," by Elizabeth R. Farrell,
Chronicle of Higher Education, February 25, 2008 ---
Click Here
A test-preparation company in Texas is being sued
by the College Board for what it calls "one of the largest cases of a
security breach in our company's history," according to Edna Johnson, a
senior vice president of the nonprofit group, which owns the SAT.
In a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court
in Dallas, the College Board is seeking unspecified damages against the
company, Karen Dillard's College Prep LP, which it says illegally obtained
copies of SAT and PSAT tests before they were available to the public. The
lawsuit also accuses the company of violating copyright-protection laws by
circulating and selling materials that included test questions owned by the
College Board.
The lawsuit arose after a former employee of the
test-preparation company reported information to the College Board. Karen
Dillard, the owner of the company, said the employee was disgruntled but
would not elaborate on why.
Ms. Dillard did not deny that one of her employees
obtained a copy of the SAT that was administered in November 2006 before the
test was given. But Ms. Dillard said her company did not use any questions
from that test in preparatory materials it provided to clients.
The lawsuit states that the employee got the test
from his brother, the principal of a high school in Plano, Tex. The
principal has been put on paid leave while the Plano school district
investigates the matter, according to the Associated Press.
Copyright Confusion
In reference to the copyright allegations in the
lawsuit, Ms. Dillard said in an interview on Friday that she had believed
she was lawfully allowed to use materials she had purchased from the College
Board before 2005.
Part of the confusion may stem from a shift in the
College Board's policies regarding circulation of previous test materials.
Until 2005, the company would sell copies of previously given SAT's to
companies. After the SAT was revamped that year, the College Board no longer
sold those materials. At that time, the company also began to offer its own
online test-preparation course to students, which now costs $69.95.
"We believe part of the motivation of the College
Board in bringing this lawsuit," Ms. Dillard said, "is to drive
test-preparation companies like ours out of business so they can dominate
the industry with their own test-preparation materials, which are for sale."
Ms. Dillard said she also thinks that the College
Board is going to great efforts to publicize the lawsuit to make an example
out of her company. To support that point, she said that Justin Pope, a
higher-education reporter for the Associated Press, received a copy of the
lawsuit and contacted her for comment before it was filed.
When contacted by The Chronicle, Mr. Pope said he
could not confirm how or when he received the lawsuit, and could not comment
further about the matter.
The lawsuit is the culmination of a four-month
investigation by lawyers for the College Board. Two lawyers from the firm
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, along with a representative for
the Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT, visited Ms.
Dillard's office several months ago.
Ms. Dillard said that, at that time, her company
fully cooperated with all requests for information and interviews with
employees, and that she also provided personal financial records to the
lawyers.
Ms. Dillard also said that her company offered to
settle the matter for $300,000, but that lawyers for the College Board made
a counteroffer of $1.25-million, a sum her company could not afford.
Ms. Johnson, of the College Board, said she could
not comment on any offers made in settlement negotiations.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on cheating are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
I wonder if admissions officers are puzzled when two or more essay
submissions look suspiciously alike?
"B-Schools Take on Essay Consultants," by Rob Capriccioso, Inside Higher
Ed, February 6, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/02/07/bschool
“Vault is collecting successful admissions essays
for top MBA programs, including Wharton — and will pay $40 for each main
essay (main personal statement greater than 500 words), and $15 for each
minor essay (secondary essay answering a specific question less than 500
words) that we accept for our admissions essay section.”
That message, recently sent out from a top company
that helps students get into business schools, is enough to irk even the
most experienced admissions officers at some the nation’s leading business
schools.
“Some of our admissions counselors have gotten
outraged,” says Thomas R. Caleel, director of MBA admissions at the Wharton
School at the University of Pennsylvania. “We want students to be giving
their real stories, not some ‘polished’ or even ‘over-polished’ versions of
themselves.”
“Essays have to be meaningful per person,” he adds.
“It might be helpful to see some successful essays, but in my mind, it might
also be limiting. Someone might read one [of the consultant-produced essays]
and think that their essays have to read the same way, in order to get in.”
Those sentiments are being expressed by an
increasing number of business school officials who say that students
shouldn’t have to pay exorbitant amounts of money to make themselves appear
different than who they really are. While some officials plan to go on the
offensive against firms that they find particularly egregious, others want
to work more closely with consultants. Still others say that there is little
they can do to prevent the phenomenon.
Deans at seven of the top American business schools
are expected to address such issues at an upcoming gathering, according to a
Monday report in The Boston Globe. In an effort to “remove the possibility
of outside interference,” Derrick Bolton, director of admissions at the
Stanford Graduate School of Business, told the paper that deans are
considering making students complete their essays under supervision,
providing different essays to students in the same applicant pool, and
conducting more interviews and follow-up with references.
While the proliferation of admissions consultants
of various sorts has frustrated officials in undergraduate admissions as
well, especially at elite institutions, the steps being considered by
business schools could amount to a much more aggressive stance against the
application-consulting industry.
“Part of getting the best candidates is for them to
be themselves during the admissions process,” says Caleel. “We really want
to get to know the real person who is applying.” Wharton’s business school
dean, Patrick Harker, is expected to be part of the group that will meet to
discuss consultant issues.
While Vault officials could not be reached for
comment on Monday, Alex Brown, a senior admissions counselor at ClearAdmit,
in Philadelphia, says that not all consulting firms function the same way.
“Some businesses are bad,” he says, “but the bulk of us, that’s not the way
we operate.”
Continued in article
This service
from Google Answers is disturbing.
Students can now pay to have their homework
answered by experts.
Some claim using the Net to do homework
shows that today's kids are resourceful. But a rise in content cribbed straight
from online sources, like Google Answers, has teachers on alert.
"Thin Line Splits Cheating, Smarts," vy Dustin Goot, Wired News,
September 10, 2002 --- http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54963,00.html
Most teachers wouldn't
be surprised to hear that students have bribed friends or siblings to do their
homework in exchange for a few bucks.
What might surprise
them is that Google Answers sometimes
takes school kids up on the offer.
Staffed by a cadre of
500-plus freelance researchers, the service takes people's questions -- for
example, a calculus problem or a term paper topic -- and provides answers and
links to information. Google charges a listing fee of 50 cents and, if someone
comes up with a satisfactory response, the user pays that researcher a
previously entered bid (minimum: $2).
Although Google
Answers has a policy encouraging students to use the service as a study aid
rather than a substitution for original work, several cases show that students
often ignore this advice.
One student
in Quebec, dismayed by a response that offered only background research for a
paper on religion, pleads, "Make it into an essay, not just links and
quotes. I need this asap PLEASE!!! 2500 words is the minimum."
While researchers are
scrupulous enough not to churn out a completed term paper -- despite the
Quebec student's $55 bid -- other potential homework questions, such as math
or science problems, can be harder to identify. In some cases researchers
acknowledge that a question looks like homework -- but they still provide the
answer.
The dilemma faced by
Google Answers researchers highlights a broader issue that vexes many
educators around the country. Namely, where do you draw the line between
appropriate and inappropriate uses of the Internet and how do you stamp out
clear abuses such as cutting and pasting entire paragraphs into an essay?
The question first
entered many educators' consciousness following a Kansas
cheating scandal earlier in the year that made national headlines. At
Piper High School, near Kansas City, a biology teacher failed 28 of 118
students for plagiarism on an assignment that consisted of collecting and
gathering information about local leaves.
However, many
students (and their parents) contended that there was nothing improper about
the leaf descriptions they submitted, which had been lifted straight from the
Internet. Others claimed it was unclear where proper citation was required.
Tamara Ballou, who is
helping implement an honor code at her Falls Church, Virginia, high
school, said that it is not uncommon for teachers and students to disagree
on what constitutes academic dishonesty.
"We took a long
time to define cheating," she said, noting that many kids felt it was
acceptable to copy homework from each other or off the Internet if the
assignment was perceived as "busy work."
"A lot of kids
don't even know what (plagiarism) is," agreed Kevin Huelsman. "They
say, 'Yeah, I did the work; I brought it over (from the Internet).'"
Continued at http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54963,00.html
The Center for Academic Integrity (CAI)
Faculty are reluctant to take action against
suspected cheaters. In a 1999 survey of over 1,000 faculty on 21 campuses,
one-third of those who were aware of student cheating in their course in the
last two years, did nothing to address it. Students
suggest that cheating is higher in courses where it is well known that faculty
members are likely to ignore cheating.
Quoted from the research of Donald L. McCabe of Rutgers University (founder and
first president of CAI) --- See below
Academic honor codes effectively reduce cheating.
Surveys conducted in 1990, 1995, and 1999, involving over 12,000 students on 48
different campuses, demonstrate the impact of honor codes and student
involvement in the control of academic dishonesty. Serious test cheating on
campuses with honor codes is typically 1/3 to 1/2 lower than the level on
campuses that do not have honor codes. The level of serious cheating on written
assignments is 1/4 to 1/3 lower.
Quoted from the research of Donald L. McCabe of Rutgers University (founder and
first president of CAI) --- See below
The Center for Academic Integrity (CAI) --- http://www.academicintegrity.org/
The Center for Academic Integrity is
affiliated with the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Clemson University. We gratefully acknowledge their financial and programmatic
assistance, as well as funding from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
and the John Templeton Foundation.
CAI is a consortium of
over 225 institutions who share with peers and colleagues the Center’s
collective experience, expertise, and creative energy.
Benefits of membership include:
-
Gathering and sharing information
about academic integrity;
-
An annual conference and faculty
institute; periodic mailings; a newsletter; an electronic listserv; a
website with both public and member-only access; and presentations at the
conference of other associations as well as on the campuses of member
institutions;
-
Encouraging and supporting
research on factors that impact academic integrity;
-
Identifying and describing
fundamental vales of academic integrity and the sustaining practices that
support those values on a variety of college and university campuses;
-
Helping faculty members in
different disciplines develop pedagogies that encourage adherence to these
fundamental values;
-
Showcasing successful approaches
to academic integrity from school around the country – policies,
enforcement procedures, sanctions, research, curricular materials, and
education/prevention programs; and,
-
Providing individual consultation
on ways to promote an honest climate of learning.
Research --- http://www.academicintegrity.org/cai_research.asp
Research projects conducted by Donald
L. McCabe of Rutgers University (founder and first president of CAI), have had
disturbing, provocative, and challenging results, among them the following:
-
On most campuses, over 75% of
students admit to some cheating. In a 1999 survey of 2,100 students on 21
campuses across the country, about one-third of the participating students
admitted to serious test cheating and half admitted to one or more
instances of serious cheating on written assignments.
-
Academic honor codes effectively
reduce cheating. Surveys conducted in 1990, 1995, and 1999, involving over
12,000 students on 48 different campuses, demonstrate the impact of honor
codes and student involvement in the control of academic dishonesty.
Serious test cheating on campuses with honor codes is typically 1/3 to 1/2
lower than the level on campuses that do not have honor codes. The level
of serious cheating on written assignments is 1/4 to 1/3 lower.
-
Internet plagiarism is a growing
concern on all campuses as students struggle to understand what
constitutes acceptable use of the Internet. In the absence of clear
direction from faculty, most students have concluded that 'cut &
paste' plagiarism - using a sentence or two (or more) from different
sources on the Internet and weaving this information together into a paper
without appropriate citation - is not a serious issue. While 10% of
students admitted to engaging in such behavior in 1999, this rose to 41%
in a 2001 survey with the majority of students (68%) suggesting this was
not a serious issue.
-
Faculty are reluctant to take
action against suspected cheaters. In a 1999 survey of over 1,000 faculty
on 21 campuses, one-third of those who were aware of student cheating in
their course in the last two years, did nothing to address it. Students
suggest that cheating is higher in courses where it is well known that
faculty members are likely to ignore cheating.
-
Longitudinal comparisons show
significant increases in serious test/examination cheating and unpermitted
student collaboration. For example, the number of students self-reporting
instances of unpermitted collaboration at nine medium to large state
universities increased from 11% in a 1963 survey to 49% in 1993. This
trend seems to be continuing: between 1990 and 1995, instances of
unpermitted collaboration at 31 small to medium schools increased from 30%
to 38%.
-
A study of almost 4,500 students
at 25 schools, conducted in 2000/2001, suggests cheating is also a
significant problem in high school - 74% of the respondents admitted to
one or more instances of serious test cheating and 72% admitted to serious
cheating on written assignments. Over half of the students admitted they
have engaged in some level of plagiarism on written assignments using the
Internet.
Read about the honor codes of many colleges and universities --- http://www.academicintegrity.org/samp_honor_codes.asp
Cheating Issues Somewhat Unique to Distance Education
July
30, 2004 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]
NEW BOOK OF ONLINE
EDUCATION CASE STUDIES
ELEMENTS OF QUALITY
ONLINE EDUCATION: INTO THE MAINSTREAM, edited by John Bourne and Janet C.
Moore, is the fifth and latest volume in the annual Sloan-C series of case
studies on quality education online. Essays cover topics in the following
areas: student satisfaction and student success, learning effectiveness,
blended environments, and assessment. To order a copy of the book go to http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/books/volume5.asp.
You can download a free 28-page summary of the book from http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/books/vol5summary.pdf.
The Sloan Consortium
(Sloan-C) is a consortium of institutions and organizations committed "to
help learning organizations continually improve quality, scale, and breadth of
their online programs according to their own distinctive missions, so that
education will become a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for
anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines." Sloan-C
is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. For more information, see http://www.sloan-c.org/.
COMBATING CHEATING IN
ONLINE STUDENT ASSESSMENT
In "Cheating in
Online Student Assessment: Beyond Plagiarism" (ONLINE JOURNAL OF DISTANCE
LEARNING ADMINISTRATION, vol. VII, no. II, Summer
2004) Neil C. Rowe
identifies "three of the most serious problems involving cheating in
online assessment that have not been sufficiently considered previously"
and suggests countermeasures to combat them. The problems Rowe discusses are:
-- Getting assessment
answers in advance
It is hard to ensure
that all students will take an online test simultaneously, enabling students
to supply questions and answers to those who take the test later.
-- Unfair retaking of
assessments
While course
management system servers can be configured to prevent taking a test multiple
times, there can be ways to work around prevention measures.
-- Unauthorized help
during the assessment
It may not be
possible to confirm the identity of the person actually taking the online
test.
You can read the
entire article, including Rowe's suggestions to counteract the problems, at http://www.westga.edu/%7Edistance/ojdla/summer72/rowe72.html.
The Online Journal of
Distance Learning Administration is a free, peer-reviewed quarterly published
by the Distance and Distributed Education Center, The State University of West
Georgia, 1600 Maple Street, Carrollton, GA 30118 USA; Web: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/jmain11.html.
SOCIAL INTERACTION IN
ONLINE LEARNING
Among the reasons
Rowe cites (in the aforementioned paper) for cheating on online tests is that
"students often have less commitment to the integrity of
distance-learning programs than traditional programs." This lack of
commitment may be the result of the isolation inherent in distance education.
In "Online Learning: Social Interaction and the Creation of a Sense of
Community" (EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY, vol. 7, no. 3, July
2004, pp. 73-81), Joanne M. McInnerney and Tim S. Roberts, Central Queensland
University, argue that an online learner's feeling a sense of isolation can
affect the outcome of his or her learning experience. The authors recommend
three protocols to aid social interaction and alleviate isolation among online
learners:
1. The use of
synchronous communication
"Chat-rooms and
other such forums are an excellent way for students to socialize, to assist
each other with study, or to learn as part of collaborative teams."
2. The introduction
of a forming stage
"Discussion on
almost any topics (the latest movies, sporting results,
etc.) can be utilized
by the educator as a prelude to the building of trust and community that is
essential to any successful online experience."
3. The adherence to
effective communication guidelines "Foremost among these guidelines is
the need for unambiguous instructions and communications from the educator to
the students involved in the course. To this end instructions regarding both
course requirements and communication protocols should be placed on the course
web site."
The complete article
is online at http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/7_3/8.html.
Educational
Technology & Society [ISSN 1436-4522] is a peer-reviewed quarterly online
journal published by the International Forum of Educational Technology &
Society and the IEEE Computer Society Learning Technology Task Force (LTTF).
It is available in HTML and PDF formats at no cost at http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/.
The International
Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS) is a subgroup of the
IEEE Learning Technology Task Force (LTTF). IFETS encourages discussions on
the issues affecting the educational system developer (including AI) and
education communities. For more information, link to http://ifets.ieee.org/.
......................................................................
ONLINE COURSES: COSTS
AND CAPS
Two articles in the
July/August 2005 issue of SYLLABUS address the often-asked questions on
delivering online instruction: "How much will it cost?" and
"How many students can we have in a class?"
In "Online
Course Development: What Does It Cost?" (SYLLABUS, vol. 17, no. 12,
July/August 2004, pp. 27-30) Judith V. Boettcher looks at where the costs of
online course development have shifted in the past ten years. While the costs
of course development are still significant, estimating them is not an exact
science. Boettcher, however, does provide some rules of thumb that program
planners can use to get more accurate estimates. The article is available
online at http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=9676.
In "Online
Course Caps: A Survey" (SYLLABUS, vol. 17, no. 12, July/August 2004, pp.
43-4) Boris Vilic reports on a survey of 101 institutions to determine their
average course cap for online courses. The survey also tried to determine what
influences differences in setting caps: Does the delivery method used make a
difference? Are there differences if the course is taught by full-time faculty
or by adjuncts? Or if given by experienced versus inexperienced providers? Or
by the level (undergraduate or graduate) of the course? The article is
available online at http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=9679.
Syllabus [ISSN
1089-5914] is published monthly by 101communications, LLC, 9121 Oakdale
Avenue, Suite 101, Chatsworth, CA 91311 USA; tel: 650-941-1765; fax:
650-941-1785; email: info@syllabus.com; Web: http://www.syllabus.com/.
Annual subscriptions are free to individuals who work in colleges,
universities, and high schools in the U.S.; go to http://subscribe.101com.com/syllabus/
for more information.
Bob
Jensen's threads on distance education in general are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Bob
Jensen's threads on the dark side of distance education are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm
Huge Cheating
Scandals at the University of Virginia, Ohio, Duke, and Other Universities
Cheating Scandal in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University
In the biggest cheating scandal ever at Duke University’s business school, 34
students are facing penalties for collaborating on exam answers,
The News & Observer of Raleigh reported. Nine
students face expulsion, while others face a range of penalties, including
one-year suspensions from the MBA program.
Inside Higher Ed, April 30, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/30/qt
The ABC News account on May 1, 2007 is at
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3105733
"Duke MBAs Fail Ethics: Test Thirty-four Fuqua School of
Business students are accused of violating the school's honor
code by cheating on an exam," by Alison Damast,
Business Week, April 30, 2007 ---
Click Here
Cheating on the Rise
Business-school leaders have reason
to be concerned. Fifty-six percent of graduate business
students admitted to cheating one or more times in the past
academic year, compared to 47% of nonbusiness students,
according to a study published in September in the journal
of the Academy of Management Learning & Education
(see BusinessWeek.com, 10/24/06,
"A Crooked Path Through B-School").
Donald McCabe, the lead author of the
study and a professor of management and global business at
Rutgers Business School, says the
large number of students implicated in the Duke case is
above average. "It's certainly not the biggest, but it's one
of the bigger ones," he says of academic scandals involving
all kinds of students.
One of the larger cases in the past
five years was a cheating scandal in a physics class at the
University of Virginia in 2002. The school eventually
dismissed 45 students and revoked three graduates' degrees.
In 2005, Harvard Business School rejected 119 applicants
accused of hacking the school's admissions Web site (see
BusinessWeek.com, 3/9/05,
"An Ethics Lesson for MBA Wannabes").
The Duke occurrence came to light
in mid-March, when the professor for the class noticed some
unusual consistencies among students' answers on the final
exam and as well as on assignments given during the course.
Stiff Penalties
The students were brought before
the school's Judicial Board and are facing a range of wide
range of punitive measures, including expulsion. The board
is made up of three faculty members, three students, and one
nonvoting faculty chair who only votes in case of a tie.
Thirty-eight students were
initially investigated, only four of whom were found not
guilty of violating the honor code. (Of the 38 students, 37
were accused of cheating and one of lying.) Of the remaining
34 students, 9 will be expelled, 15 will be suspended for
one year and receive an F in the class, and the remaining 9
will receive an F in the course. The penalties for the
students will not go into effect until June 1, after which
students will have 15 days to file an appeal. The school did
not release the names of the students involved or name the
professor.
Gavan Fitzsimons, a
professor who is chair of the Fuqua Honor
Committee, said in a written summary of the
board hearings that the board spent several
weeks "deliberating at length" the
circumstances of the case. "It is my utmost
hope that all of the individuals found
guilty of violating our Honor Code will
learn how precious a gift honor and
integrity is," he wrote. "I know from my
interactions with many of them that they
will forever be changed by this experience."
Academic Pressures
The faculty and
student body at Duke were informed of the
committee's decision on the afternoon of
Apr. 27, and the news spread throughout the
campus and on Internet chat groups. Charles
Scrase, Fuqua's student body president, was
surprised by the charges: "The classmates I
work with on a day-to-day basis are ethical,
outstanding individuals," he says. "We're
shocked that [cheating] could've occurred to
this degree."
Sonit Handa, a
first-year Fuqua student, suggests the
students involved in this case might have
been tempted to cheat because they wanted to
ensure they did well in the class: "Duke is
a hectic MBA business school, and employers
want good grades, so there's a lot of
pressure to do well."
The pressure, of
course, is not confined to Duke. Many