One part of the article that I found interesting was what Simon Fraser University is doing for those student who are plagiarizing. They have created a new grade, "FD", that will show up on students transcripts which stands for Failed for Academic Dishonesty. I actually think that this is an excellent approach to the situation. The threat alone that something will show up on your official academic transcript saying that you plagiarized were deters many student I believe.
The article also talks about the use of programs such as Turnitin.com where professors can compare your paper against a network of other papers to see if you plagiarized. I had always understood why professors may do this but this artile brought up something that I had never considered. By automatically putting students papers through these websites, isn't that telling students that you do not trust them. By the time we reach university shouldn't we have earned some kind of respect and trust from the academic community? I had never had a problem with profs putting my work through those kind of websites but now that I think about it, it is kind of insulting.
What do you guys think? Do you think the threat of getting an "FD" on your transcript is enough? And do you think that professors should trust their students more or should trust be earned?
This article and your response bring up very good points when it comes to dealing with plagiarism but I'm not convinced that the FD will be enough of a threat for students. I realize it looks terrible on your transcript and you will fail the class so that's a good punishment but i'm still not sure if that would be enough, like you stated above, it is drilled into our heads from the minute that we step into our first class that it is wrong and there will be consequences for it. But people still do it, I think it is a nice threat but I do not think it is enough. Maybe instead of failing the one class they should be excused for the rest of that year, maybe that would be a scarier thought for them.
ReplyDeleteFinally with the trust issue, I do agree that it is insulting to a certain degree but who is to blame them for doing it. If professors really have to push the plagiarism speech so often it is probably for a good reason. Students are lazy and they try to find loop holes for everything so professors are probably doing a good thing by putting our papers though these sort of websites.
-Veronica
Interesting article! I'll have to admit though that from my perspective having a FD on my transcript would be plently scarey. Your transcript follows you and you cant erase it. That will have an effect on you when trying to get into graduate school or further your education after undergrad. It could also stick with you when applying to jobs. Simply dismissing you for the rest of the semester would be scary at that moment in time but then you can just redo everything next semester. Most students do not complete their undergrad in 4 years anyway so adding on an extra semester probably wont make much difference.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that having my professor scan my paper over the internet for plagiarism is not insulting at all. I know many untrustworthy univeristy students so if I was a professor I would do it too. Also this system simply reinforces how important it is not to plagiarize. People are more apt to take the time to properly cite and write in their own wording when they know there is a high possibility of getting caught if they dont.
This is an interesting topic. Personally I have a bit of an issue with the FD thing because it is a punishment that will affect the individual for the rest of their life, in both academia and in their job (assuming they could find one). To me this is taking away any opportunity for that student to redeem themselves or have a second chance, this would be like the death penalty in university which would only result in people taking precautionary steps to avoid getting caught. In my opinion the best thing to be done is to establish incentive, creating a motivation for students to create their own work rather than wanting to plagiarise and to explain the ideas around why plagiarism is wrong. I suppose this would be like a crime prevention type approach to the matter.
ReplyDeleteAs for professors checking my work I wouldn't say I'm insulted by it personally, but I could understand if some people are. My concern here is that some professors do not allow students to use papers or work that they have used in the past, that work belongs to the individual who wrote it and as long as it applies to that course they should be able to use it.