Plagiarism
In the past couple of weeks I had a conversation with a student from Erie Community College that was discussing her latest assignment in a paralegal/legal information systems degree program. The assignment was a 30-page paper due that week. I expressed my shock at the length of the paper for a 100/200 level course. She rebutted that it was okay because she was instructed to copy & paste from the Internet and book for the majority of the paper.
“Plagiarism”, I cried.
She rebutted that she was following the instructions of the professor and looked up plagiarism to mean “copying only quotes from other people”.
“Plagiarism”, I cried.
She rebutted, again, that the professor confirmed the definition and assured the students it was a legit practice.
“Plagiarism”, I cried.
“You must be citing the source and putting the large chucks of information you are lifting in quotes of some kind, right?” I asked.
“No”, she responded, “the professor said we don’t need to do that, it isn’t necessary.
Let me assure you, plagiarism is taking anyone’s work and representing as your own. If you don’t believe me go to Wikipedia and check it out.
I am shocked at the display of academic dishonesty exhibited by both the professor and school. As a distance learning student in a doctoral program, I take considerable heat about plagiarism potential at the school. I defend the program, the work, and the school honorably and with facts. My school, University of Phoenix, goes above and beyond to protect students from academic dishonesty. Further, UOP, spends time, money, and resource to make sure students understand plagiarism and that it does not occur in any class.
That a New York State school not only condones but promotes plagiarism is shocking and hard to believe. More poignantly, this is a law course. If any group should understand the consequences of dishonesty it is the law department.
To Erie Community College, the department, the professor, and the student, “Shame!”
As always, comments are most welcome and appreciated (cite your sources <wink>)
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Below is a newsletter sent to doctoral students at University of Phoenix and an example of how important not plagiarizing is to the University. These notes come out about once a month
From: School of Advanced Studies [SAS@phoenix.edu] Sent: Tue 5/8/2007 6:59 PM
To: MICHAEL BERTA
Cc:
Subject: SAS Tip — Plagiarism Guidelines
Making a Difference Today — SAS Tips
Plagiarism Guidelines
Many learners have wondered what exactly constitutes plagiarism. When is a faculty member justified in submitting an official charge of plagiarism against a learner? Could a 4 word phrase be considered plagiarism? How about a 7 word phrase? When does similar wording rise to the level of chargeable plagiarism?
The “smoking gun” for administration that indicates that plagiarism has occurred is a complete sentence copied verbatim without quotation marks. When a student uses the exact words of a source for a sentence without quotation marks, that is clear plagiarism. If exact words are copied without quotation marks, even if parenthetically cited, it is plagiarism. Direct quotes must be surrounded with quotation marks (or, if long enough, indented as a block) with a parenthetical citation containing the page or paragraph number of the source from which the sentence was taken.
Using copy-and-paste techniques in a written assignment is a very dangerous practice. Even when you change some words or reorder the sentence in an attempt to paraphrase, it is usually obvious that you used cut-and-pasting, because many short phrases from the original source appear in your writing. These short phrases evidence a clear over-reliance on sources, which is bad academic writing and can easily be construed as plagiarism.
If you are cutting-and-pasting sentences or paragraphs, and then attempting some cosmetic reordering as a nod to paraphrasing, the instructor can remove points for poor writing and poor use of APA, and if the phrases are more than a handful of words, you will be verging on a plagiarism charge.
SAS is extremely vigilant about improving learner writing skills because all of our degrees require the composition of a dissertation which must pass multiple layers of review and which will be available for the whole world to read! In a very real and visible way, dissertations establish your reputations and that of our entire University.
Thank you for always striving for the highest quality writing and research!
The SAS Leadership Team
Questions? Email SAS@phoenix.edu
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
This is a tough one. When I started teaching online, I liked to think that all that I’d heard about the rampant plagiarism was hogwash — that there’s no way people would be so blatant about stealing others’ works. I was so wrong.
I’ve experienced just as you’ve described — students swiping 800 – 1,000 words at a time in their papers, three, four, five members of a single class.
But I don’t believe these students are malicious. I don’t believe they’re all so lazy as to justify this behavior. I believe, again as you describe, that these students are simply no longer educated as we were in the fundamentals of constructing a public document.
I use the word “public” with intent here, as opposed to “academic” — though in this case they could be interchangeable. We’re a part of a changing time — when music is as good as free, books are copy-and-paste easy to lift, and the backbone of once lofty academic culture is crumbling.
Are we too late?
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Pete,
Your comments are well received. There is a difference in public and academic documents. To both points I call on an old training edict, “steal obliviously”. Providing credit is important and is a matter of respect for others.
While there is no physical harm that comes from lifting the work of others it is kinder to give credit for work done by someone the student respects enough to read, understand, and believe the work of for a paper. Like mom always said, “share”.
The shift in documents from private, held, protected to open and editable is an important shift. For those of us that held knowledge as “shareware”, this is the culmination of a new democracy. Does this mean we should abandon our feelings and responsibility of sharing? No.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0