Forwarded from the From: Professional & Organization Development Network
in Higher Education discussion forum: [mailto:
POD@listserv.nd.edu].
posted by Tom Rocklin
thomas-rocklin@uiowa.edu
Indeed, nuances abound.
I've found it useful recently to think about "misrepresentation" (or
fraud) as the central issue in academic integrity issues, including
plagiarism. Briefly, when a student misrepresents his or engagement
in a set of learning activities, we have a lapse of academic
integrity. Whether a paper is downloaded from the web, written by a
friend, purchased from a term paper mill, or stolen off a roommate's
computer, the student has falsely represented that he or she did the
research, thinking, drafting, editing, etc. that led to the final
product. That means the student didn't have the opportunity to learn
what we wanted him or her to learn.
I go on a bit more in this vein in a recent piece I wrote for our
newlsetter. It's not on our web site yet, but you can get the
typescript from:
http://homepage.mac.com/trocklin/plagiarism_is_fraud.pdf
One of the upshots of thinking of things this way is that we need to
write assignments that specify both the learning activities that we
want students to engage in and the products we want them to produce.
Tom
At 8:45 PM -0300 6/1/02, Russ Hunt wrote:
>Come the second quarter of any year, many of the lists I participate
>in start to talk about plagiarism. Not often, though, do I see
>
>>a request for a set of scenarios to be used to introduce students to
>>the finer nuances of cheating and plagiarism.
>
>But when I think about it, "nuances" aren't something we often think
>plagiarism has. It's probably a healthy move to introduce the idea to
>a world where "plagiarism" is (as I read on another list the other
>day) "the most serious academic crime." It's pretty obvious that most
>institutions, and most teachers, are real clear about plagiarism, and
>even though it may really be an idea that has a good deal of nuance,
>we usually don't much bother with it. Draconian punishments for an
>academic atrocity are the standard pattern. But as soon as we start
>seriously to think about examples, it starts to get complicated.
>
>>For example, is it cheating to use a paper previously submitted for
>>another class as the basis for a paper in a second class?
>
>Indeed. Now _there_ is a problem, beginning with the phrase "as the
>basis." Nuances is what it's about.
>
>-- Russ
>
>St. Thomas University
>http://www.stu.ca/~hunt/
--
_________________________________________________________________
Tom Rocklin 4039 Main Library
319/335-6048 The University of Iowa
319/335-6073 (fax) Iowa City, IA 52242
mailto:
thomas-rocklin@uiowa.edu Professor of Educational Psychology and
Director, Center for Teaching