CCE

Plagiarism guilt pangs

In one morning of grading, at the end of this spring semester, I found four instances of plagiarism in my students' essays. My emotional responses were tangled: anger and disappointment, queasiness at the impending confrontations, sadness at what I imagined to be (in several cases at least) my students' desperation, the secret thrill (almost) of having my hunches justified, and the sense of guilt that I had not done more to prevent it in the first place. It was the guilt that set me to thinking and looking for resources.

This site from Central Queensland University (apparently no longer maintained but with lots of refs through 2006) offers many resources and links; a page from Michigan State's Faculty Development site also gives many links.

The wholesale copy-and-paste sort of plagiarism can occur, of course, with almost any writing assignment. (Doug Johnson offers some valuable general tips on "Plagiarism-Proofing Assignments," applicable in a wide variety of courses and grade levels.) But the two FYC assignments I'm concerned with here are the traditional research paper and the writing-about-literature essay (which is where "my" plagiarism cases occurred this semester).

Research paper case.

• One general anti-plagiarism strategy involves restriction either of subject or of sources to be used (perhaps providing one or two sources students must use, to be supplemented by their own research). I have tried restricting subjects, though more to avoid cliched topics than plagiarism, as well as having students self-select into groups based on topics the class brainstormed (followed by collaborative source-gathering). This past semester I was a little more restrictive, asking students to argue the desirability (or not) of urbanization, with info drawn from two out of three sources I provided plus additional, fairly minimal research of their own. The main tension here involves the notion that students need to find topics for themselves, that personal investment is necessary for effective writing. (I remain ambivalent about this issue.)
• The other main approach, in terms of assignment design at least, involves process. Nick Carbone gives here a compelling argument for the use of research portfolios (on grounds beyond just plagiarism-reduction), as well as an interesting comparisonof plagiarism-detection options.
  
• Unintentional plagiarism is always an issue here, to be combated with lots of discussion and practice of paraphrasing and summarizing. Learning how to take notes is vital, what Bruce Ballenger calls "writing in the middle" in his Curious Reader/Writer/Researcher books; for a more theoretical, though still very readable, discussion, I'd recommend his Beyond Note Cards.

Writing about literature in FYC. (I had not thought as much about plagiarism in this course because I  expected students to respond directly to the literature read, without use of secondary sources; I need to think more carefully about how to harness students' natural curiosity to see what others have written about a work that students might not feel that they understand--more explicit discussion about the constructive aspect of reading, the notion that different people might read the same text differently??)

• To start with selection of readings, plagiarism-reduction is one reason I prefer non-canonical (non-sparknoted) choices.  (The idealistically titled site Exampleessay.com offers 30 essays on the Updike's ubiquitous "A & P"; there are hundreds of other Updike short stories one might choose.)
• One possible strategy: assignments that ask students to relate several readings (either through comparison/contrast or tracing out some theme or literary device, for example). Thematic readers facilitate these sorts of assignments; this semester I used The Seven Deadly Sins Sampler, to fairly positive student reviews, and Jeffrey Eugenides' anthology My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead seems like another good option.
• In terms of process, I've started experimenting with including electronic annotations as part of students' poetry projects, inspired by Kathleen Blake Yancey, whose Teaching Literature as Reflective Practice is on my reading list for summer.

Exercises.
IHE had an interesting article recently on plagiarism ("Winning Hearts and Minds in War on Plagiarism"), which included discussion of an assignment that asked students to plagiarize on purpose; Mike Edwards of vitia describes a similar assignment here.

The exercises I'm most interested in constructing, though, are very short ones, giving students a short source or two plus an index card to write on, asking them to compose just a few sentences or a paragraph that uses info from the source(s). Lots of these! (In my marathon classes this summer--three hours and forty-five minutes, maybe we should do at least one per class.)

Any other suggestions??

The psychological approach. Finally, I need to think more/read more about how to counteract those student feelings of desperation that can lead to plagiarism: being more explicit about teaching time management skills, setting and enforcing deadlines in a way that helps teach those skills, getting more frequent feedback on student progress through minute-papers or brief conferences, establishing individual relationships and a comfortable atmosphere where students can admit to feeling overwhelmed before panic sets in.

More on Tii

Others have been voicing their opinions on Tii these past few days.  Visit Sharon, Clancy and Mike for some well-reasoned thoughts on Tii, PDS and student honesty.  Mike directs readers to an article in the Washington Post regarding some local high school students who are protesting Tii at their school. 

Is It Plagiarism if Your Mom Writes Your Emails?

E

This is my sorry tale of changing a student's grade (upwards, of course).  I spent a good month kicking myself for it, as I pride myself on being thoughtful and meticulous when it comes to grades, as well as hard-nosed and exacting when it comes to changing them.  The difference this time was that I was distracted by needing to get out of town to visit my hospitalized father and wanting to tie things up before I went. 

Nonetheless, here's my tale of woe.  Last semester, in my basic writing class, I had a student who was very bright and very frustrated that she didn't get "A's" on her writing assignments.  She had a good attitude, though, and worked hard at learning how to revise. 

And then came the midterm, where the assignment was to take two paragraphs and revise them.  Her first paragraph, a memoir of her first home, was a fine revision, and showed a growing ability to weave together parts of drafts into a coherent paper.  The second paragraph, a discussion of the kinds of employees one would find at our school, read like a business report--as if my student had been taking technical writing on the side, and doing very, very well in it.

So, during her midterm conference with me, I asked if she'd gotten any help with her paper.  Oh yes, she replied, her mother had helped her because she'd run out of time.  So, after discussing how that was plagiarism and unacceptable, I gave her the option of rewriting it into her own words and resubmitting it for a grade no higher than a "C."  (I'm not this generous in higher-level comp. classes, BTW).

Come the semester's end, the student was on the border of freshman comp and the second level of basic writing.  I hemmed, hawed and finally placed her in the second level of BW.

And then the emails began.  Her first email to me sounded like she had written it and asked that I reconsider her grade.  I did.  I felt that she belonged where I'd placed her. 

So the subsequent emails took on a very polished, very professional, very mature tone much like her mother's draft of the midterm.  I forwarded the emails to the course coordinator and we met to review the student's writing portfolio and semester grades.  She could see why I'd felt that the student was on the border between the two classes, and like me, felt that the lower was the better choice.  However, we both could see that maybe, just maybe,  the student could handle freshman comp, given that she is a strong student (I know, sounds crazy, but she was--paid attention, took notes, wouldn't let the other students distract her.).

In the meantime, I'd been getting more emails wondering if I'd met with the course coordinator and what we'd decided. Each email was as professional as the last.  I was tempted to write back asking if the student was getting some help with her emails, but I chose not to, not wanting to start something that might take forever to resolve. 

In the end, I caved and changed the grade.  And as I wrote above, I spent a good month being mad at myself before I let it go.

But the question remains:  is it plagiarism if your mom writes your emails for you?  Equally important, has the student's privacy been violated by her mother's act? For example,  how do I know that the student gave her mother permission to use her email address and write for her?  Also, how do I know that the mother was the one writing the emails?  This is the issue that troubles me the most, since I know that from my end of things, I simply needed to use more spine than I had, but that I could discern the different voices.  But the message that I allowed to be sent was that it's okay for someone else to write your letters, and you may not even know that it's happening.

Had I not been so worn out and determined to get out of town, I would have required that the student meet with me in person (and alone) to go over her portfolio again.  I would have reminded her that she had the right to appeal her grade through the department (though that's not really my responsibility).  But I didn't, and that's my sorry story.