Most history professors have handed out, or will soon be handing out, their syllabi to students in their classes. Students will stare blankly at the five stapled pages, hoping that they will be able to find some way to get through the class while maintaining a
respectable GPA.
Among other things, a syllabus is a contract. A good syllabus gives students and teachers a clear picture of what to expect from one another. A bad syllabus--self-contradictory, thin, riddled with mistakes--does the opposite.
It's always a good idea to spell out clearly what you mean by cheating, misuse of evidence, or otherwise trying to pull one over.
Almost every year I find myself wondering if students really understand what plagiarism is. I include the following in my syllabi:
Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated. Be advised: ANY instance of cheating on tests, essays, or other assignments may result in immediate failure of the course. For more on this fascinating topic, please refer to the ENC history dept. guidelines concerning academic honesty: http://www.enc.edu/history/stephens.plagiarism.html. Those who are guilty will be caught. Incriminating evidence is only a Google™ search away.
Still, that warning does not necessarily get through. Now and then I'm left wondering about what a student was thinking. ("What were you thinking!!??") Neuroscience and psychology shed some light on that vexing question. I sometimes fall down a theory-of-mind rabbit hole when I reflect on student cheating. Simon Baron-Cohen writes: "By theory of mind we mean being able to infer the full range of mental states (beliefs, desires, intentions, imagination, emotions, etc.) that cause action. In brief, having a theory of mind is to be able to reflect on the contents of one’s own and other’s minds."* The game of poker requires some theory of mind skill. Adjudicating cases of plagiarism test our theory of mind abilities, too.
Did a student know what he/she was doing when he/she lifted that long passage, unaltered, from Wikipedia? Did she/he think that I wouldn't notice that the writing style shifted from spotty, wordy, and atrocious to fluid and concise? Was it a calculated bet worth making? Did the student not even know that there was anything wrong with copying and pasting all of that material from the web?
Surely there are some researchers out there who have polled students on questions like this. Until I see those kind of studies I'll continue to wonder just what was going through the plagiarists mind. . .
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6 comments:
Interesting that just before I saw this, I was looking at Neil Gaiman's short video on copyright (http://www.youtube.com/user/historydashpunk?feature=mhee#p/a/f/0/0Qkyt1wXNlI ). Doesn't contradict anything Randall said, but I thought it offered a different perspective on intellectual property.
Would you be offended if I "borrowed" your line about Google for my syllabus?
Not at all. Borrow away.
A close friend of mine who teaches high school English in Colorado had a pupil lift a short story by Shirley Jackson verbatim which he submitted as his own work for his end of year short story writing assignment. Unfortunately for him, my friend knew the story as well as who wrote it and informed him and his parents to this effect. The boy's mother rang the schoolboard and demanded that my friend be sacked instantly for casting such a slur upon her son. My friend wrote an email to the mother, attached the son's 'short story' and the link to Shirley Jackson's work. And I'm happy to say the mother apologised shortly thereafter. However, and this is the clincher, this wasn't the first time this boy had plagiarised--he'd done it in my friend's class the previous year and had be caught then too.
Hard to undertsand what is at work with these repeat offenses.
I find myself troubled by rampant and flagrant plagiarism in academia. I do wonder if the corporate model of higher education is leading to this problem. Think of it this way: higher enrollment can cause the WalMart effect. Stock 'em deep and sell 'em cheap in the classroom. If you have 60-100 students per course, that is a high volume of papers to grade. Many students do not count on the instructor reading the papers thoroughly. So, they are guessing that they can slip in plundered content without being detected.
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