Writing assignments and academic dishonesty
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Mark Stellmack
Jun 18, 2013, 1:09:52 PM6/18/13
to psy_te...@umn.edu
When a student submits a paper, we expect that the paper was written by the student and that it reflects their own ideas or their own paraphrasing of others' ideas. When a student claims to be the author of someone else's work, that constitutes academic dishonesty. At the very least, students must include proper citations when they are expressing the ideas of others.
If students are assigned to write a paper outside of class, it is easy for them to copy from online sources or even to have someone else write the paper. These types of academic dishonesty can be difficult to detect. About the only way to do so is when the writing is in a style that seems unusual for that student. If the writing is much better than you would expect from a particular student, or if the writing style changes abruptly within the paper, you should consider the possibility that it was plagiarized. Fortunately, because it has become much easier for students to plagiarize, that makes it a little easier for you to detect it. Student plagiarism often results from the student searching the Internet for a particular topic and copying from the resulting hits. If you think a passage was copied, simply search the Internet for a couple of the phrases that seem particularly idiosyncratic. Remarkably, students will sometimes make it easier for you by including a citation and then plagiarizing from the cited source. In general, if the writing assignment is specific enough and if it requires students to incorporate personal thoughts and interpretations, it might make it more difficult for students to find outside sources that will work well if directly copied to their papers.
The situation regarding whether a student is taking credit for someone else's work becomes complicated when someone proofreads or edits the student's writing. It is prudent for any writer to allow someone to proofread their work. Students who are making their first attempt at scientific writing, in particular, tend to need a lot of help. If students knew appropriate construction or phrasing for their writing, presumably the students would have incorporated them in their papers in the first place. In giving feedback on scientific writing, I think that if the student is going to improve his or her writing, he or she needs specific suggestions, such as a suggested rewording of a sentence. In many cases, it is more instructive and efficient to simply say, "How about if you rewrite it like this?:" followed by a revision of the passage, rather than simply writing "awk" and expecting the student to guess what a less awkward rewording might be. This is particularly true if the student is a non-native English speaker, in which case the student is much less likely to get it on his or her own, without examples. If the student uses the editorial suggestions of a proofreader, it is hard to call that plagiarism, but the resulting writing will no longer resemble that student's natural writing style.
To some extent, with respect to student writing, we can only appeal to the students' honesty and integrity and we have to trust that students are doing the work that we expect.
If students are assigned to write a paper outside of class, it is easy for them to copy from online sources or even to have someone else write the paper. These types of academic dishonesty can be difficult to detect. About the only way to do so is when the writing is in a style that seems unusual for that student. If the writing is much better than you would expect from a particular student, or if the writing style changes abruptly within the paper, you should consider the possibility that it was plagiarized. Fortunately, because it has become much easier for students to plagiarize, that makes it a little easier for you to detect it. Student plagiarism often results from the student searching the Internet for a particular topic and copying from the resulting hits. If you think a passage was copied, simply search the Internet for a couple of the phrases that seem particularly idiosyncratic. Remarkably, students will sometimes make it easier for you by including a citation and then plagiarizing from the cited source. In general, if the writing assignment is specific enough and if it requires students to incorporate personal thoughts and interpretations, it might make it more difficult for students to find outside sources that will work well if directly copied to their papers.
The situation regarding whether a student is taking credit for someone else's work becomes complicated when someone proofreads or edits the student's writing. It is prudent for any writer to allow someone to proofread their work. Students who are making their first attempt at scientific writing, in particular, tend to need a lot of help. If students knew appropriate construction or phrasing for their writing, presumably the students would have incorporated them in their papers in the first place. In giving feedback on scientific writing, I think that if the student is going to improve his or her writing, he or she needs specific suggestions, such as a suggested rewording of a sentence. In many cases, it is more instructive and efficient to simply say, "How about if you rewrite it like this?:" followed by a revision of the passage, rather than simply writing "awk" and expecting the student to guess what a less awkward rewording might be. This is particularly true if the student is a non-native English speaker, in which case the student is much less likely to get it on his or her own, without examples. If the student uses the editorial suggestions of a proofreader, it is hard to call that plagiarism, but the resulting writing will no longer resemble that student's natural writing style.
To some extent, with respect to student writing, we can only appeal to the students' honesty and integrity and we have to trust that students are doing the work that we expect.
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