 |
| Photo courtesy of Joe Pemberton |
They
look at me blankly as if what I said was in a foreign language. Perhaps it is
not that it was foreign in terms of the words, but the concept seems to be at
odds with their everyday experience of the world. Then there is a tentative
stutter as one of them reaches through the veil to clarify the concept, “Wait…so…um…so,
even though I bought the CD and paid to be able to play it whenever I want to I
can’t actually use even a piece of it – what I paid for – in the background of
my YouTube video?”
“Well,
in short, no. You can’t. You could, if you were going to be reviewing the song
or album, but only a certain amount of time from the CD, like less than thirty
seconds…and that might be pushing it. But other than that, not really…well,
unless you were talking about the author’s life and it was important to the
story you were telling. Well, except that there is a difference when you are a
student and you are going to be using it as part of a project, but only if you
are going to turn it in for the teacher or play it to the class and a wider
audience is not going to be able to see/hear it. You see it comes back to the
issue of copyright infringement which is really unclear right now in the courts
with the–“
“Wait,
Mr. W! The courts don’t know what is copy whatever but we might get in trouble?
What about the other music I downloaded? the movies I torrented? the files I
copied? the Wikipedia article I used in my paper? (I mean, we don’t even know
who the heck wrote that so I can use that right?)”…
And
so began my discussion of academic (and real world) honesty in the seventh
grade classroom. Since then, I have had the same conversation with every age
group from middle school to graduate school. At each step along the way I have
had numerous questions from the students but also from my own experiences
culminating in a final varied view of what it means to be academically honest
and where the concept of academic honesty falls in the realm of the classroom
(and the instructor’s responsibilities). This leads us to today’s topic:
Plagiarism and more specifically plagiarism checkers.
There is no doubt that plagiarism is a potential
problem in the information age (of course I would check the stats twice
myself so I knew where they came from – oh wait, they aren’t cited
appropriately...oops). The fact that students are growing up in a world where
information is literally available on just about every technological device and
many times reposted without attribution begs students to consume and resample
information. What then is to be done, especially in distance learning classes
where the instructor is removed in time and space from his or her students? In
fact, this smorgasbord of content without clear guidelines about usage can be
difficult for students to understand.
To
make sure that we are clear, perhaps what we need to
do first is agree on what academic honesty is. This may be a little
difficult as even schools who are members of the Center for Academic Integrity
differ on the language used to define academic honesty. While the main points
are the same, the details can differ. So perhaps we need a better explanation
for exactly what constitutes
fair use and copyright infringement. A quick search for fair use landed
over 4,600,000 results among which were many sites like
this one from Columbia University that attempted to give an idea of various
fair use examples for students to look at. So perhaps fair use is a more confusing concept in practice
than on paper. In any event, we should be able to agree on the fact that taking
someone’s work without attribution and trying to pass it off as one’s own is
against the standards of the academic community. (Unless we consider different
culture’s approaches to the idea of learning, look at different disciplines, or
at different purposes for the publishing, all
valid points raised by Bob Jensen or people on his discussion).
Okay,
so now that the water is significantly muddy, let me try to form a clear
picture of the idea of plagiarism and checking for plagiarism in the 21st
century. I believe that to take another’s work without citation, reference, or
credit is inappropriate and undermines the quality of discussion in an academic
setting. I also believe that student’s should be taught to be responsible with
work done by others. Students should be taught the value of thought and to this
end it makes sense to check their work for signs of plagiarism.
At
the same time I say those things, I also believe that using one of the
myriad of online plagiarism checkers out there (this resource gives a great
description of their capabilities, therefore I won’t copy it here!) in some ways
undermines the very quality in students that we are looking for, especially when
it is found that those plagiarism checkers have flaws (Heather 2010). It is
interesting (and ironic) that plagiarism checkers like TurnItIn routinely
take students’ work regardless of whether or not the choice to submit the
work was the student’s in the first place. Of course, the courts have agreed
that this is okay for these for profit institutions to do – as Turn It In tells
us proudly in detail. So then, how do we rationalize for students the
allowances made for those checking for plagiarism while telling them to avoid
the same behaviors themselves?
Perhaps
the issue is not with the plagiarists so much as with the assessments those
students are asked to complete. I would argue that as instructors it is our job
to understand and support our students, to tap their creative potential and
produce innovative creations. If instructors create assessments that require
creative and critical thinking perhaps the students will be unable to simply copy
and paste their way to a better project. Perhaps the construction of
assessments should be tailored to individual students à
la personalized learning. One of the components of that particular resource
is the fact that the learner must be engaged and that the instructor must be
involved. If all learners were engaged (participating) and instructors were
involved (monitoring) the instructor would get to know the student and be able
to comment and guide the student without the need for plagiarism.
With
this kind of system the learning might be more relevant, tailored to the
student’s Zone of Proximal Development (Boettcher & Conrad 2010), and
plagiarism would be more difficult for the student to attempt (or at least less
inviting as an option). While the capabilities of plagiarism checkers
(comparative databases, phrase and keyword searches, and archival structures)
are a quick fix for the instructor worried about plagiarism, perhaps more care
should be put into the teaching of academic honesty than the punishment of
academic dishonesty. Perhaps instead of making every student turn in every
paper they write to a plagiarism checker, a common practice in many institutions,
campuses should
follow the example of Princeton and focus on their honor code.
I
might be an idealist, but at the core of academics and (life) is the tenet that
students will take the right action more often than not if they find that
action to be clearly defined. As an instructor I would hope that I could explain
to my students the reasons that their own work is important, the reasons that
work by others should be cited, and what a quality product would look like. In
addition, I would also hope that students would feel they had support
throughout the learning process and that they could ask for help or
clarification on their own ideas instead of sampling the works of others. Part
of being a great instructor is being able to inspire students to take risks and
to be proud of their own accomplishments. Should we check for plagiarism when we are convinced there is a reason –
absolutely, but maybe we ought to know and support our students so well that
they have no need to plagiarize in the first place.
References:
Boettcher, J. V., & Conrad, R. (2010). The
online teaching survival guide: Simple and practical pedagogical tips. San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Heather, J. (2010). Turnitoff: identifying and fixing a hole in
current plagiarism detection software. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher
Education, 35(6), 647-660. doi:10.1080/02602938.2010.486471
No comments:
Post a Comment