Cousin of a Lie
There are many definitions of Plagiarism but in its essence it is a lie, a product of dishonesty. Jeff Hancock in his Ted talk The future of lying (2012) explains that people tend to be more honest in an email than on the phone, in their LinkedIn resume than their paper CV and that written communications in general tend to be more honest than those that are not recorded. The reason behind it is the fact that a lying person leaves proof and a trace behind, something that they can be held responsible to. Hancock (2012) also demonstrates the principles of some lie detection software, which has an algorithm of detecting a lie, and is used in identifying fake reviews.
In the same way as there are different motives behind a lie (lying to a friend to preserve your relationship in its nature different to writing fake reviews), there are different types of plagiarism. In their video talk Palloff & Pratt (2010) explain that some students are unaware that copy-pasting information from the web is plagiarism, others think it is ok to plagiarise themselves and reuse their papers they wrote in a different course, which can be considered unintentional plagiarism. And can be dealt with, suggest Palloff & Pratt (2010), by educating the students about plagiarism, copyright, fair use and cheating.
My Sad Case
Extreme cases, according to Jocoy & DiBiase (2006), would include copying entire or large portions of papers written by someone else or papers purchased from term paper mills. Which when I used to be a graduate student everybody at my University did and the teachers did not consider it a crime, you just had to study the report you took off the Internet and be ready to present it. We did write our thesis the way an American student would be required to, but thinking back to that report system I do find it a strange practice to be employed in an academic environment. Also because of the compressed curriculum everyone at University tried to cheat at tests and exams even those who would be considered diligent self-motivated students. The assignments did not stimulate collaboration or original thinking like Palloff & Pratt (2010) recommend in order to prevent plagiarism. And whatever papers we did submit would be graded by a human teacher and according to Jocoy & DiBiase’s (2006) research results manual methods detected plagiarism in only about 3 percent of assignments, whereas Turnitin.com revealed a 13 percent plagiarism rate among the same assignments. So in this respect online education wins because content created by students can be run through a plagiarism detection software, unlike its paper counterpart. There is an array of services you can use for plagiarism detection: some of them free, some of them require a subscription fee, all of them targeted at a slightly different content type. Petronzio (2012) recommends at least 10 plagiarism detection tools, the most well known of which is Turnitin.com that charges a subcription fee.
TurnitIn or else!
I checked out Turnitin.com and found a great 10 question ‘How well do you know plagiarism?’ quiz that I took to find out how well I understand plagiarism behaviour. After being graded a Pro that still can benefit from learning more about plagiarism I was directed to other websites to do more exercising. Each participant according to their level of awareness is recommended a suitable remedial activity.
The punishable perils of plagiarism by D’Annunzio, Rodríguez & Espinell (2013) from Ted. edu is a more fun way to learn about plagiarism. First you watch an animation, then take a quiz and reflect. You are also recommended to broaden your perspective by looking at the White Paper Plagiarism Spectrum developed by Turnitin.com that detects 10 types of plagiarisms and explains the detection algorythm of each one of them.
One of the questions of ‘How well do you know plagiarism?’ developed by Turnitin.com identifies the following consequences of plagiarism:
Tarnished reputation;
Suspension or expulsion from school;
Loss of job;
Legal repercussions;
Monetary loss.
Sounds quite grim, don't you think? More importantly why do people who plagiarise don't think?
Watch your Attitude!
Palloff & Pratt (2010) say ‘Learners cheat online as often in an online environment as they do in traditional environments’. And Hancock (2012) adds that while pathological liars do exist they make up only a tiny portion of the population. It is a matter of attitude. When I write my paper and do my research my primary motif is not the grade it is knowledge, and my secondary motif is momentary. I pay a lot for my online course and I am determined to squeeze every drop of knowledge from it so that there is nothing left when I am done.
Hancock (2012) sums it up beautifully ‘when it comes to lying and what we want to do with our lives, I think we can go back to Diogenes and Confucius. And they were less concerned about whether to lie or not to lie, and more concerned about being true to the self’. As educators we are the ones that instill attitudes and plagiarism prevention is much more rewarding and stress free than the punishment you will have to execute if it does occur in your course. Start an initial course with an assignment that will educate your students about plagiarism. I thought of creating a fun exercise that can follow watching a tutorial and doing a plagiarism quiz. Students write papers that should be as plagirised as humanely possible and then exchange them with each other and try to detect instances of plagiarism, using available plagiarism detection software and guidelines suggested by the White Paper Plagiarism Spectrum. Paper topics might vary and off the top of my head I can come up with the following 2: ‘10 most famous plagiarism scandals’ and ‘Dangers and consequences of plagiarism’. This type of activity is both real life in its character and invites collaboration, just as Palloff & Pratt (2010) recommend.
Happy writing everyone!
References:
D’Annunzio, M., Rodríguez, H., & Espinell, I. 2013.T edEd. [Animation] Retrived from http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-punishable-perils-of-plagiarism-melissa-huseman-d-annunzio#watch
Hancock, J. 2012. The future of lying. Ted talk. [Video] Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_hancock_3_types_of_digital_lies/transcript?language=en#t-1089934
Jocoy, C., & DiBiase, D. (2006). Plagiarism by Adult Learners Online: A case study in detection and remediation. International Review of Research in Open & Distance Learning, 7(1), 1–15.
Laureate Education (Producer). (2010). Plagiarism and cheating [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.walden.edu
White Paper Plagiarism Spectrum. Retrieved from https://www2.nau.edu/d-elearn/support/tutorials/academicintegrity/pdf/Turnitin_WhitePaper_PlagiarismSpectrum.pdf
