Plagiarism.
Combat plagiarism by rewarding students to build on the work of others.
Yesterday I wrote about cheating in online course exams and tests. Plagiarism is also an issue, but the shift to online courses in 2020 doesn’t affect this form of academic malfeasance as much: regardless whether a course is online or on the ground, plagiarism can occur.
Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash
Plagiarism has become a much easier “crime of opportunity” since the rise of the internet some 20 years ago. Plagiarism detection software is used by many instructors to verify student originality, and the companies making this software have been keen in more recent years to align their tools with the academic integrity education initiatives at universities and colleges. These tools are sold not just for their detection abilities, but as part of a strategy to assist students in revising their work and understanding how to attribute and cite sources.
Much of the discourse surrounding plagiarism is extremely negative, understandably so given the breach of professional ethics that plagiarism entails. Exam cheating might only be a temptation for students, but plagiarism is a temptation for anyone in the educational system. iThenticate, which is promoted to editors, academics, and graduate students as a tool to prevent inadvertent copying of text from other sources, pulls no punches when it lists “6 Consequences of Plagiarism” on their website: destroyed student reputation; destroyed professional reputation; destroyed academic reputation; legal repercussions; monetary repercussions; plagiarized research.
The heightened anxiety and nervousness accompanying plagiarism in a professional context has carried over into the undergraduate educational context. As a result, many instructors approach plagiarism as a “thou shalt not” moment. Offices of academic integrity, libraries, and writing centres all offer suggestions on research skills that stress how to cite properly and how to paraphrase, all very useful but still based in a discourse of avoiding the consequences mentioned above.
This isn’t exactly a negative approach, but it’s not the most positive route to take, either. We shouldn’t be teaching students how to avoid plagiarism, we should be teaching them the value of recognizing those whose ideas have helped them formulate their own perspective. Even the emphasis on citation that one sees in anti-plagiarism education can lead to the situation where we miss the forest because of the trees: we can get so caught up in the mechanics of citation that we forget why we’re citing in the first place, which is simply to help readers find the sources of attribution.
Instructors can avoid this trap in how they design assignments. Getting away from standard term paper assignments by substituting targeted exercises where students are expected to find and attribute ideas would go a long way here. These are shorter assignments that don’t ask students to juggle a lot of balls. But they benefit students enormously by teaching them (1) how to collect ideas and (2) how to attribute those sources as they (3) construct their own arguments and takes on the course topics. Students develop the habit of attribution, and in so doing realize that they don’t need to plagiarize in order to still enjoy the benefits that come from using the work of others.
For Fall Term 2020 this blog will be exploring issues informing education during a pandemic. It is appearing as part of a graduate seminar on online teaching and learning. You can read more about the seminar or see the other posts.
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