LM_NET: Library Media Networking
Just a few thoughts I had already put together:
Plagiarism
Joyce Kasman Valenza
"There is nothing new under the sun." Ecclesiastes 1:8
Ah, the joys of digital text! Where would we be today if we couldnUt cut
and paste and revise our own work? Most children cannot envision the
dark ages, the world of the yellow pad, index cards and erasable typing
paper. Composing and editing text has come a long way since our college
days. But there is danger and temptation out there. And many students
are taking too much advantage of the flexible nature of digital text.
"The old educational specter of plagiarism comes at the speed of light to
the digital age!" writes Doug Johnson, District Media Supervisor of
Mankato Public Schools, in his book The Indispensable Librarian, Linworth
Publishing 1997. RIn the good-old purely-print-pencil-and-paper days,
the teacher or media specialist often had the luxury of monitoring
students as they took notes by hand from books and magazines. Notes were
often a required part of the research assignment. Nowadays, its rather
heartless to ask the student researcher to sit at a computer and convert
those digits already dancing on the screen to graphite and paper, and
then laboriously keystroke, letter by letter, the paper-bound information
back into word processing digits."
Students are not just editing their own text. They are editing the text
of others and calling it their own. And they are calling it research.
It is now very easy to piece together a term paper from materials culled
from a few Web sites or CD-ROM sources. Voila! Teachers once adept at
identifying sources from the limited print sources available are
confounded by the sheer number of possible sources from which their
students may have borrowed, unless they innocently point to them in their
bibliographies. Few students choose to provide those leads.
One ninth grader told me, "There are so many sources out there, that it's
impossible for a teacher to tell if a student plagiarized. The Internet
has made it easy."
Students need to know:
Anytime you take the words, ideas or creative work of another and claim
them as your own, you are plagiarizing. This means *text* and *images*
and *sounds* and *video.* Of course, you *can* use the works of others
as long as you credit your source. Any direct quote, any image, sound
and video you copy must be cited. But issues of intellectual property
are often more complicated. There are areas of gray. And students and
teachers are confused.
"But I changed a few words!" is the comeback of many a student accused
of plagiarism. Though we've taught paraphrasing as a skill,
paraphrasing is itself a form of plagiarism. Any unique idea, any fact
that is not "common knowledge," should be cited. Perhaps this seems a
severe approach to take with a young researcher, but this training can
help students avoid serious consequences later on. Instruction in
information ethics should begin as early as students begin to write.
Children should understand that intellectual property is property.
This understanding is important because the consequences of plagiarism
can be bigtime. Journalists, scientists, politicians and professors have
been humiliated, their careers have been jeopardized over accusations of
plagiarism. High school students may get a zero for a project or flunk a
course. In some academic institutions plagiarism is grounds for
expulsion. Universities are clearly worried; thousands of academic
honesty policies are now posted on the Web.
Though the threat of consequences may be a powerful deterrent, the real
deterrent should be ethical. Copying the work of others is wrong. You
donUt learn the content. You don't learn to think. It is not fair to the
writer. Plagiarizing is cheating.
Plagiarism is not limited to print. In fact it is rampant over the Web.
I have seen impressive student Web page projects constructed exclusively
with uncited content and original art selected from the Web sites of
others.
Students tell me cheating is fine as long as they donUt get caught.
Other students may plagiarize out of ignorance or carelessness. Still
others tell me they plagiarize out of desperation. "I've been hearing
about plagiarism since first grade," said one twelfth grader, Rbut when
we get lots of papers dumped on us at one time, we get stressed out and
school work gets too much to handle. Copying seems the only way out."
As a matter of fact, a desperate student, with a less-than-active
conscience, no longer has to go to the trouble of tracking down several
sources. Some students find the works of their peers stored on
harddrives or on a network and claim those works as their own. But it is
even easier to buy or download term papers. Term paper mills are growing
in popularity and easy to find on the Web. There is no guarantee you
are going to download an A. There is no guarantee of any quality at
all. One of the most popular of these sites offers free term papers and
no apologies. "Students are using School Sucks as a legitimate resource
for learning. Because the papers are free, professors are as likely to see them as
students. As the papers are unrated, they don't know that they are
downloading anything of any quality. Caveat Download!"
http://www.schoolsucks.com
So whatUs a teacher to do? Here are a few suggestions to prevent and
identify plagiarism:
Let students know you are aware of the problem of plagiarism.
Have a clear student policy on plagiarism and communicate it to students
Teach students to cite any direct quote, cite any unique idea or any idea
that is not common knowledge and when in doubt, cite!
A search engine like Opentext may help identify phrases that do not
appear to be student-generated.
Be aware of the term paper sites.
Ask students to turn in printouts, especially of Web pages
Plagiarism is not just for text, insist that all other media types be cited.
Model what you preach--cite your own sources. Demonstrate a respect for
copyright yourself. Do not duplicate copyrighted software and video
Don't reuse last yearUs assignments
Provide feedback throughout the writing process.
"I believe we should be making a concentrated effort to assess the
process as well as the product," says Marjorie Pappas, assistant
professor of Information Science at the University of Northern Iowa. "If
we really believe the information-seeking process is a critical skill
today than we must be willing to assess that process. Strategies like
journals and research portfolios enable teachers to keep track of the
process. Graphic organizers help provide structure when students are
working on projects in small groups and independently, and students can
be encouraged to keep these organizers in their research portfolios.
Students might be asked to keep a sampling of their print-outs from
searches, notes, webs, bibliographies, etc. All of these provide a paper
trail from thought-process to finished product."
Policing for plagiarists is no fun and a waste of valuable time. The best
approach is a positive, preventive and creative one. Don't ask students
to write a report they can easily copy or download. Assign projects that
force students to reorganize information, projects that force students to
compare, analyze, evaluate and draw conclusions. One place to find
model units that display this approach is Jamie McKenzie's Making the
Net Work for Schools: Online Research Modules
http://fromnowon.org/sept97/online.html
Sources for information about citation
Debbie Abilock's Nueva Library Research Goal
http://www.nueva.pvt.k12.ca.us/~debbie/library/research/research.html
Wissahickon High School Virtual Library Style Sheet
http://mciunix.mciu.k12.pa.us/~whslib/mla.html
Classroom Connect--Citing Internet Resources
http://www.classroom.net/classroom/CitingNetResources.html
MLA Citation Guide
http://www.cas.usf.edu/english/walker/mla.html
Keeping it Legal: Questions Arising Out of Web Site Management
http://fromnowon.org/jun96/legal.html
PitscoUs Launch to Citing WWW Addresses
http://www.pitsco.com/p/cite.html
About copyright:
Stanford University Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/library/
The Copyright Website
http://www.benedict.com/
Copyright Workshop Linda C. Joseph
http://www.cyberbee.com/copyrt.html
How to Lessen the Chances of Plagiarizing--University of Northern British
Columbia
http://quarles.unbc.edu/lsc/rpplagia.html
Joyce Kasman Valenza
<jvalenza@mciunix.mciu.k12.pa.us> or joyce.valenza@phillynews.com
Wissahickon High School Library Philadelphia Inquirer tech.k12
521 Houston Road http://gopher.mciu.k12.pa.us/~jvweb
Ambler, PA 19002 http://mciunix.mciu.k12.pa.us/~whsweb
Phone: 215-628-1735
Fax: 215-643-2920
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