[LM_NET] Reporter looking for input on plagiarism

[Nancy Willard <nwillard@CSRIU.ORG>]

Hi all,

I was contacted by a reporter for the LA Times who is doing a story on
plagiarism. He first asked me about teachers who are creating other
assignments, like making students write in class instead of assigning
research papers for homework, to avoid problems with plagiarism. I told him
that I think this is not a good approach because then students do not learn
how to effectively write research papers. But I do think that assigning more
creative writing projects can avoid some inclination to engage in
plagiarism.

I also explained what I consider to be inadvertent plagiarism -- students
who simply do not know how to effectively and responsibly incorporate the
work of others into a research paper -- an educational issue. And
Intentional plagiarism -- intentionally turning in work written by another
or several others. Actually I think that Internet addiction is likely a
cause of the intentional plagiarism -- too much time spent gabbing and
gaming and not enough time dedicated to homework.

The reporter would like to communicate with some teachers on this,
especially high school or college. There are several things he is looking
for:

1. Examples of "bonehead" attempts by students to plagiarize -- cutting and
pasting with different fonts. I told him that I think most high schools
students and many college students simply do not have sufficient brain
development to effectively pull off intentional plagiarism.

2. Examples of ways in which teachers are modifying assignments to try to
reduce the inclination for plagiarism.

3. Effective ways to teach students not to plagiarize.

The reporter gave me his email so you can communicate directly with him. It
is: terril.jones@latimes.com. His name is Terril Jones (as if that was not
obvious ;-))

Nancy

-- 
Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.
Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
http://csriu.org
http://cyberbully.org
nwillard@csriu.org

Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats: Responding to the Challenge of Online Social
Cruelty, Threats, and Distress, a resource for educators, is now available
online at http://cyberbully.org.

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