"It wasn't me, was it?" Plagiarism and the Web

Summary:

DeVoss begins this article by explaining two approaches that Annette uses in order to avoid plagiarism in her classes. First, she explains what plagiarism is, what makes it wrong, and how the students should avoid it. Secondly, she encourages her students to create their own ideas.

Annette assigns an assignment over King Lear. To her surprise, three of her students plagiarized, and they knew exactly what they had done. One of the students who didn’t plagiarized asked, “It wasn’t me, was it?” (Page 192). Turns out that the rest of the students who didn’t plagiarize “weren’t sure if they had plagiarized or not” (192).

“You have to do all that?”

Danielle always takes her student to the library for a tour. She discovered that one of the student’s assignments had sources that were “shaky”. She then decided to give him a tour and show him how the library databases could help him. After explaining the whole procedure, the student asked, “You mean I have to do ALL THAT?” (192). It wasn’t as simple as using Yahoo, and checking out the first few tabs.

“No…I didn’t write the paper”

Danielle had assigned a paper to her class, and to her surprise, she discovered that an international student had not written his own essay. How did she know this? Cause this essay had a different style of writing from the first essay the student had turned in. When the student finally admitted that he had plagiarized, he explained that in his country they weren’t as strict with plagiarism, but he knew that it was still unacceptable.

There are many ways that students can plagiarize. Instructors “must address to be best equipped to better understand plagiarism, deter students from plagiarism, and encourage students to be thoughtful and critical researchers” (193). This article shows two arguments: “First, we are witnessing students adapting their own literacy, research, reading, and writing skills and processes to the virtual space- and complexity- of the World Wide Web. Secondly, first year composition teachers have a key role in helping students adapt to this space, and encouraging students’ critical research and writing skills in this space” (193). Instructors are showing their students about plagiarism, and ways in which we could avoid it.

Plagiarism is punished because it makes the people look and feel bad. But the punishments that are implied do not have a huge impact on the students, “until and unless we convince students that their written work is valuable and valued-a small, but potent gesture (Selfe, 1999) toward encouraging students’ writing, thinking, and development” (194). Borrowing from other texts allow us to process and develop new ideas, and it also allows us to try new approaches.

Why do students plagiarize? Some of them plagiarize because they didn’t cite correctly, or because they “borrow” too much information. For some students, plagiarism has to do with their culture. Others may just do it to get done with the work. The truth is that instructors expects for their students to create their own ideas, but many of the times it’s really difficult because they still have to use so many resources.

Instructors “should should share with students definitions of academic honesty and cases of plagiarism to enable students to read, analyze, and understand institutional approaches to academic dishonesty” (196-197). One as a student should understand what their responsibility is as well as their authorship. It is dishonest for a student to copy and paste, or to download someone else’s work and use it as your.

DeVoss ends this article by restating what plagiarism is, and ways in which should avoid it. “Rather than approach plagiarism as an affront to our values and authority as teachers, issues of plagiarism can provide a scaffolding for discussions relating to appropriate research, good writing, similarities and differences in research spaces, intellectual propery rights, and the pitfalls and potentials of electronic media” (201).

Synthesis:

Most of the essays I have to write require me to use some sort of resource. I already get super stressed just with the thought of writing a paper. Imagine how I feel having to use references, and being careful not to plagiarize. That’s right, it sucks! Not only does it take a long time to make sure you’re not plagiarizing, but it is also really hard to avoid, and to understand if you are plagiarizing or not.

I agree with DeVoss when she says that instructors should explain in depth what plagiarism means, in order for us to avoid it. I also agree when she says that many of the students don’t know if they’re plagiarizing or not. This happens to me all the time. I am using a resource, and I’m honestly scared because I don’t know if what I’m doing could be considered as plagiarism. It’s also bad, cause many of the times, students could be doing it, without even realizing that they did it. Whatever the case is, this subject is really hard to understand, but it’s even harder to avoid it.