Whew. I have seen the light, and it is good! To mix biblical metaphors or something.
First things first--I'm going to get caught up on everyone's blogs, say hello, get re-acquainted, and all that jazz. I've only been on here sporatically for the last four weeks or so, and have had little time to say hello to everyone.
BUT,
Things are slowing down a bit, and I should have a little bit of time to do some things that I haven't been able to do in a while--like see a movie, go out to dinner, and mingle with friends. Now if I can just pry the wife away from her work for an hour or so, she might be able to join me on such endeavors!
What's an SG blog without a good rant? My topic today is plagarization, or, how I can sound smart without doing any work. I'll try to keep this brief, but the premise is this: students plagaraze. What's worse, is that they do it poorly. Every university has an academic honor code that says, in essense, that plagarization is illegal, and that breaking the rules is punishable by death. But students do it anyway.
I got a paper from a student who essentially cut and pasted the whole thing out of Wikipedia. With no citations. At all. WHile Wikipedia can be useful, it is not a schoarly source, and I explicity say in my syllabi not to use it. WHat tipped me off with this student was the use of British spellings of words. Like 'globalisation" for example. When I see things like this, what I go is google phrases from the paper, because I am suspicious of cutting and pasting. Sure enough, A google matched, word for word: Wikipedia.
So I printed out a copy of the Wikipedia article, highlighted the parts he copied, and stapled it to his paper. I also gave him a zero, which is merciful, if you ask me. I could have failed him for the course and sent his ass to various and sundry disciplinary councils. I refrained, thinking everyone deserves a second chance.
I guess the moral of the story is don't plagariaze. But if you are going to do it, do it well. Believe it or not, professors are smarter than people give them credit for.
The weather here has been amazing for two weeks straight. I wish it was like this all year.
Buy the Scissor Sisters' new CD, Ta-Dah! It's fucking amazing.
First things first--I'm going to get caught up on everyone's blogs, say hello, get re-acquainted, and all that jazz. I've only been on here sporatically for the last four weeks or so, and have had little time to say hello to everyone.
BUT,
Things are slowing down a bit, and I should have a little bit of time to do some things that I haven't been able to do in a while--like see a movie, go out to dinner, and mingle with friends. Now if I can just pry the wife away from her work for an hour or so, she might be able to join me on such endeavors!
What's an SG blog without a good rant? My topic today is plagarization, or, how I can sound smart without doing any work. I'll try to keep this brief, but the premise is this: students plagaraze. What's worse, is that they do it poorly. Every university has an academic honor code that says, in essense, that plagarization is illegal, and that breaking the rules is punishable by death. But students do it anyway.
I got a paper from a student who essentially cut and pasted the whole thing out of Wikipedia. With no citations. At all. WHile Wikipedia can be useful, it is not a schoarly source, and I explicity say in my syllabi not to use it. WHat tipped me off with this student was the use of British spellings of words. Like 'globalisation" for example. When I see things like this, what I go is google phrases from the paper, because I am suspicious of cutting and pasting. Sure enough, A google matched, word for word: Wikipedia.
So I printed out a copy of the Wikipedia article, highlighted the parts he copied, and stapled it to his paper. I also gave him a zero, which is merciful, if you ask me. I could have failed him for the course and sent his ass to various and sundry disciplinary councils. I refrained, thinking everyone deserves a second chance.
I guess the moral of the story is don't plagariaze. But if you are going to do it, do it well. Believe it or not, professors are smarter than people give them credit for.
The weather here has been amazing for two weeks straight. I wish it was like this all year.
Buy the Scissor Sisters' new CD, Ta-Dah! It's fucking amazing.
VIEW 12 of 12 COMMENTS
I bet your students don't think you listen to the Scissor Sisters... or have a membership to SG, for that matter. Silly students. I often think back to my old elementary school teachers and try to imagine them listening to the popular music of the day and having sex. I still can't do it, even though I know full well I'll be doing those very things while I'm teaching. Blows the mind.
I feel ya with the retarded students. In a class I took earlier in the year, on the discussion board I noticed that someone had posted a Wikipedia page word for word. Alas, the prof' didn't catch it and he got an "A" on the assignment. You're correct that Wikipedia is not a scholarly source, but I like it because it is, in a sense, peer reviewed and the articles do site sources. Just my $0.02.