Here's a link to a story discussing how some academic institutions in the US are addressing plagiarism in their schools. I still vividly recall an experience I had when I taught English five years ago. There was this male freshman student who submitted a very good book report in my writing class and I praised his work in front of the class. He gave me his best smile, stood up, thanked me, and blurted out with pride that he got the review from the Internet. I was pretty much disappointed with his admission but was glad he did it. As a result of his honesty, I deducted a lot of points from the original grade I gave him.
In my graduate research on information literacy assessment conducted in 2003, I asked my respondents, who were freshmen college students, if they knew what plagiarism was and whether it's all right to cut and paste the contents of a web site and pass them as their own. 94.7% knew what plagiarism was and 76.4% said it was not all right to cut and paste. With these results I should be happy that our students have the moral values the story above was referring to but the reality is quite the opposite.
During one of our strategic planning sessions at work, we in the Instructions Committee were discussing the skills our students need to improve on while in school. One of the skills identified was critical thinking skills. It was at this point that I raised the issue of plagiarism which the faculty members in my committee, most of whom have encountered reading plagiarized papers, agreed should be addressed. Although nothing concrete has come out of the discussion as we are stil in the process of finalizing our plans, we are at a consensus that faculty members should address plagiarism the moment they see it and confront the student immediately.
To penalize our students caught plagiarizing would be out of the question as penalties for other infractions like being caught smoking in uniform, cutting classes, etc., have not proven to be a deterrent to our students. Encouraging the faculty to orient their students on the ethical and legal use of information will not only be practical but it will also be a good start towards spreading the value of respect for intellectual property and developing critical thinking skills in our students.
During one of our strategic planning sessions at work, we in the Instructions Committee were discussing the skills our students need to improve on while in school. One of the skills identified was critical thinking skills. It was at this point that I raised the issue of plagiarism which the faculty members in my committee, most of whom have encountered reading plagiarized papers, agreed should be addressed. Although nothing concrete has come out of the discussion as we are stil in the process of finalizing our plans, we are at a consensus that faculty members should address plagiarism the moment they see it and confront the student immediately.
To penalize our students caught plagiarizing would be out of the question as penalties for other infractions like being caught smoking in uniform, cutting classes, etc., have not proven to be a deterrent to our students. Encouraging the faculty to orient their students on the ethical and legal use of information will not only be practical but it will also be a good start towards spreading the value of respect for intellectual property and developing critical thinking skills in our students.
No comments:
Post a Comment