Donna Bell is Academic Integrity Officer at Ryerson University in Toronto. She has some great stories about the ways students today are using technology to bend the rules, cheat or plagiarize at school. It’s not all about intentional cheating, though. In our cut-and-paste culture, what students even consider plagiarism is changing. You’ll hear an edited version of this interview on our first show, but here’s the raw interview.
Let us know your reactions to Donna’s comments, and we’ll get as many of them on the air as we can.
Donna Bell’s Academic Integrity Office
As a former Ryerson faculty member I listened to your interview with Donna Bell and wasn’t surprised to learn about the plague of plagiarism. However, back when I taught Information Technology and Society, the Academic Integrity Office didn’t exist. When I suspected plagiarism I would cringe knowing that I would have to bring the matter to the attention of the dean. To be honest. I wanted to ignore it. Dealing with a single case could take hours. Nevertheless, I was compelled by my sense of moral responsibility. And that’s precisely what’s missing from Bell’s account of academic integrity. She bends over backwards to exonerate the students and blames the faculty for not communicating expectations. Insofar as she reduces the solution to technicalities, as if it’s simply a matter of informing the students that the speed limit will be enforced, she is complicit in perpetuating the problem. Cheating is wrong. Academic integrity is a moral problem for faculty and students alike. Getting a credit may look like a pass even when it’s a moral failure.
I am currently enrolled in the Masters in Education – Technology
Integration and of course also a teacher, as a teacher I am not
surprised by this interview. We are currently living in a society that
is comprised of USERS. What I mean is people in today?s generation
quite often take without giving.
Many of my students download music or movies on a daily basis without
paying for it. In many ways this is also like cheating; as it gives
the creators no credit for their work. Many of these kids really don’t
care that they are taking from these people either. So when it comes
to an assignment or a test, if there is someway that they can get a
good grade or move ahead in life, without citing it (“paying tribute
to the author”) then they really don’t think twice about doing it.
They are desensitized to these immoral acts because it is just quick
and easy to copy! All a student needs to do is hit control ?v or right
click and copy and they have someone else?s idea and they paste it in
to pass off as their own. In general the morals of today’s youth
greatly differ from those of the last generation.
So when I hear students are plagiarizing I am not shocked because
stealing a quote is actually easier than finding the new 50 cent album
online to download.
I agree that the easy with which students can copy-and-paste information from the Internet has desensitized them to the moral consideration of giving credit where credit is due. However, I think the technology should be exploited for what it facilitates rather than rejected outright. Along side traditional essays and seminars, students should be given opportunities to use the Web to work together in new ways. Some courses now have blogs that allow students to get credit for class participation when they contribute an entry. At the end of one of my courses, I randomly assigned each student a major topic and asked them to create a web page that summarized their topic. They were required to link their pages to pages created by other students with related topics. Moreover, by linking their pages to the pages on the Web that they used as source material, the format of the assignment inherently avoided plagiarism. In the end, the class had created a mini-wikipedia that I used to generate exam questions and they used to study for the exam. In this way, we turned Plagiarism 2.0 into Collaboration 2.0.
This is an issue that goes well into other areas of question we face every day in society. No matter the country or background, we are faced with a tidal wave of moral decline, each generation giving in to a greater portion of moral dacay. Somehow we have gone from living with the highest regard for personal integrity and sold it outright for rationale that caters to the individual. We live in a ‘ME’ Cheating is no exception. Whether youth or adult, it is easy for people to do whatever they want; cheating included. Almost every cellphone has a camera and is headphone ready. Convenience and personal pleasure come at a price. In my short experience as a teacher, I have learned a short sentence that seems to say it all. When I ask my students and even some of their parents when it is wrong to steal or cheat, the reply is almost unanimous…”only when you get caught.” sad.
I am a retired teacher, at all school levels, and former university lecturer for a B. Ed. course.
After listening to Donna Bell`s interview, I feel compelled to ask some questions: Has the definition of cheating and plagiarism changed, as she is hinting? Should it change? Must it change, because of the stranglehold of the cut-and-paste subculture?
Why does Bell (and her colleagues at Ryerson and beyond) bother to attack cheating if she won`t or cannot enforce the current ethical standard? Why even issue a threat warning?
Her statement of the “absolute remorse ” excuse doesn`t ring true, as she immediately goes on to state that most offenders blame the faculty for not setting or keeping the standard or being lax, let alone informing them about it. Where does is state that “absolute remorse” = “blame”?
Alleged first semester cheaters at Ryerson are asked to submit their drafts and references. As I savour a good laugh, I can hear most of them replying, “WHAT drafts and references?”
Perhaps it all boils down to this: At some future time, will the cheater- students, now workers, not even care if their original ideas and works are copied or stolen? By extension, will research data from all public and private sources become instantly and completely available, as society gears up to abandon all attempts at enforcing proprietary ownership?
I think not.
Before the printing press and the later lobbying by English printers, copyright did not exist. In the days before printing presses, you could copy anything you wanted; it was just difficult. For economic reasons, “temporary” copyright was allowed, first by the Statute of Anne.
“Cheating” is undergoing similar pressures as the technology is changing how we interact with information. In the print age, getting the right answer was what mattered. In the connected age, working well with others (collaboration) is important. This is an epochal shift and those in traditional positions of power obviously don’t like it. Shift happens. Get used to it.
I have to say, I’m of two minds on this. Part of me finds the stats about cheating to be truly shocking, and I think regarding plagiarism in particular, we ought to be doing a better job of teaching both the technical (what plagiarism is) and the ethical aspects. Yet, I also agree with Harold, that we are undergoing a profound shift in our relationship to information, and that part of what we need to focus on is teaching good, ethical collaboration. I have often wondered, for instance, if the culture on anonymity online isn’t leading to problems both in terms of ethics (how easy it is to slag someone behind a cloak of anonymity), and also towards a more responsible notion of collaboration. In my experience, collaborative projects tend to work better when the people involved are known to one another and share accountability. Wikipedia is, I guess, a notable exception to this.
I was listening to you on the air just a few minutes ago on this subject. As a Professional Interior Designer, I can honestly say that most students in the Design field are influenced by what they see and read – and they express their ideas in the projects they do as part of their schoolwork as interpretive of what they have seen. Only 10% of any design class – no matter what the field – are truly unique thinkers and designers. The rest graduate to become the peons and/or fodder for the design offices around the world – only to execute the designs that the more brilliant have created. Sad as it is – think of it – 90% of the students spend upwards of 10 years at University only to follow not lead.
I listened to Plagiarism 2.0 on the podcast this morning, and it made we think something a little divergent from the thread that has emerged here. I’m interested in the collaborative enterprise. In my university teaching we think and talk alot about working in groups, and talk about things like conflict and the free-rider problem.
My sense is that we struggle to work together well, in many of our work, social and academic groups, and that our output may be bland and uninspired — a far cry from your story meetings, I’m sure.
In fact, that might be fun — how do you design and build the show as a team of producers, and talent? What is the hardest part of working together? What are the nuts of bolts of your collaborative engine?
James
I listened to Plagiarism 2.0 on the podcast this morning, and it made we think something a little divergent from the thread that has emerged here. I’m interested in the collaborative enterprise. In my university teaching we think and talk alot about working in groups, and talk about things like conflict and the free-rider problem.
My sense is that we struggle to work together well, in many of our work, social and academic groups, and that our output may be bland and uninspired — a far cry from your story meetings, I’m sure.
In fact, that might be fun — how do you design and build the show as a team of producers, and talent? What is the hardest part of working together? What are the nuts of bolts of your collaborative engine?
James
I listened to Plagiarism 2.0 on the podcast this morning, and it made we think something a little divergent from the thread that has emerged here. I’m interested in the collaborative enterprise. In my university teaching we think and talk alot about working in groups, and talk about things like conflict and the free-rider problem.
My sense is that we struggle to work together well, in many of our work, social and academic groups, and that our output may be bland and uninspired — a far cry from your story meetings, I’m sure.
In fact, that might be fun — how do you design and build the show as a team of producers, and talent? What is the hardest part of working together? What are the nuts of bolts of your collaborative engine?
James
I guess it comes down to “you can’t eat your cake and have it too” (Anonymous). We live in a post-modern society and the one thing that is absolutely forbidden is to expect others to adhere to a set of absolute standards (of course the self-contradiction in post-modernism seems to be more of a goal than a problem). But really, mankind cannot establish absolute standards because mankind is not absolute so if one does not believe in God (not just a “god”) why in the world would we expect others to adhere to our arbitrary standards? Why my or your standard of honesty? “It is not dishonesty to me” trumps the day. How can you argue with that without appealing to an absolute of which God is the only one? When our institutions reject God (as the University I teach at has) are we (her minions) not the stupid ones for still grasping the things that can only exist when one believes in God? We should honor students who plagiarize as “throwing off the burden of absolutes” not fail them!
“Cheating” in its many manifestations–e.g., peeking over someone’s shoulder during a test, frantically copying a classmate’s lab report before class, or resubmitting a friend’s essay as one’s own–isn’t exactly contested terrain. Even in our post-modern age of moral relativity perpetrators know that it is wrong irrespective of their level of moral reasoning (from “mommy/god/my teacher said so” to “this contravenes an implicit social contract”) so I would like to confine my comments to the issue of plagiarism and touch upon two main points. First is the degree of difficulty of producing if not an entirely original then at least an appropriately referenced piece of academic prose. Second are the systems and processes used to deal with those who fail to do so.
I work in the publish-or-perish university system and have had the opportunity to write (often collaboratively) for academic audiences and also function as a peer reviewer for others who have done the same. In no instance would I consider myself, my co-authors, or the nameless, faceless others whose work I review moral reprobates attempting to pass off the work of others as original. That said, almost without exception passages have been written, argument have been advanced, or conclusions have been reached that smack entirely too much of someone else’s work. If I/we leave off a set of quotation marks or misplace a citation by a sentence or two, however, these omissions may be picked up by a collaborator, a peer-reviewer, or an editor and rectified prior to publication.
No such lines of defence exist for the typical undergrad. I offer neither excuse nor apology for those who cut ‘n’ paste passages, but I have a great deal of sympathy for those who for wont of understanding or attention to detail make a mistake. Both the blatant rip-off and also the honest mistake are treated as an academic offence and are subject to the same system of academic justice. As an instructor, I can assign a grade from zero to one hundred to papers of varying quality; to the rip off artists and the ones who make a mistake I can assign no grade but am obliged send their work up the administrative ladder for judgment.
In a system of education that allows degrees of imperfect understanding to be judged by educators, it is a perversity that failure to perfectly conform to a specific set of rules is not an opportunity to better learn those rules but an occasion to be punished by an arm’s-length administrator. If a student fails to properly use a period, colon or semi-colon we may find them guilty of a run-on sentence and dock them a few marks. If a student fails to properly employ quotation marks we bring the weight of administrative authority down on them with very significant and often long-lasting effect.
To boot, an increasingly common practice is to demand that students allow their work to be run through a service like turnitin.com and have it checked against an increasingly vast database for similarities. I can’t help but find it somewhat bizarre that out of one side of our mouths we say, “you can’t copy others’ work” and out of the other we demand, “you must allow your work to be copied”–for someone else’s financial gain, no less.
I won’t claim to have any answers but I will suggest that a system in which students are guilty until proven innocent and professorial judgment is usurped by administrative procedure militates against a collegial learning environment. Furthermore, contrary to effectively addressing the issue this system actually creates an entirely new set of transgressions with which to contend.
While the show is well past, some of your listeners interested in the topic of Plagiarism may be interested in a presentation I give to graduate students titled “Plagiarism: What it is and how to avoid it”.
The talk is about understanding what plagiarism is (passing off other people’s work as your own). It is also about how you can use other peoples work by clearly marking the material you are using, and citing its sources. This is considered good practice in science reporting. of course, you can’t just copy large chunks of other people’s work without permission, and at some point that is not acceptable practice. But you can certainly build upon their work.
The presentation itself is intentionally remixed from other sources. Its not plagiarism, though, as all sources are clearly marked on each side. Thus the talk itself is an example of how to remix while still giving credit in a reasonably acceptable way.