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Articles Conference Reviews |
2008F17Beaudin“That shit is plagiarism by any definition”: Conceptualizing Cheating in an Academic Context By virtue of the title alone, I had to attend this session. Katherine Hagopian began the session presentations with “Plagiarism 101: How Students Construct Rhetorics of Plagiarism within the Composition Classroom.” The purpose of Hagopian's research and resulting presentation: to reframe the concept of fraud (the usual mode for conceptualizing plagiarism) and instead look to understanding how students constructed and defined plagiarism in the classroom. Her research method was simple. Students were instructed to complete the university's online plagiarism tutorial, which admittedly provides a limited introduction to the concept, and were then provided with source paragraphs and instructed to summarize, to paraphrase, and, yes, even to plagiarize passages. For many who teach citation practices, the results are probably not surprising. When told to intentionally plagiarize, students often included direct quotes without using quotation marks, a plagiarism concept directly addressed in the tutorial. When asked to correctly summarize or to paraphrase, however, more than half (53.57%) plagiarized—adopting the syntax of the source. Hagopian questioned how to frame such results, drawing upon Bartholomae's notion of “failed apprenticeship” rather than blatant fraud as well as Howard's concept of patchwriting—“taking brief strings of discourse from a source and patching them, verbatim or slightly altered, into one's own sentences” (Howard “Cultural” 488). Such considerations lead to the larger question as to what extent students should be held legally responsible for such “failed apprenticeship.” I reflected upon my institution's clear policy that all incidences of plagiarism—whether considered intentional or unintentional—must be reported to the department chair and to the dean. Is such a requirement at odds with this notion of apprenticeship? Hagopian argued (and many in the audience appeared to agree) that students should not be held legally responsible for patchwriting, as it is assumed to be part of the learning process. In her conclusion, however, she did argue for limits, and left us with other issues to consider. We understand that students do plagiarize, but when students do so we often blame ourselves for lack of pedagogy. What of the student who “masters” plagiarism? If students don't lack for information on plagiarism, why do they do it? In his introduction to “The 'efficient bad person': When Students Construct the Plagiarist in Cyber-space,” Roy Stamper admitted that when his students cheat, he almost always blames himself. (Don't most of us?) The assumption among professionals seems to be that student plagiarism is the result of some sort of teacher failure—a sentiment echoed in a senior faculty listserv that Stamper cited. Beyond the blame, however, there is anger. Stamper cites Amy Robillard's claim that we need emotion—we must acknowledge that plagiarism “pisses us off”—otherwise we dehumanize composition studies. Between anger and self-imposed guilt comes the WolfWeb thread that is the foundation for Stamper's presentation. WolfWeb (brentroad.com) is a social site for NCSU students. The site is not affiliated with the university, and it takes its domain name from a physical location, Brent Road, that is known as a party area. The site setup and architecture is quite similar to university web space (I believe the term used was an “official unofficialness”). While the site provides information to students and members of the university community, such information is often quite non- or even possibly anti-academic in scope. Stamper locates a plagiarism thread, more specifically a query: a student who goes by the handle SD is looking at a term paper site online, and s/he wants to find out if it's worth it to purchase a paper. SD claims that the issue is not laziness, but simply that “lots is due.” SD states that s/he is trying to find out more before “paying big money and poss[ibly] getting screwed.” Stamper notes how SD needs to justify his or her proposed behavior in this first post by explaining that four papers, three assignments, and an exam are due. SD's claim of being “fried and overloaded” is met with less than sympathetic responses: the user DO states, “learn time management”; Moby says to prioritize and learn from experience; Foot reprimands SD to spend “less time posting and more time writing”; RedB quotes Full Metal Jacket—“Are you quitting on me? Well, are you?” Stamper is slightly more sympathetic to SD, asking if it's possible that the complaint that there is too much work to do is legitimate. He asks if we know how much our students are doing, and should we know? Good writing takes time and reflection, yet implicit in the language of the responses is the efficiency argument. WolfWeb user Dew observes, “if you can get away with 30 minutes of plag. [sic] instead of a few days of work, you are efficient and not nec. [sic] a bad person.” Proof responds, “I'll settle on efficient bad person.” Spike pulls no punches: “It's called college, grow up and get your shit done. Work your ass off, finish it.” SD finally admits, “Well in all honesty, this is partly my fault. I never realized id [sic] get a bunch of crap for wanting to find something out.” Stamper points out that this is more than peer pressure, this is peer teaching! Students might not say such things to us, but they will say such things to each other. Yet, there is the prevailing notion that the best way is the most efficient way. In this discussion, students also questioned and (re)constructed the very definition of plagiarism. User Whit explains that his technique is to pick up two or three free papers, read them through, and rewrite them in his own words yet using the ideas. He claims that it's “not necessarily plagiarism, [and it] saves money and time.” Tarzan responds, “that's the very definition of plagiarism.” Another asks if that isn't what journalists and academics do. Ernie charges, “that shit is plagiarism by any definition. If you were caught your ass would be nailed to the cross” to which Hurache counters, “do any of y'all actually think that any of your ideas are completely original?” Perly replies, “that's more of a philosophical debate than anything.” And it is... what to cite and what to paraphrase. Moody identifies the problem thusly: “I honestly think that a large majority of students really don't understand the full definition of plagiarism...it's not just copying and pasting.” Stamper brings us back to his introductory sentiment, about being “pissed off,” but he confesses that he can't be that angry. Students are not unlike us. They, and we, are vexed as to how to define and understand plagiarism. In “Knowing What to Cite: Discerning Ownership in Disciplinary Discourse,” Evelyn Audi identifies areas of ambiguity with understanding and identifying plagiarism, specifically the use of models (considering the popularity of, for instance, Graff and Birkenstein's They Say/I Say) and drawing upon or resubmitting writing submitted for another course. Audi's goal is to work towards a “more holistic understanding of authorship...authoring something original and conventional simultaneously.” The genesis of her research was “Plagiarism and Ethical Conduct With Words: A Questionnaire,” a document she attributes to Chris Anson at NCSU. Student responses to this questionnaire indicated issues with navigating perceptions of ownership: what “belongs” to students, to other people, what to make of work that is, in a sense, “contracted” for another class, and that which is not “owned”—common knowledge or accepted practice. Audi now teaches at a secondary school, and she asks where does (should) the teaching and learning about understanding issues of citation and plagiarism begin? She has observed students in study hall completing “low stakes” writing assignments (homework prompts to look up an author or historical figure) by using sources such as Wikipedia or Answers.com as “search and find manuals”; students do not think it necessary to cite this factual information, though they would do so for high stakes (formal papers) assignments. Audi offers some suggestions as to how to deal with this sticky issue of plagiarism and what I would term “ethical scholarship.” If she receives a draft that she suspects was written for another course, she engages in an open conversation with the student. Rather than rewriting the entire work, students are encouraged to use the text as a source or model and then to cite themselves in the revised/ re-envisioned work. She discusses using templates (such as those in They Say/ I Say) to cultivate voice. She advocates “early interventions to teach writing from a rhetorical perspective earlier on.” Ultimately, the key is in making these issues of plagiarism and academic integrity more transparent. While all three presentations were wonderfully prepared and quite informative, I left feeling a bit disheartened. I sense that “the plagiarism problem” is not one of ethics or even ignorance, but it is a perception rooted in changing cultural (digital) practice. Popular culture has quite a different conceptualization of “sources” than academe. Many see acts of downloading (text or files) as either free and unencumbered (online equals “there for the taking”) or justifiable theft (along the lines of Robin Hood). Somewhere among the ideologies behind Limewire, the RIAA, and MLA should be a sense of fair use and attribution. Academic models of citation seem, for many students, out of step with reality. Yet academe is the one place where pretty much all “property” is intellectual, and academic notions of attribution and sharing (much along the lines of Creative Commons licenses) should, in my opinion, be more prominent in the current cultural debate. How can we initiate these conversations not simply inside the classroom, but outside as well? |