Book review yesterday in the journal about the growing incidence of plagiarism among students. The problem being that it is woefully easy for students to copy and paste off the internet and into the term paper; like most crimes, catching the guilty is time-consuming and always a step behind.
After pondering the problem, I’m thinking that this is our cue to make the proverbial lemonade. Here’s my thought:
If the paper is just to help you memorize, who cares? Say I assign my students to each do a report on a topic related to the course, and the goal is really just to broaden and deepen their knowledge of the subject. In that case, I’d grade the paper in two parts.
Part one would be the student’s ability to present a logical paper, properly cited. I don’t care if you copy and paste the entire thing, as long as it makes sense (in other words: you actually read the stuff) and you put quotes around the copied stuff and cite it appropriately. It’s not so much an academic paper as a factual memo.
Part two would be a test question. After reading each paper, I’d write down a test question for that paper. For example, if the paper were about “The Three Main Causes of the Civil War”, my test question would probably be something like, “What were the three main causes of the civil war?”. And then I’d either go through the class and give the quiz orally, if I wanted the other students to hear the information, or else I’d tack each student’s personal quiz question to the end of the next exam I gave.
–> In essence, the personal test questions would be the students’ chance to put the material into their own words.
Suppose I really did want a good paper, though. Then what? I’d take advantage of the ease and inexpense of modern printing and copying technology to work through the research and writing process together. Rather than asking for the finished paper in the usual citation format, I would require that every sentence of the paper be cited. Is it your idea? You put an endnote on that sentence saying “I thought this up myself”. Are you paraphrasing someone? You give me an endnote saying “I am paraphrashing . . . .” and cite the source. And I would have the student enclose a copy of the texts used — not the whole book or article, but just whatever portion is being cited.
–> My goal would be that rather than fighting the temptation to plagiarize, I push the students to develop an awareness of their sources and of how they build their ideas. Where does someone else’s idea end and my idea begin? Where did I get my information, and do I think it is a credible source?
Given the amount of work involved for both student and instructor, I’d adjust the overall workload in light of the new approach. In a five-paper class, I might have the students take only one of these super-cited papers and polish it into traditional academic format.
I think in this way you could move students’ writing to a new level. The sordid truth is that a lot of what gets written by grown-ups is a bunch of blather — the repeating of ideas that don’t really hold up. Now we have students who can easily access and compile other people’s ideas; let’s grab hold of the capability to teach our students how to critically evaluate what it is they are assembling.