Whereas every undergrad at Carnegie Mellon had to learn basic Unix skills. Different priorities, eh?
In the age of Google, people really need to stop plagiarizing.
- Thread starter firehawk12
- Start date
Whereas every undergrad at Carnegie Mellon had to learn basic Unix skills. Different priorities, eh?
Don't feel too bad about not knowing anything about formatting citations. I don't know know anyone in academia who does the citation formatting manually. Personally I use bibtex to generate the citations as I write mostly in latex now days. Endnote is also a popular choice especially for the non-engineering students on this campus.
Whereas every undergrad at Carnegie Mellon had to learn basic Unix skills. Different priorities, eh?
Hmm the same here in GT. Though I think the management students don't have to do it.
I agree. I think many in the generation that grew up with computers have lost the concept of plagiarism or theft. Copy & Paste and Downloading have made it so easy to move things from one place to another that they don't really comprehend the idea that things belong to somebody else.....
A
Amaris
Guest
I've actually been in the opposite situation... when I was in high school I was falsely accused of plagiarism. My english teacher couldn't prove it (obviously) so she couldn't fail me and instead just knocked what was probably an A essay to a B-. At the time, I was pretty annoyed. In retrospect, I am very angry as a matter of principle.
I had the same accusation put upon me by my AP English teacher. In regard to a report on the differences between modern and ancient languages, she insisted that I plagiarized another work. I asked her to show me the work that would indicate plagiarism, and she couldn't find it. She said it was evident that I plagiarized several works. I asked her to show me the works from which I lifted my source material. She couldn't find it. Her reasoning had something to do with my grammar and spelling. I asked her how that indicated plagiarism. She said the spelling and grammar were too perfect. I smiled and told her she had my permission to see my 1st place spelling bee trophies sitting on my book shelf anytime she liked. I told her she was free to contact my previous schools and check my grades. So it was dropped.
Of course, that same year she accused me of lying when I finished our book assignment before the end of class. We were instructed to read "Lord of the Flies". We had 90 minute block classes, and so we started on our reading about an hour before the end of class. I was done in 35 minutes. She asked me why I had closed the book, and I told her I was finished. She refused to believe me, and at her insistence, she verbally quizzed me right there in class. Fortunately, the whole story was still fresh in my mind (and when I had great information retention), and I answered all of her questions. She asked if I had read the book before, and I told her I had never read the book before that day. She didn't believe me, but she had no proof.
She didn't like me very much.
Oh, which reminds me of another story. We were once having a more relaxed day in that class, and she got onto the subject of relationships (I don't know how we got there), and was asking us our thoughts. One of the discussions led into whether a relationship of different philosophies and religions could work, and out of a class of 37, I was the only one who said yes. So I got the questions. She asked me if I had any beliefs. I said yes, and I told her I was a devout Christian, Pentecostal sect. She asked, "Would you have a relationship with someone who was atheist?" I said yes. She said "How would that work?" I answered that my beliefs are my own, and I would not force them upon anyone else. She didn't believe me, saying that my own faith says I can't do that. I disagreed.
We were at a stalemate the rest of the day on the subject.
She didn't like me very much.
J.
I had more direct plagiarism while I was at Uni - people attempting to directly copy my work. I was never exactly a straight-A student at school, but somehow I got things right at University. People saw me get good grades and then suddenly I was Mr. Answer Bank. Sorry, it's tough, you pick hard modules you have to do hard work. I'm sorry Operating Systems Design was not quite as easy as some of the Noddy subjects we had in the first year but that's not my fault.
I find it offensive in the same way that I find web 2.0 crowd sourcing offensive - you are giving them your work for free in order to help them build their company.
Now, you can argue things like Wikipedia and Facebook provide utility to the user. Yeah, Wikipedia survives off volunteers, but for every edit you make, you probably read 100 times more articles. And yeah, Facebook is selling your identity to Lavalife, but you get a way to keep in touch with your friends or whatever. Hell, even TrekBBS depends on its posters to make money - but we get to have the pleasure of conversations such as this one, so that's perfectly fine with us.
The student gets absolutely nothing when they essentially give their paper away to the company who runs turnitin.com. I mean, I'm sort of fed up with undergrads, but given that they're screwed so many ways already, finding another way to make money off them is in bad taste.
Now if you took a course that used turnitin.com and got a small tuition refund, at least it would be somewhat justifiable.
Actually, you should feel bad--like someone who can't do simple arithmetic without a calculator, or who can't spell without a spellchecker, or who drives to the convenience store because a block is too far to walk.
That said--I would be perfectly willing to let my students rely on computer programs to generate their citations. The results might not be perfect, but they would at least be consistent.
The problem is, they don't seem to know how to use programs like Endnote, either.
I just can't summon up the energy to feel bad, I got my PhD, I got my publications, what's left to prove? That I can do something manually that's quicker and easier to do with a machine? What's the point?
I had that problem as well, especially in high school. In one class we would do an assignment in-class and turn it in to a basket at the front of the room. Well, people would wait until I turned mine in, then go through the basket when the teacher wasn't looking, and pull it out to copy my answers. So after that happened everyone else turned theirs into the basket and I turned mine in straight to the teacher. I also always had to position myself correctly during tests or people would constantly be looking over my shoulder. It's ridiculous. If I knew someone was looking sometimes I would put the wrong answers and then change them later when they were gone.
Nope still feeling great here.
Anyhow I don't think the knowledge of citation format should be lumped together with basic mental aptitudes like arithmetic and spelling. The fact is no one in the math/science/engineering academic communities cares about the details of the citation formats. Seriously what is the point in knowing that? We are pretty much accustomed to use latex so bibtex seems to be the logical choice in generating the citations. It's much more flexible i.e. I can change the citation format with a change of a single argument and it saves you a lot of time since most online journal repositories now provide you with the bibtex entries. It's just the smart way of going about this. I mean if you can't use the computer to raise your own productivity to higher and higher levels then what is the point? Ah you see at least some minimum mental ability is required even if you are reliant on software. I guess they'll just have to do the citation formatting using the old, slow, and inefficient manual way.
What a strange system.
Politically driven, of course.
