In the age of Google, people really need to stop plagiarizing.

[firehawk12]

So I'm doing my marking and I just caught someone who basically plagiarized from two sources... and I just caught this person by typing out sentences from their essay into Google and reading the search results.

I can sort of understand using Google to find "ideas" for essays, but why would someone actually cut and paste paragraphs?

It annoys me that I feel bad because I'm going to have to give this person a zero. I almost feel sorry for this person... until I remember that they essentially cheated.

 

[Sephiroth]

hardass, everything is plagarization of the dictionary anyways

 

[RoJoHen]

My old roommate got kicked out of college for getting caught plagiarizing...3 times!

 

[Triskelion]

Um, insulting a teacher for failing plagiarizing is a funny joke. But the joke's on the student. Education is not about the answers. It's about developing the skill to get the answers.

I have a feeling that in fifty years there will be nothing but remixed culture. I like electronic music but it does rather miss the point of music.

 

[Deckerd]

I work at a university. The lecturers have had software for years which checks for plagiarisation.

 

[RJDiogenes]

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.....

 

[RoJoHen]

^On that same note (and I can't necessarily disagree), I think we have lost the concept of "put it in your own words." So much research can easily be done online. You don't really have to search through books in the library and formulate your own ideas anymore.

 

[JAG]

I tell my daughter that all the time. This happens in middle school too. One of the kids in my DD's school was caught doing this.

 

[Deckerd]

At university you have to research books. There's no way round it unless you buy someone else's work, or download it from th'internets. Either way you're stuffed, since the lecturers' heads do not zip up the back.

 

[Triskelion]

Just think how easy it would be to totally twist an entire generation's thinking to be anything you could imagine, really, just by manipulating search engines and rewarding plagiarizing with lackadaisical school policies.

People don't realize there are plenty of people in this world who yearn for this type society and would do anything in their power to make it a universal reality.

If Google told you to jump off a bridge would you do it?

 

[JoeZhang]

turn it in (software to catch cheating) was a terrible invention, in the old days, unless the cheating was really obvious, as a lecturer, I'd just turn a blind eye (as would most of my colleagues) - the drawn out process of dealing with students you caught was a complete pain in the arse and cut into your important stuff like research.

My old department only uses it with post-grads because they know they'd catch virtually all of the undergrads and it would be too much of a headache to deal with...

 

[JoeZhang]

^On that same note (and I can't necessarily disagree), I think we have lost the concept of "put it in your own words." So much research can easily be done online. You don't really have to search through books in the library and formulate your own ideas anymore.

Gawd, I couldn't think of anything more time-wasting than going to the library - my specialism is the information sciences, you can get all of our peer-reviewed journals electronical in a 10th of the time of going to the library. I haven't been in a library in years.

However, at post-grad level, you still have to be able to show novel synthesis of sources, you can't just repeat the sources.

 

[rafterman1701]

My company farms out some work and I've caught stuff badly copied from online sources. All I had to do was Google one sentence and I got the entire thing.

 

[Neroon]

I work at a university. The lecturers have had software for years which checks for plagiarisation.

I've long been interested in just how such a software package works. How does it determine what is and is not a plagiarized work? Precisely what is measured?

 

[Deckerd]

You need to ask JZ about 'turn it in' Neroon. I'll ask our teaching staff what they use and how it works (ha ha - they are not what you would call at the honed blade of the leading edge of technology).

 

[Lindley]

I work at a university. The lecturers have had software for years which checks for plagiarisation.

I've long been interested in just how such a software package works. How does it determine what is and is not a plagiarized work? Precisely what is measured?

I'd guess it's similar to anti-spam software. It probably samples statistics off the document and compares it to an index of documents on the web; any which are remotely close it would examine more closely for direct lifts.

 

[Goliath]

^On that same note (and I can't necessarily disagree), I think we have lost the concept of "put it in your own words." So much research can easily be done online. You don't really have to search through books in the library and formulate your own ideas anymore.

Gawd, I couldn't think of anything more time-wasting than going to the library - my specialism is the information sciences, you can get all of our peer-reviewed journals electronical in a 10th of the time of going to the library. I haven't been in a library in years.

Because, as we all know, nothing important has ever been published in book form.

 

[Tomato]

I remember there was controversy with turn it in. Number one because this company is now profiting from my work by using it to cross reference other student's work. Not happy about that.

But I don't if you need to plagarize you are only hurting yourself. I fully believe that if it is worth doing it is going to be difficult. And the more difficult something is the more you get out of it.

 

[Michael]

I like electronic music but it does rather miss the point of music.

Huh? How's that?

 

[Crusher Disciple]

Gawd, I couldn't think of anything more time-wasting than going to the library - my specialism is the information sciences, you can get all of our peer-reviewed journals electronical in a 10th of the time of going to the library. I haven't been in a library in years.

I love walking in there, crawling through the stacks and pulling out books. I just can't get the same feeling from typing on a computer terminal.