English — Who Needs That? I'm Never Going to England
Ah, yes, the lengths to which students will go to avoid active thought. I remember reading an interesting, well-noted paper at the end of one term. A few papers down in the stack, there was another paper on the same topic. "Oh, dear," I thought after having read the first page, "one's copied the other." I hated those sorts of discoveries not only because of the extra work it meant for me, but because I felt genuine disappointment. In this case, only the second party was guilty, because the portions that I initially recognized were word-for-word copies of – get this – what were cited quotations in the first paper I'd read. That made me suspicious. A bit of googling on sentences from both papers revealed that 75% of Student No. 2's paper was cut and pasted directly from four or five on-line sources, with no attribution. Can you say, "F"?
Of course, my plagiarist had at least bothered to format the entire paper in a consistent style. One of my fellow T.A.'s had a plagiarist who didn't even bother to change the fonts of the different unattributed cut & pasted portions.
Ah, me. The stories I could tell.
Anyhow, I was only alerted to this because two students had used the same source. That is, it was initially a passive discovery on my part. It was only after my suspicions were aroused that I started googling. I could, of course, have googled my way through every paper, but you know what? I didn't get paid enough for that. And besides, that only works for the open-access sources that were plagiarized.
It was towards the end of my teaching career that automated plagiarism detectors began appearing. I never used them, but the way they purported to work was this: you made your students submit their work digitally (on disk or via email), then you ran them through the scanner, which would do the googling for you. Plus, some of them compared them to known products of paper mills, for which I wasn't about to spend my hard-earned pittance merely so I could compare them to the largely mediocre papers I had to grade. (And, frankly, I wonder how much good milled papers have done anyone ever. I've looked at a couple of ostensibly "grad school quality" samples and been left feeling, shall we say, incredulous. I'm sure I could have done reasonably well by selling some of my own work, but there were to many other things I wanted to do with the time it would have taken. Like sleep.)
Now they're coming out with ways to defeat the scanners, such as synonomizing one's paper (hey, easier than cracking open the thesaurus yourself, I suppose.) Fine. Though I wish they'd just put the creative effort of avoiding assignments, into them. It seems that doing evaluative work actually contributes to learning and knowledge retention — it's not just for teachers to evaluate what has already been learned (Roediger, H. L., and J. D. Karpicke [2006]. Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention. Psychological Science 17[3]).
So they won't get the "F" for plagiarism. But take a look at one of the screen shots, and the suggested substitutions:
"Frequentness" for "frequency"? "Locution" for "word"? No, they won't get the "F" for plagiarism — they'll get it for illiteracy.
(Oh, and this made me snicker. Here's the disclaimer at the bottom of the page:
And here's what's at the top of the page:
In other words, "This is how we can help you! [But don't use it for that].")
Of course, my plagiarist had at least bothered to format the entire paper in a consistent style. One of my fellow T.A.'s had a plagiarist who didn't even bother to change the fonts of the different unattributed cut & pasted portions.
Ah, me. The stories I could tell.
Anyhow, I was only alerted to this because two students had used the same source. That is, it was initially a passive discovery on my part. It was only after my suspicions were aroused that I started googling. I could, of course, have googled my way through every paper, but you know what? I didn't get paid enough for that. And besides, that only works for the open-access sources that were plagiarized.
It was towards the end of my teaching career that automated plagiarism detectors began appearing. I never used them, but the way they purported to work was this: you made your students submit their work digitally (on disk or via email), then you ran them through the scanner, which would do the googling for you. Plus, some of them compared them to known products of paper mills, for which I wasn't about to spend my hard-earned pittance merely so I could compare them to the largely mediocre papers I had to grade. (And, frankly, I wonder how much good milled papers have done anyone ever. I've looked at a couple of ostensibly "grad school quality" samples and been left feeling, shall we say, incredulous. I'm sure I could have done reasonably well by selling some of my own work, but there were to many other things I wanted to do with the time it would have taken. Like sleep.)
Now they're coming out with ways to defeat the scanners, such as synonomizing one's paper (hey, easier than cracking open the thesaurus yourself, I suppose.) Fine. Though I wish they'd just put the creative effort of avoiding assignments, into them. It seems that doing evaluative work actually contributes to learning and knowledge retention — it's not just for teachers to evaluate what has already been learned (Roediger, H. L., and J. D. Karpicke [2006]. Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention. Psychological Science 17[3]).
So they won't get the "F" for plagiarism. But take a look at one of the screen shots, and the suggested substitutions:
"Frequentness" for "frequency"? "Locution" for "word"? No, they won't get the "F" for plagiarism — they'll get it for illiteracy.
(Oh, and this made me snicker. Here's the disclaimer at the bottom of the page:
Disclaimer: This software is intended for stylistic purposes, avoiding excessive repetitions of words in a text. We are aware that distortion of a copyrighted text can be used to elude intellectual property claims. We are not responsible for any misuse of our software. The authors are not liable for any incidental, indirect, or consequential damages related to the use of this software. Legal consequences of using our Synonymizer software are possible and are entirely left to the user responsibility. If you do not agree with this disclaimer refrain from use.
And here's what's at the top of the page:
Mean Plagiarism Detection sites are being used by overzealous teachers to pinpoint copy-paste writing
You cannot afford to use unmodified text from any source
Most of them work by comparing short text strings in the web original and the student essay
It is known that a simple synonym substitution here and there prevents detection, false alarms, embarrassment and penalization.
Outsmart Plagiarism Zealots!
Get even!
In other words, "This is how we can help you! [But don't use it for that].")
posted by Dr. Bubbles at 11:52
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