In a soon to be published book entitled My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture, Susan D. Blum talks about how current students think and act about originality and ethics. She posits that two cultures exist today in the classroom, ours and theirs. Studies have shown that over 75% of students admit to having cheated and 68% say that they have cut and pasted material from the Internet without citing the source.
We all can probably think of many reasons that we could give for students using any means to get a good grade. From a post reporting on the book on the February 3 Inside Higher Ed Page, Blum suggest that the real problem of academic dishonesty comes from a lack of communication between the two cultures she describes. The Inside Higher Ed report states that she believes that most universities use a "shock and awe approach" to combating plagiarism and that it is not working. Blum believes that we should adapt a "hearts and minds strategy" to help us understand why students do what they do, why what we do does not work and why we should even care.
When the book is published, it sounds like something that we should read and could help to open a dialogue between us and our students. But until then, read the article on Inside Higher Ed, and let others know what you think. Is what we are doing unproductive? Is it appropriate? What role do we have in the promotion of academic integrity? Is this part of helping student pharmacists to become professionals? What other approaches, if any, should we take? I look forward to your thoughts.
5 comments:
I agree with Blum that there are various degrees of plagiarism. I think lack of citation or inappropriate citation is a far cry from purchasing papers and submitting it as your own work. However, how should these “grayer” situations be handled when violations occur? Is it a matter of grading in the course or a “law enforcement” issue? I applaud Blum’s efforts to try to circumvent cheating/plagiarism in her courses by requiring “steps along the way.” One can still purchase a paper and submit parts of it as the class progresses. However, at least she is taking a proactive stance in attempting to decrease the incidence of plagiarism, rather than reacting to it when it occurs. As educators, we should inform and try to instill value in originality and also promote proper citation. I think all students understand that concept and most will probably be receptive, but there will always be those who do not care. Some people will always value the end result despite the means to get it. This is an interesting issue with no clear cut solution. I think attitudes toward plagiarism begin long before students enter college. I remember my first encounter: I was in 2nd grade writing a report and I copied an encyclopedia entry word for word. Several of us did, we were all sitting at the same table in the school's library. Our teacher read our reports and gave us a lesson about plagiarism. It's stuck with me ever since.
Renee, I didn’t realize that this was going to be a place for confession! Confession, however, is a great spiritual discipline to follow. And Richard Foster has said that “the Discipline of confession brings an end to pretense.”
I agree with you that we need to be proactive rather than reactive. I also agree with you that, we as educators, must do more than provide content. Teaching is about who we are. As Parker Palmer says, “good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.”
I do think we have to be proactive instead or reactive. One thing though I do think needs to remain is real penalty for plagiarism. Blum gave me the impression that we "need to be more understanding" and that maybe the students don't understand that their ways are wrong. No, we don't need to be more understanding, we need to identify the real problem and deal with it. If they are doing unethical things, they need corrected.
Justine, I think what Blum is saying is that you cannot legislate professionalism and a passion for learning. Legislating personhood didn’t work and it has taken over 40 years to get close! We need to talk about and act on these things in every class, but we need to begin where the students are and try to move them to where they should be.
I agree the "shock and awe approach" to combating plagiarism is not a good idea and that Blum has a better idea with her "hearts and minds strategy". Cheating is like pornography, everybody knows it when they see it, at the same time it is very difficult to legislate away. However if we teach and show by example that there is a better way (like pointing out the self respect that comes with not cheating) real progress can be made, even in large hard to monitor classes like our PharmD course.
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