Re: (teach) Plagiarism - was Online materials & "cheating"!

[Stephanie Noke]

Jim wrote:

So, if our Chinese students ask us what's wrong with plagiarism,
what do we tell them? Do we say that it's prohibited in Western
societies, so you shouldn't do it if you go to school abroad? Or
should we say you should never do it under any circumstances. If
the latter, what can we say to convince them that it's as evil as
we Westerners think it is?
>
>
As I see it, it isn't so much that plagiarism is evil, it's just that it does not help the person to develop or create anything of their own.  So what, they may say!  In my experience working in multinationals in China, the problem with alot of staff is that they cannot solve problems or see different perspectives because they were taught that the end result is important, not how you get there.  Thus they are not able to go through that thinking process as they only copied stuff to obtain the end result.  It's like in maths, it's not that the answer is 4 but how did you get to 4.  I think we need them to see that the process itself is important to help them in their future careers if they wish to study or work overseas.  An example, I was trying to hire an assistant in Beijing and interviewed one guy who had an MBA and was very proud of it.  I interviewed him and did not even consider hiring him and told him so at the interview.  He was shocked and asked why.  I explained to him that he was unable to perform effectively in my scenarios because when he had got his MBA, he got only a piece of paper - he learned nothing in the process and so was of no use to me.  I hoped it would help him understand and learn from it.  I hired someone with lesser qualifications but more brain power!  That's my two penn'orth!
Stephanie

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[nate jarvis]

As I see it, it isn't so much that plagiarism is evil
</stephanie>

i've got a novelist friend who'd definitely beg to differ. though writers'
and academics' work is being submitted to, if not the world, at least to a
community global in scope, whereas students are really only submitting their
work to their teacher (and maybe a few classmates if the class does peer
review)--if you successfully take credit for an academic's work, you deny
him the ability to take credit for his own work. not a problem with Ss just
trying to get a decent grade without doing the work.

<stephanie>
It's like in maths, it's not that the answer is 4 but how did you get to 4.
</stephanie>

i've actually had math assignments to the effect of "go online and find a
proof for this theorem." i've also had math teachers say things like "please
at least TRY to work out the proof on your own"--theyre pretty much resigned
to it. and of course the "why" is more essential than the how--there's still
people teaching trig classes telling students to memorize that a circle is
2pi radians, instead of taking 5 minutes to tell their students what a
radian is (after which "2pi" is pretty self evident--and if it's not they
can take another 5 minutes to explain what pi is, after which 2pi*r is
pretty much self evident).

<stephanie>
I think we need them to see that the process itself is important to help
them in their future careers if they wish to study or work overseas.
</stephanie>

i definitely agree with you here. i've told students in the past that
homework assignments at school, which are given under the assumption that
practice-yields-progress and to give Ts content-irrelevant samples to
assess, tend to be fairly identical from school to school and class to
class. because Ts at different schools tend to give Ss similar assignments,
it's fairly easy to find a similar assignment someone else has already done.
when they enter the work place they'll have to write things specific to an
office with possibly as few as (in extreme) 2-3 people. even if there's
100+, the odds someone at their company wrote something sufficiently similar
to what theyll have to write are pretty small. who are they going to copy
off of? and i get this "oh......" of realization that one day they will have
to turn a couple of points and questions into english prose longer than a
search string.

whether they give up plagiarizing or not after that....

nate.