Please review the articles that I sent to you via e-mail about Plagiarism - specifically, the article by Hamalainen about Useful Tips on Avoiding Plagiarism.
Relate the content of this article to the article that we reviewed in the previous weeks on the blog about Critical Thinking Disposition and consider the following questions:
- How does critical thinking disposition relate to plagiarism (if it all)?
- What teachable moments can librarians use to PREVENT (rather than combat) plagiarism?
- Provide examples of collaborative efforts you have made with faculty at the beginning of the quarter to prevent plagiarism. Note any effective (or even ineffective) techniques/approaches.
As always, your comments and responses on the blog are appreciated and will go a long way in developing our TEAM approach to collaborating with faculty to improve the skills of our students. I encourage you to respond before our team meeting next Wednesday. Thanks!
5 comments:
I believe some of our instructors do create assignments that promote higher levels of critical thinking, i.e. compare/contrast papers in Eng. Comp., requiring research notes and articles to be turned in with the final assignment in Eng. Comp, Income tax I, Acctg.II and others, but there is still room for improvement.
The ability to use critical thinking skills will alleviate issues of plagiarism. A student who can formulate an opinion using a variety of sources, explain their reasoning,and create an argument based on their research will not need or be able to plagiarize, but as Hamalainen discusses the original assignment will require a "twist" beyond merely presenting information.
Our teachable moments begin with our first visits to Sucess Strageties classes and stressing the importance of "process" in research and our willingness to guide/help in areas of paraphrasing/summarizing/quoting and citation.
I have in previous quarters presented a workshop to faculty stressing "levels of information literacy" assessment (borrowed idea from Emily). We discussed process of research, using shorter assignments (intial exploration,annotated bibs, article review, turning in notes, rough drafts leading into a full blow research paper). I had all faculty fill out discussion questions related to the workshop and any problems they had experienced with student research projects along with individual meetings with them work on specific assignments.
I think that we currently fall short when it comes to research-based assignments which require critical thinking. Many research papers are reports, just summaries of facts. When students struggle with creating outlines and thesis statements, it shows they are having trouble with synthesizing sources. They have difficulty seeing how various sources fit together. But when is that skill taught? It's out of the scope of our Success Strategies presentations.
When it comes to GAP concepts, the one which receives direct instruction is information literacy. Students hear us several times throughout their courses. However, critical thinking does not have such direct instruction, and when it is mentioned, it's in isolation from the other skills. Like Beth mentioned, the use of critical thinking will alleviate issues of plagiarism. We can teach IL skills until we turn blue, but students will still resort to plagiarism if they don't know how to integrate and use the information they've found.
As for teachable moments used to prevent plagiarism... When I give a workshop, I try to give a brief demonstration of how to use note cards. Unlike the librarian in one of the articles, though, I've never led students through using note cards and then combining them to form paraphrases.
Plagiarism can be combated by teaching students that it is okay to use another person’s words as long as you cite your information. Also, an entire research paper cannot be another person’s quotes. As seen in a few GAP papers that have lots of quotes but then no summarizing or analyzing of the differing opinions. So, the first step is teaching proper APA citation. When students ask me to read their papers, it is blatantly obvious when they are plagiarizing. I can tell right away that the students switch from simple sentences and simple vocabulary to more complex language and sentences. And, I write in the margins:
“Are these your words? If not, you MUST cite your source.”
Critical thinking occurs at these “teachable moments” when you can talk to a student and tell them that this is an example of plagiarism. I think we can harp at the students in the success strategies workshops and in open workshops about APA and Plagiarism, but the most “sinking in” and “critical thinking” will probably hit-home at the teachable moments.
I also think it might be effective to talk about ethics and apply that it is unethical to “steal” someone else’s work.
I do not agree with the article written about changing assignments so students cannot possibly plagiarize- “Useful Tips on Avoiding Plagiarism” by Hamalainen. I understand the motive of constructing assignments to avoid plagiarism, but I do not think we are doing students a favor by avoiding the opportunity to stumble upon the “teachable moment.” Also, by not presenting these plagiarism-free assignments, students have the chance for “critical thinking” because a student will have an opportunity to critically think by looking at an author’s words, and then putting their concepts into their own words.
Over the years, because of GAP, I have seen assignments get better (instruction sheets are usually created and handed out now, instead of telling students, 'do a paper'), with more of the focus on citation and format than before. Critical thinking is coming along more slowly. I've listened to an instructor say that critial thinking is not taught at the two year level and is only achieved at a four year level, thus we do not have high scores in it. I used to think this made sense, but after thinking on it, it seems like a bad excuse. The critical thinking disposition relates to plagiarism, in that, students may resort to it if they feel they do not understand what they are learning and take a short cut by borrowing or buying a paper. In the last two quarters, I have been asked more frequently to look at papers to get my opinion on them/research to see if they are plagiarised. One example was blatently a bought paper, but because an administrator apparently never had heard of buying papers on the internet, the instructor had to show that the references in the paper were somehow false to charge the student with plagiarism because the student said that they had written the paper (found it on TWO different paper selling sites--they hadn't changed the title and it had nothing to do with what the assignement was supposed to be). (that was just a really strange situation-the instructor wanted to know if there was a way to get a copy of the paper to compare it to the one the student handed in and I said, no you have to purchase it off the site, since we have no way to retrieve it for free). I had another instructor come in the week before finals with a paper that a student had just handed in because he suspected plagiarism. The majority of it was word for word from business websites, so it was either a really bad one that had been bought, or one that was slapped together with a references page that made no sense whatsoever. There will always be those few students that will do something at the last minute but expect to get a decent grade because 'hey, they handed in something'!
Teachable moments...I like to catch students early in the quarter and have them come in so we can have them do a good paper by the time it is due. I have already had one student come in the first week to get a start on their papers and get an idea of what subject/topic they will need to do research on. In workshops, I tell them, get started on it now; your instructors give you sylibi and let you know when something is due; a paper done at 4am the night before it is due usually looks like it was done at 4am the night before it was due. I also tell them to be sparing on their use of paraphrases and quotes--I don't want to look at your paper and see "quote, quote quote, quote, quote" and then, "quote, paraphrase, quote"--I want to 'hear' their voice in the paper. I get this through the most when I go through a student's paper with them and can point out where they need to rewrite or restructure their paper and I point out they are using too many quotes and not enough of their voice.
I liked the ideas used by Hamalainen and I see some of that with the full time faculty but the part time faculty don't always do as well; some do, some don't, depending upon how well they teach. I actually had a part time instructor ask if we have plagiarism software to run papers through (I was impressed that they mentioned it, but I don't think we have that). I wish more of the 'twists' were used by the medical instructors. It can be difficult to write a paper on the nervous system, or the skeletal system, etc., using your own words and having to cite everything because the instructors make them cite everything because of the APA push, even the common items that we would not have them cite in another type of paper. I liked the ideas in the Foss paper, with having the students provide print outs of the items from the references page, with the time and date on them, to prove that they found the items. We've had more instructors doing that as well as having them do bibliographies, and hand in rough drafts, so they can see the progression of the paper. The MacDonell article reminded me of what we would do in the workshops. Some of the handouts on how to paraphrase would say, change some words and use the words to write your sentence. This would make me cringe because students would use 'different words' but the sentences would make no sense at all when they then used them. We just need to get the instructors to see the way we do and not see the APA as 'hard to learn' or 'why do I have to learn that?' (because it is part of your job?) It is starting to get easier, but we will need instructor instruction for awhile, so we can all get to the same level (don't we do that during GAP training?) and be able to handle plagiarism in a united front, as well as positively steer students away from it and to take pride in their own creations.
I enjoyed the article by Hamalainen. It describes my favorite assignment that I assist CJ students with. Rose, our CJ instructor, has assignments with this described twist. The students have to research two ideas but then put them together with their own thoughts. This assignment has presented many teachable moments and also promotes critical thinking. I do believe that developing assignments that have some depth, encourage critical thinking and help students avoid plagarism is an on-going process, one that is never complete. If we believe that these are important skills for our students to pursue, we as librarians must be the ever vigilant adovates of these skills. Success Strategies and faculty workshops, here we come!
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