BellaOnline Forums Education Distance Learning Plagiarism

We just got the assignment for my spring term class returned and our professor was disgusted by the amount of plagiarism. I'm absolutely shocked! Particularly since I really think it would almost be easier to actually do the assignment than plagiarize it - we were supposed to turn in 3 informal personal reactions to topics in the course of about 1 paragraph in length. It wasn't intended to be a particularly rigorous assignment, but more to get us in the professional habit of sitting down at the end of the week and writing a short journal type entry about what we'd done or learned that week - something the professor finds personally useful in his professional career.

It's really sad to think that some of my classmates would find it easier to find other people's reactions to stuff we are reading about than to come up with their own. (Not to mention that they would find it acceptable!)

My professor is hugely dispirited by this, and frankly so am I!

Julie

When I went to school online we had a plagiarism checker to send out work through, so did the instructors. Plagiarism was punishable by expulsion, rightly deserved.

At my school, only the instructor has access to the plagiarism checker, but we have the same type of checker. People who are caught plagiarizing get an F in the course as a first step and then there are further steps. In many cases an F is equivalent to expulsion anyway. I didn't pay a lot of attention to the process because I wouldn't plagiarize.

Julie

This is interesting to me since I didn't know there was anything like a plagiarism checker. I always wondered how the instructors could keep up with all the information coming in on papers to know if it was plagiarized or not. I am glad that there is something available to make their work a little easier. I guess it is good too if the students can use it before submitting their work but it seems that they should have been taught how to make sure they aren't plagiarizing while they were still in secondary school. Maybe some of them just don't understand the concept?!!!

It really is baffling to me too that people would plagiarize like that. They are the ones paying for their education, don't they want to learn?

I don't get that either. No one is making them take these courses, right? I would want to get out of a class everything possible, to the last nugget of info.

Just to present the other point of view, a student in one of my classes got a promotion and was instructed that he needed to get a degree in order to maintain the promotion. I.e. he was promoted into a job that required a degree and was let in anyway even though he didn't have one. So for him, I imagine all he cares about is getting that piece of paper.

well, that is fine then. it's all about motivation. At least his are clear. :-)