A further twist to the IP issue.... There was an instance a few years ago
where a student kicked up a fuss about having his/her work submitted to
Turnitin. As I recall, the argument was that, because all submitted work
becomes part of the database that Turnitin checks new submissions against,
and because Turnitin¹s commercial success partly depends on having as large
a database as possible, the student¹s intellectual property (assuming that
he/she actually wrote the essay!) was being used for someone else¹s profit,
without consent or compensation.
Andrew
Andrew Biro
Dept of Political Science
Acadia University
Wolfville, NS B4P 2R6
(902)585-1925
andrew.b...@acadiau.ca
On 07/01/09 3:20 PM, "Michael Maniates" <mmani...@allegheny.edu> wrote:
> From Ronnie Lipschutz...I think he's on to something
>
> MM
>
>
>
>
>> All rather ironic (or pathetic), in light of the sanctity of intellectual
>> property rights, no?
>>
>> I suspect this all goes along with downloading music, film, etc. from the
>> web.
>>
>> Ronnie
>>
>> Michael Maniates wrote:
>>> As most of you know, I was away during the Spring of 2007 with Semester at
>>> Sea. I served as Dean, hired the faculty, dealt with academic
>>> problems...the usual Deanly stuff.
>>>
>>> We had ~ 700 students on the ship, from maybe 200+ institutions, from Ivy
>>> League to schools that required only a pulse for admission, if that.
>>> Additionally, we were running under the Univ. of Virginia's Honor Code,
>>> which is probably the strongest in the land: One strike and you're out Code.
>>> Any "cheating, lying, or stealing," and you're expelled. This code was
>>> explained to students, and discussed in class by faculty.
>>>
>>> Despite all of this, we had several instances of plagiarism, mostly
>>> involving the cutting and pasting of material from web sources. When
>>> confronted, students seemed to be genuinely shocked. They thought, at least
>>> many did, that this was how one did research: cutting and pasting, with some
>>> bracketed commentary throughout.
>>> One student was expelled for this sort of behavior on a marginal assignment.
>>> Others (for whom we couldn't did up definitive proof) were read the riot
>>> act.
>>> I leave that experience thinking that there's something seriously amiss in
>>> the educational/socialization process, as opposed to a decline in the
>>> ethical bearing of our students. That so many students could think that
>>> what we regard as plagiarism is AOK, even in the face of daunting sanctions,
>>> was alarming.
>>>
>>> Mike Maniates
>>>
>>> At 01:04 PM 1/7/2009, you wrote:
>>>> On cheating, great discussion, thanks to those who have been posting. A few
>>>> random thoughts:
>>>>
>>>> Rational choice/incentive model: People cheat when the stakes are high and
>>>> the sanctions are low/unlikely. I read of one study in which MBA students
>>>> were found more likely than JD students to cheat, attributed to the
>>>> latter's fear of not being allowed to sit for the bar exam if caught. I try
>>>> reasonably to catch them, but do my students really fear being caught? I
>>>> doubt it.
>>>>
>>>> Socialization/norms model: I will speak only for the USA. (1) Studies show
>>>> that young people here increasingly crave fame and acclaim (I blame
>>>> American Idol, seriously). (2) Neoliberal commodification of education has
>>>> made teachers at lower levels into accomplices, which must send a powerful
>>>> message to the kids. We have seen MANY staff-facilitated cheating scandals
>>>> on the No-Child-Left-Behind standardized tests by which teachers and
>>>> schools are increasingly evaluated, including my own kids' former
>>>> elementary school, with nobody fired as a result. (3) "Pay to play"
>>>> politics and financial Ponzi schemes are pretty much the heart of our
>>>> political economy, as recent events have shown. It is not too strong to say
>>>> that the dominant norms in public life have become "be famous or you are a
>>>> loser", "it's the outcome, not the path to it, by which you will be
>>>> judged", and "don't get caught."
>>>>
>>>> Information/transaction costs model: The line as to what constitutes
>>>> plagiarism has been blurred with online resources, web-sites that interlink
>>>> and reproduce without attribution, etc, and students in K-12 are not taught
>>>> seriously where the line is; and the transaction costs have dropped greatly
>>>> with cut-and-paste, Google, Wikipedia, and online buy-a-paper sites.
>>>>
>>>> In other words, all our social-science approaches lead in the same
>>>> direction. Too bleak?
>>>>
>>>> On a lighter note, veterans will recall that GEPED had its own experience
>>>> several years ago, when someone posted a paragraph from a paper that a
>>>> student couldn't possibly have written, and I recognized it as being from
>>>> Nancy Peluso's chapter in the edited volume Ronnie Lipschutz and I did some
>>>> years back. I reproduced that e-mail exchange in my syllabi for a while, as
>>>> a warning to students....kc
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>> >>> Susanne Moser <promu...@susannemoser.com> 1/7/2009 11:24 AM >>>
>>>> Good morning everyone -
>>>>
>>>> I don't know about you all - maybe you're used to this, maybe you're
>>>> cynical, maybe you've given up.... but I find all these posts rather
>>>> disturbing to read. I don't teach at a colleague or university so don't
>>>> have first-hand experience. Thus forgive if this is a totally dumb
>>>> question, but can someone please offer some hunches as to the reasons
>>>> for why such services exist?
>>>>
>>>> Are professors placing too many demands on students (either or both in
>>>> quantity or quality)? Are students too dumb or ill-educated so that, by
>>>> the time they get to college they can't perform what is asked of them?
>>>> Is there a lack of mentoring, lack of writing assistance (because
>>>> professors have papers to publish or perish, and advisory staff got
>>>> cut)? Is there too much parental pressure to be a straight A student? Is
>>>> it the pressure to get into grad school and super-duper jobs? Is it
>>>> vanity? Is it just another money-making ploy by the good old capitalists
>>>> who will find just about any niche to exploit? Are morals that far out
>>>> the window and maybe more so than before? And is anyone going to get on
>>>> the barricades and resist this baffling trend of anti-intellectualism?
>>>> (if I go on for a bit, it will soon be a GEP-relevant topic....)
>>>>
>>>> Sorry, this just got me all rallied up, and I am not even at the bottom
>>>> of the first cup of caffeine....
>>>>
>>>> Susi
>>>>
>>>> Peter Jacques wrote:
>>>>> > Also, in this political economy of cheating, Turnitin.com offers a
>>>>> separate service ("writecheck") specifically and only for students who can
>>>>> see, for a fee, if their paper indicates plagiarism compared to the
>>>>> turnitin database without adding it to the turnitin database.
>>>> At UCF, thesis chairs are now mandated to submit all theses and
>>>> dissertations to turnitincom.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Peter J. Jacques, Ph.D.
>>>>> > Department of Political Science
>>>>> > University of Central Florida
>>>>> > P.O. Box 161356
>>>>> > 4000 Central Florida Blvd.
>>>>> > Orlando, FL 32816-1356
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Phone: (407) 823-2608
>>>>> > Fax: (407) 823-0051
>>>>> > http://ucf.academia.edu/PeterJacques
>>>>> >
>>>>> >
>>>>> >
