Re: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without comment
Be sure to read the section on plagiarism in the second link, in which the customer buying a dissertation is assured that the document will be an original, unplagiarized work, pre-screened with plagiarism-detecting software! Honor among thieves, indeedKen Conca Ronald Mitchell rmitc...@uoregon.edu 1/6/2009 4:39 PM Colleagues, As many of us advise doctoral and masters students, I thought I would send on a site I came across while googling for global warming dissertations: http://www.phd-dissertations.com/ and http://www.phd-dissertations.com/topic/global_warming_dissertation_thesis.ht ml Perhaps others were aware of this sort of service, but I was not. I leave it to others to determine what lessons to derive from the existence of this site. Best, Ron PS: Note that, among other options, their pricing allows delivery within 8-23 hours for only $39 per page! =-=-=-= Excerpts from the site: PhD-Dissertations.com one of a kind and never resold Our one-of-a-kind writing is guaranteed http://www.phd-dissertations.com/guarantee.html to match your specifications! Dissertations - Research Proposals - Thesis Papers Introduction dissertation Hypothesis dissertation Literature Review dissertation Methodology dissertation Conclusion Abstract - Problem Statement - Rationale - Statistical Analysis Data Collection - Results - Discussion - Recommendations 300+ Words Per Page A discount of 10% applies to orders of 75+ pages! Our New Jersey office provides phone support from 9:00 AM (EST) to 9:00 PM (EST). http://www.phd-dissertations.com/phone-2.gif An excerpt Flexible: You can order http://www.phd-dissertations.com/order.html a complete dissertation, thesis, or research proposal, from the first page through the last page. Or, we can write an individual chapter http://www.phd-dissertations.com/dissertations_features.html , section http://www.phd-dissertations.com/dissertations_features.html , abstract http://www.phd-dissertations.com/abstract.html , literature review http://www.phd-dissertations.com/literaturereview.html , proposal http://www.phd-dissertations.com/proposal.html , etc. Optionally, our doctoral-level researchers can supplement their scholarly information, innovative ideas, and current sources with any documents that you wish to provide. If you have already written parts of your dissertation or thesis, you can provide us with your existing material. We will incorporate that material into our process http://www.phd-dissertations.com/dissertations_features.html as a basis for expanding on your ideas, proving your hypothesis, and/or refining your arguments.
RE: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without comment
We had a funny case when I was at Princeton in which the faculty member assigned to grade a senior thesis found a receipt for the purchased thesis tucked neatly into its pages when he opened it up to read. - Marc -Original Message- From: owner-gep...@listserve1.allegheny.edu [mailto:owner-gep...@listserve1.allegheny.edu] On Behalf Of Peter Rogers Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 10:55 AM To: GEPED Subject: Re: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without comment Writing Centers and/or Dean of Students' offices at many institutions have good resources for spotting plagiarism and providing background on these sort of services. I had a nasty case with a senior thesis several years ago and was directed to some good internet resources. Unfortunately, I don't where my notes from that incident have gone (I suspect that I wanted to forget it ASAP). However, there is a strong anti-plagiarism contingent on the net, the white hats vs the black hats as it were. Peter Rogers On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 10:28 AM, Ken Conca kco...@gvpt.umd.edu wrote: Be sure to read the section on plagiarism in the second link, in which the customer buying a dissertation is assured that the document will be an original, unplagiarized work, pre-screened with plagiarism-detecting software! Honor among thieves, indeedKen Conca Ronald Mitchell rmitc...@uoregon.edu 1/6/2009 4:39 PM Colleagues, As many of us advise doctoral and masters students, I thought I would send on a site I came across while googling for global warming dissertations: http://www.phd-dissertations.com/ and http://www.phd-dissertations.com/topic/global_warming_dissertation_thesis.ht ml Perhaps others were aware of this sort of service, but I was not. I leave it to others to determine what lessons to derive from the existence of this site. Best, Ron PS: Note that, among other options, their pricing allows delivery within 8-23 hours for only $39 per page! =-=-=-= Excerpts from the site: PhD-Dissertations.com one of a kind and never resold Our one-of-a-kind writing is guaranteed http://www.phd-dissertations.com/guarantee.html to match your specifications! Dissertations - Research Proposals - Thesis Papers Introduction dissertation Hypothesis dissertation Literature Review dissertation Methodology dissertation Conclusion Abstract - Problem Statement - Rationale - Statistical Analysis Data Collection - Results - Discussion - Recommendations 300+ Words Per Page A discount of 10% applies to orders of 75+ pages! Our New Jersey office provides phone support from 9:00 AM (EST) to 9:00 PM (EST). http://www.phd-dissertations.com/phone-2.gif An excerpt Flexible: You can order http://www.phd-dissertations.com/order.html a complete dissertation, thesis, or research proposal, from the first page through the last page. Or, we can write an individual chapter http://www.phd-dissertations.com/dissertations_features.html , section http://www.phd-dissertations.com/dissertations_features.html , abstract http://www.phd-dissertations.com/abstract.html , literature review http://www.phd-dissertations.com/literaturereview.html , proposal http://www.phd-dissertations.com/proposal.html , etc. Optionally, our doctoral-level researchers can supplement their scholarly information, innovative ideas, and current sources with any documents that you wish to provide. If you have already written parts of your dissertation or thesis, you can provide us with your existing material. We will incorporate that material into our process http://www.phd-dissertations.com/dissertations_features.html as a basis for expanding on your ideas, proving your hypothesis, and/or refining your arguments.
Re: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without comment
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 Ken Conca kco...@gvpt.umd.edu 1/7/2009 10:28 AM Be sure to read the section on plagiarism in the second link, in which the customer buying a dissertation is assured that the document will be an original, unplagiarized work, pre-screened with plagiarism-detecting software! Honor among thieves, indeedKen Conca Ronald Mitchell rmitc...@uoregon.edu 1/6/2009 4:39 PM Colleagues, As many of us advise doctoral and masters students, I thought I would send on a site I came across while googling for global warming dissertations: http://www.phd-dissertations.com/ and http://www.phd-dissertations.com/topic/global_warming_dissertation_thesis.ht ml Perhaps others were aware of this sort of service, but I was not. I leave it to others to determine what lessons to derive from the existence of this site. Best, Ron PS: Note that, among other options, their pricing allows delivery within 8-23 hours for only $39 per page! =-=-=-= Excerpts from the site: PhD-Dissertations.com one of a kind and never resold Our one-of-a-kind writing is guaranteed http://www.phd-dissertations.com/guarantee.html to match your specifications! Dissertations - Research Proposals - Thesis Papers Introduction dissertation Hypothesis dissertation Literature Review dissertation Methodology dissertation Conclusion Abstract - Problem Statement - Rationale - Statistical Analysis Data Collection - Results - Discussion - Recommendations 300+ Words Per Page A discount of 10% applies to orders of 75+ pages! Our New Jersey office provides phone support from 9:00 AM (EST) to 9:00 PM (EST). http://www.phd-dissertations.com/phone-2.gif An excerpt Flexible: You can order http://www.phd-dissertations.com/order.html a complete dissertation, thesis, or research proposal, from the first page through the last page. Or, we can write an individual chapter http://www.phd-dissertations.com/dissertations_features.html , section http://www.phd-dissertations.com/dissertations_features.html , abstract http://www.phd-dissertations.com/abstract.html , literature review http://www.phd-dissertations.com/literaturereview.html , proposal http://www.phd-dissertations.com/proposal.html , etc. Optionally, our doctoral-level researchers can supplement their scholarly information, innovative ideas, and current sources with any documents that you wish to provide. If you have already written parts of your dissertation or thesis, you can provide us with your existing material. We will incorporate that material into our process http://www.phd-dissertations.com/dissertations_features.html as a basis for expanding on your ideas, proving your hypothesis, and/or refining your arguments. -- ~~ Susanne C. Moser, Ph.D. Director, Principal Scientist Research
RE: plagiarism
It's rampant among undergrads - we piloted Turnitin and discovered that it's the norm for students to weave chunks of text from the web into papers. They consider this research. Often try to cover themselves by citing a bunch of sources at the end. The question is what percentage is word for word, and Turnitin tells you - generally from 15-30% is low, 30-50 is moderate, and over 50% is more blatant plagiarism Even setting specific paper topics does not help too much, the students know how to dig out online working papers, reports, discussions... And after all, plenty of students are happy to settle for the B- or C grades that come from not following the guidelines too closely... Grad level we found less plagiarism, but still plenty of it. If you are not catching a few every semester, you are not looking... I used to just use google for suspicious phrases, on a paper with generally poor English - it really stands out for foreign students. But Turnitin revealed that the bigger undetected problem was with English speakers who are better at covering their tracks. Also, google is less use with the various cheat sites behind login firewalls. Many of the sites allow you to trade papers - you get access by posting a paper. Amusingly, I was rejected after submitting an academic paper of my own! They said it could not have been a student paper...so there is quality control! An MBA marketing student I caught out treated me as if it were a customer relations problem and I was a disgruntled customer... I understand you have some issues with the paper, how can we move toward a satisfactory solution here? Have fun, David David L. Levy Professor and Chair Department of Management and Marketing University of Massachusetts, Boston 100 Morrissey Blvd., Boston, MA 02125, USA http://www.faculty.umb.edu/david_levy/
Why plagiarism?
Dear colleagues: My experience with plagiarism at various institutions is that no matter how carefully documented a case I have been able to present, the administration/upper echelons of faculty have been consistently reluctant to take any real punitive action, either because they are litigation-averse, or are loathe to dissuade fee-paying students in any way from enrolling with/staying at the institution. Without wishing to appear too starry-eyed, I do believe from experience that it is a very small minority of students who plagiarise (I would guess less than 1%); I actually doubt that the proliferation of cheater web-sites actually increases the number of cheaters. Parallels in other areas of life may be found... As professors we must offer clear moral instruction regarding our expectations of honesty and originality. Students in turn need and expect this from us. We can also be clear that we will work to the extent of our capacities to detect and punish plagiarism, for the benefit of (i.e. not effectively to penalise) those students who turn in original (and perhaps slightly shabbier) papers. At the same time we need to ensure that we do not assign a volume of work that exceeds our capacity to read it carefully, train our teaching assistants in plagiarism detection (and accordingly regulate the workload of graduate students to ensure that they have time to read UG students' work carefully) and to resist vehemently any further encroachments by administration on our available time. Cheating, is at the root, a moral problem, and I feel it is a mistake to blame the capitalists for it, unless one is willing (as perhaps one should be) to go further and interrogate the fundamental moral basis of our capitalist society. Cheers, Bill ___ Bill Hipwell, PhD Honourary Research Associate School of Geography, Environment and Development Studies Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand Director of International Projects DAI Inc. Suite 300, 67A Sparks Street Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5A5 Canada Telephone: +1-613-238-7842 (o) +1-613-799-3188 (m) Facsimile: +1-613-238-0007 VoIP: +1-613--686-1639 ext. 202 E-mail: mailto:hipw...@daigroup.ca hipw...@daigroup.ca mailto:william.hipw...@vuw.ac.nz william.hipw...@vuw.ac.nz Skype:William.Hipwell
Re: plagiarism
Armin: I love it. My experiences are not as dramatic and both occurred when I was an nontenured assistant professor. In one case i submitted and article to a well respected newsletter on environmental matters. The piece was rejected. Two years later I found an article written by the editor of the newsletter what had lifted almost all of my original paper. In the second case i submitted a paper to a California Law review on California groundwater law. Rejected. A few months later a research note written by a law student (this is perhaps the most prestigious law school in California) had lifted about half of my paper - detailed footnote comments included. Contacted the supervising faculty member and got something like he didn't understand. That was almost 25 years ago- I suspect he's a federal judge by now. Zach On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 9:47 AM, Armin Rosencranz ar...@stanford.edu wrote: I served two terms on the Amer. Pol Sci Assn's Committee on Ethics, Rights and Freedoms. One case involved a tenured professor at a major institution who had taken 150 pages of another scholar's earlier unpublished work and submitted it word for word as his PhD dissertation. After several years he apparently forgot that he had stolen the work and sought to publish it. One of his peer reviewers happened to be the original author. The PhD was revoked, but I believe he kept his job. Another case involved two endowed chairholders who claimed complete exoneration because the massive plagiarism in their submitted article was the work of their graduate student. (Nowhere in the paper did the graduate student's name appear.) armin rosencranz - Original Message - From: Peter Rogers proge...@gmail.com To: GEPED gep-ed@listserve1.allegheny.edu Sent: Wednesday, January 7, 2009 7:54:49 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Subject: Re: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without comment Writing Centers and/or Dean of Students' offices at many institutions have good resources for spotting plagiarism and providing background on these sort of services. I had a nasty case with a senior thesis several years ago and was directed to some good internet resources. Unfortunately, I don't where my notes from that incident have gone (I suspect that I wanted to forget it ASAP). However, there is a strong anti-plagiarism contingent on the net, the white hats vs the black hats as it were. Peter Rogers On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 10:28 AM, Ken Conca kco...@gvpt.umd.edu wrote: Be sure to read the section on plagiarism in the second link, in which the customer buying a dissertation is assured that the document will be an original, unplagiarized work, pre-screened with plagiarism-detecting software! Honor among thieves, indeedKen Conca Ronald Mitchell rmitc...@uoregon.edu 1/6/2009 4:39 PM Colleagues, As many of us advise doctoral and masters students, I thought I would send on a site I came across while googling for global warming dissertations: http://www.phd-dissertations.com/ and http://www.phd-dissertations.com/topic/global_warming_dissertation_thesis.ht ml Perhaps others were aware of this sort of service, but I was not. I leave it to others to determine what lessons to derive from the existence of this site. Best, Ron PS: Note that, among other options, their pricing allows delivery within 8-23 hours for only $39 per page! =-=-=-= Excerpts from the site: PhD-Dissertations.com one of a kind and never resold Our one-of-a-kind writing is guaranteed http://www.phd-dissertations.com/guarantee.html to match your specifications! Dissertations - Research Proposals - Thesis Papers Introduction dissertation Hypothesis dissertation Literature Review dissertation Methodology dissertation Conclusion Abstract - Problem Statement - Rationale - Statistical Analysis Data Collection - Results - Discussion - Recommendations 300+ Words Per Page A discount of 10% applies to orders of 75+ pages! Our New Jersey office provides phone support from 9:00 AM (EST) to 9:00 PM (EST). http://www.phd-dissertations.com/phone-2.gif An excerpt Flexible: You can order http://www.phd-dissertations.com/order.html a complete dissertation, thesis, or research proposal, from the first page through the last page. Or, we can write an individual chapter http://www.phd-dissertations.com/dissertations_features.html , section http://www.phd-dissertations.com/dissertations_features.html , abstract http://www.phd-dissertations.com/abstract.html , literature review http://www.phd-dissertations.com/literaturereview.html , proposal http://www.phd-dissertations.com/proposal.html , etc. Optionally, our doctoral-level researchers can supplement their scholarly information, innovative ideas, and current sources with any
Re: Why plagiarism?
Bill: I have used Turn it in the last couple of years and plagiarism was running 30-35 percent among undergraduates and 15 percent among graduate students. Now I explain in detail what turn it in is and how it works. As a result now plagiarism is rare. Zach On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Bill Hipwell william.hipw...@vuw.ac.nzwrote: Dear colleagues: My experience with plagiarism at various institutions is that no matter how carefully documented a case I have been able to present, the administration/upper echelons of faculty have been consistently reluctant to take any real punitive action, either because they are litigation-averse, or are loathe to dissuade fee-paying students in any way from enrolling with/staying at the institution. Without wishing to appear too starry-eyed, I do believe from experience that it is a *very* small minority of students who plagiarise (I would guess less than 1%); I actually doubt that the proliferation of cheater web-sites actually increases the number of cheaters. Parallels in other areas of life may be found... As professors we must offer clear moral instruction regarding our expectations of honesty and originality. Students in turn need and expect this from us. We can also be clear that we will work to the extent of our capacities to detect and punish plagiarism, for the benefit of (i.e. not effectively to penalise) those students who turn in original (and perhaps slightly shabbier) papers. At the same time we need to ensure that we do not assign a volume of work that exceeds our capacity to read it carefully, train our teaching assistants in plagiarism detection (and accordingly regulate the workload of graduate students to ensure that they have time to read UG students' work carefully) and to resist vehemently any further encroachments by administration on our available time. Cheating, is at the root, a moral problem, and I feel it is a mistake to blame the capitalists for it, unless one is willing (as perhaps one should be) to go further and interrogate the fundamental moral basis of our capitalist society. Cheers, Bill ___ *Bill Hipwell, PhD* Honourary Research Associate School of Geography, Environment and Development Studies Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand Director of International Projects DAI Inc. Suite 300, 67A Sparks Street Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5A5 Canada Telephone: +1-613-238-7842 (o) +1-613-799-3188 (m) Facsimile: +1-613-238-0007 VoIP: +1-613--686-1639 ext. 202 E-mail:hipw...@daigroup.ca william.hipw...@vuw.ac.nz Skype:William.Hipwell -- Zachary A. Smith Regents' Professor Environmental and Natural Resources Policy Politics and International Affairs Box 15036 Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ 86011 zachary.sm...@nau.edu web page: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~zas/ fax 928-523-6777 phone 928-523-7020 CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail transmission, and any documents, files for previous e-mail messages attached to it may contain information that is confidential or legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, or a person responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you must not read this transmission and that any disclosure, copying, printing, distribution or use of any of the information contained in or attached to this transmission is STRICTLY PROHIBITED. If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately notify the sender by telephone or return e-mail and delete the original transmission and its attachments without reading or saving in any manner. Thank you
Re: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without comment
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 studentskc 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 Ken Conca kco...@gvpt.umd.edu 1/7/2009 10:28 AM Be sure to read the section on plagiarism in the second link, in which the customer buying a dissertation is assured that the document will be an original, unplagiarized work, pre-screened with plagiarism-detecting software! Honor among thieves, indeedKen Conca Ronald Mitchell rmitc...@uoregon.edu 1/6/2009 4:39 PM Colleagues, As many of us advise doctoral and masters students, I thought I would send on a site I came across while googling for global warming dissertations: http://www.phd-dissertations.com/ and
RE: plagiarism
One step I take that hopefully reduces plagiarism is to break down the writing process. Early in the term I have the students submit a one paragraph description of their research topic, followed a few weeks later by a long outline, followed by a rough draft and then a final draft. Someone obviously could download a paper from the web at the beginning of the semester and work from there, but I suspect that this requires more planning than most would-be-cheaters are prepared to undertake. -j Jim Salzman Samuel Fox Mordecai Professor of Law Nicholas Institute Professor of Environmental Policy Duke University P.O. Box 90360 Durham, NC 27708 tel. (919)613.7185 fax (919)613.7231 David L. Levy david.l...@umb.edu 1/7/2009 12:26 PM It's rampant among undergrads - we piloted Turnitin and discovered that it's the norm for students to weave chunks of text from the web into papers. They consider this research. Often try to cover themselves by citing a bunch of sources at the end. The question is what percentage is word for word, and Turnitin tells you - generally from 15-30% is low, 30-50 is moderate, and over 50% is more blatant plagiarism Even setting specific paper topics does not help too much, the students know how to dig out online working papers, reports, discussions... And after all, plenty of students are happy to settle for the B- or C grades that come from not following the guidelines too closely... Grad level we found less plagiarism, but still plenty of it. If you are not catching a few every semester, you are not looking... I used to just use google for suspicious phrases, on a paper with generally poor English - it really stands out for foreign students. But Turnitin revealed that the bigger undetected problem was with English speakers who are better at covering their tracks. Also, google is less use with the various cheat sites behind login firewalls. Many of the sites allow you to trade papers - you get access by posting a paper. Amusingly, I was rejected after submitting an academic paper of my own! They said it could not have been a student paper...so there is quality control! An MBA marketing student I caught out treated me as if it were a customer relations problem and I was a disgruntled customer... I understand you have some issues with the paper, how can we move toward a satisfactory solution here? Have fun, David David L. Levy Professor and Chair Department of Management and Marketing University of Massachusetts, Boston 100 Morrissey Blvd., Boston, MA 02125, USA http://www.faculty.umb.edu/david_levy/
Re: plagiarism
I'll second David's warning re: undergrads cutting pasting. it's definately something to look out for warn your students against. It seems to me that cheating is going to be rampant whenever education is seen as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. A lot of my students--particularly in GE classes--are just jumping through the hoops of academia to get the degree to get the job. As such, they don't see how cheating hurts them. I try to point out the general benefits of the exercises that we assign so they can see how they are building skills that will make them more competitive in whatever field they choose. I'm not sure how much this helps, but I've at least seen the light dawning on a few faces. livwell, dgwebster On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 9:26 AM, David L. Levy david.l...@umb.edu wrote: It's rampant among undergrads - we piloted Turnitin and discovered that it's the norm for students to weave chunks of text from the web into papers. They consider this research. Often try to cover themselves by citing a bunch of sources at the end. The question is what percentage is word for word, and Turnitin tells you - generally from 15-30% is low, 30-50 is moderate, and over 50% is more blatant plagiarism Even setting specific paper topics does not help too much, the students know how to dig out online working papers, reports, discussions... And after all, plenty of students are happy to settle for the B- or C grades that come from not following the guidelines too closely... Grad level we found less plagiarism, but still plenty of it. If you are not catching a few every semester, you are not looking... I used to just use google for suspicious phrases, on a paper with generally poor English - it really stands out for foreign students. But Turnitin revealed that the bigger undetected problem was with English speakers who are better at covering their tracks. Also, google is less use with the various cheat sites behind login firewalls. Many of the sites allow you to trade papers - you get access by posting a paper. Amusingly, I was rejected after submitting an academic paper of my own! They said it could not have been a student paper...so there is quality control! An MBA marketing student I caught out treated me as if it were a customer relations problem and I was a disgruntled customer... I understand you have some issues with the paper, how can we move toward a satisfactory solution here? Have fun, David David L. Levy Professor and Chair Department of Management and Marketing University of Massachusetts, Boston 100 Morrissey Blvd., Boston, MA 02125, USA http://www.faculty.umb.edu/david_levy/ -- D.G. Webster, PhD Lecturer Environmental Studies Program University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089-0372 http://wrigley.usc.edu/research/webster.html
Re: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without comment
Don't we know that most social science theories overpredict failure? - Original Message - From: Ken Conca kco...@gvpt.umd.edu To: GEPED gep-ed@listserve1.allegheny.edu; Susanne Moser promu...@susannemoser.com Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 1:04 PM Subject: Re: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without comment 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 studentskc 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 Ken Conca kco...@gvpt.umd.edu 1/7/2009 10:28 AM Be sure to read the section on plagiarism in the second link, in which the customer buying a dissertation is assured that the document will be an original, unplagiarized work, pre-screened with plagiarism-detecting software! Honor among thieves, indeedKen Conca Ronald Mitchell rmitc...@uoregon.edu
Fwd: Re: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without comment
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 studentskc 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
Re: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without comment
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 studentskc 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
Re: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without comment
Re: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without commentWe rely on turnitin here at UMASS, as well. A colleague told me that it is possible for students to submit provisional copies of papers to turnitin, and thus game it until they have a paper which has been sufficiently baudlerized to pass inspection. - Original Message - From: Andrew Biro To: Michael Maniates ; gep-ed@listserve1.allegheny.edu Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 3:15 PM Subject: Re: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without comment 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 Turnitin's commercial success partly depends on having as large a database as possible, the student's intellectual property (assuming that he/she actually wrote the essay!) was being used for someone else's 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
Re: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without comment
I agree with those who have suggested that the key is to create writing assignments that can not be plagiarized because they are specific to the course and to require in person conferences and multiple drafts in submission. My worst case of cheating/plagiarism (prior to instituting above) was a graduating senior who plagiarized the old fashioned way by typing in extended paragraphs from books (not web sites) in an incoherent pastiche and then accused me of academic misconduct for improper grading! Thank God I was vindicated by our College Judicial Council (and the student deprived of one of his majors), but he has continued to haunt me on Internet web sites for rating professors. . . It does me good to know that my male colleagues are also visited by this nonsense ;-) Welling B. Welling Hall, Ph.D. Professor of Politics and International Studies Plowshares Professor of Peace Studies Director of Model UN Program Earlham College Richmond, IN 47374-4095 USA Email: mailto:welli...@earlham.eduwelli...@earlham.mailto:welli...@earlham.eduedu Voice: 765.983.1208 Fax:765.983.1207 Model UN page: http://www.earlham.edu/~modelun Those of us who work in universities should have it as our aim to make young people understand that all existing social systems have a history. None of them is natural or inevitable. We have made them all, including the disgracefully primitive international system. We have to remove from the minds of the young . . . the disempowering idea that what happens to exist now is inevitable and permanent. (Philip Allott, The Health of Nations, p. 154) Political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe. As it distinguishes between truth and opinion, so it distinguishes between truth and idolatry. . . There is a world of difference between the belief that all nations stand under the judgment of God, inscrutable to the human mind, and the blasphemous conviction that God is always on one's side and that what one wills oneself cannot fail to be willed by God also. (Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, p. 13) I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. E.B. White, writer(1899-1955)
Re: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without comment
That can be possible - but when you set it up set it up so they only have one shot. On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 1:55 PM, Peter Haas h...@polsci.umass.edu wrote: We rely on turnitin here at UMASS, as well. A colleague told me that it is possible for students to submit provisional copies of papers to turnitin, and thus game it until they have a paper which has been sufficiently baudlerized to pass inspection. - Original Message - *From:* Andrew Biro andrew.b...@acadiau.ca *To:* Michael Maniates mmani...@allegheny.edu ; gep-ed@listserve1.allegheny.edu *Sent:* Wednesday, January 07, 2009 3:15 PM *Subject:* Re: thesis and dissertation writing -- noted without comment 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 Turnitin's commercial success partly depends on having as large a database as possible, the student's intellectual property (assuming that he/she actually wrote the essay!) was being used for someone else's 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
FW: [bioplan] A drop in the Ocean?
FYI for those that address oceans issues, some nice new summary pieces by the Economist in a special section this week. See links below. wil Dr. Wil Burns, Editor in Chief Journal of International Wildlife Law Policy 1702 Arlington Blvd. El Cerrito, CA 94530 USA Ph: 650.281.9126 Fax: 510.779.5361 ji...@internationalwildlifelaw.org http://www.jiwlp.com SSRN site: http://ssrn.com/author=240348 Skype ID: Wil.Burns # Troubled waters http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12798458 # Scramble for the seabed http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12798472 # The curse of carbon http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12798428 # More abused than used http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12798510 # Plenty more fish in the sea? http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12798502 # Come, friends, and plough the sea http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12798536 # Grabbing it all http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12798494 # An Icelandic success http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12798518 # Saline solutions http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12798526 # Sources and acknowledgments http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12798442
Re: plagiarism
In some of my courses in recent years, I have simply stopped having students do research papers because ALL of them (or nearly all) have some kind of plagiarism. Doing research is important, but if done that way, the value is lost. Instead of research papers, I have assigned more very short papers, written summaries and assessments of readings, etc, and raised the value of in-class participation way up (routinely 50% in upper-level courses; participation being defined as adding value to class discussions and showing evidence of doing reading and thinking about it; I don't give credit for just showing up). Other ways around the problem are to have students write up their research findings in an exam format (just sit in class and write what they have learned from the research), and so forth. All of these are surrendering, to be sure, but realistically I don't think we are capable of catching, or having time to catch, such widespread plagiarism. What's most annoying is how shameless students can be. This drives me nuts. One of my recent senior thesis students plagiarism nearly all of his thesis (despite numerous warnings I give to all students). I gave him an F, of course. But, despite the thesis being worth two courses, he still graduated on time. He had taken two extra courses and met other requirements. He steered clear of me at graduation and showed no remorse. He beat the system even though he got caught. But I assume others graduated without getting caught. Just my two cents worth... Paul On Thu, January 8, 2009 02:50, DG Webster wrote: I'll second David's warning re: undergrads cutting pasting. it's definately something to look out for warn your students against. It seems to me that cheating is going to be rampant whenever education is seen as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. A lot of my students--particularly in GE classes--are just jumping through the hoops of academia to get the degree to get the job. As such, they don't see how cheating hurts them. I try to point out the general benefits of the exercises that we assign so they can see how they are building skills that will make them more competitive in whatever field they choose. I'm not sure how much this helps, but I've at least seen the light dawning on a few faces. livwell, dgwebster On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 9:26 AM, David L. Levy david.l...@umb.edu wrote: It's rampant among undergrads - we piloted Turnitin and discovered that it's the norm for students to weave chunks of text from the web into papers. They consider this research. Often try to cover themselves by citing a bunch of sources at the end. The question is what percentage is word for word, and Turnitin tells you - generally from 15-30% is low, 30-50 is moderate, and over 50% is more blatant plagiarism Even setting specific paper topics does not help too much, the students know how to dig out online working papers, reports, discussions... And after all, plenty of students are happy to settle for the B- or C grades that come from not following the guidelines too closely... Grad level we found less plagiarism, but still plenty of it. If you are not catching a few every semester, you are not looking... I used to just use google for suspicious phrases, on a paper with generally poor English - it really stands out for foreign students. But Turnitin revealed that the bigger undetected problem was with English speakers who are better at covering their tracks. Also, google is less use with the various cheat sites behind login firewalls. Many of the sites allow you to trade papers - you get access by posting a paper. Amusingly, I was rejected after submitting an academic paper of my own! They said it could not have been a student paper...so there is quality control! An MBA marketing student I caught out treated me as if it were a customer relations problem and I was a disgruntled customer... I understand you have some issues with the paper, how can we move toward a satisfactory solution here? Have fun, David David L. Levy Professor and Chair Department of Management and Marketing University of Massachusetts, Boston 100 Morrissey Blvd., Boston, MA 02125, USA http://www.faculty.umb.edu/david_levy/ -- D.G. Webster, PhD Lecturer Environmental Studies Program University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089-0372 http://wrigley.usc.edu/research/webster.html
