Because of the length of postings, I'm not including Mikaila's complete note. Her posting stimulates a question that I'm very curious about. It comes out of the second point,
spend 20 extra minutes per paper assignment Googling
I am wondering how many students do the people posting on approaches to plagiarism have, and what length of paper they are evaluating.
Regarding whether it is hard to detect (and hence to decide to take the time to search for sources), while some papers are obvious (e.g., the paper i got in 1973 on migrant labor in the US never mentioned Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers...so i knew the sources predated that movement's emergence), others are not. And one can find one self looking when it turns out no plagiarized source is ever found.
Thinking about time spent on a task is important, as college admnistrations, journalists, and legislators often render significant parts of instructors' labor invisible. We should not be doing this to ourselves! As sociologists, we should be able to get a notion of the range of time commitment that this task (checking for plagiarism) entails ...and it no doubt varies a great deal depending on structural factors.
Now I do think it is awful to reduce students' writing experiences, but to reckon the costs and rewards involved I think we need some data :)
from the muggy northeast, laura
