Most of the replies concerning the plagiarism thread have so far dealt with the wholesale buying or stealing of papers. What I encounter much more often (in fact, twice already in a group of papers I'm grading) is students "borrowing" sentences from various sources that they then combine into a fairly coherent paper (without quotation marks, of course). In one case in particular, a student borrow sentence 1 from one source, sentence 2, from another source, etc. The resulting paragraph actually read quite well -- unfortunately, it wasn't the student's own work. What I do is bring the person in, discuss the problem, and give them an opportunity to rewrite the paper. I explicitly tell them that they only get the one chance to clean the whole thing up. (Once I've found an instance of plagiarism, I stop looking for more.) They know that a considerable "plagiarism penalty" will be assessed against their final grade, but at least they have a chance to correct the problem (I want it to be a learning experience). After they turn in the new paper, I scour the whole thing, and if I still find plagiarism, then it's most likely an F for the course. And yes, if you're wondering, I define and discuss plagiarism on the first day of class, have an extensive discussion of it on my syllabus (along with relevant web links to excellent resources) and have told them penalties for students that have committed plagiarism in the past. Nonetheless, I've dealth with 4 cases in the past two semesters, both in relatively small classes (~ 30 students each). It's becoming quite a problem. I'd appreciate hearing from others that have had similar experiences. What do you do? ********************************* Mark A. Casteel, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology Penn State York (717) 771-4028 *********************************
