Jump to content

Menu

Plagiarism--Am I obligated to report this?


EKS
 Share

Recommended Posts

Earlier today I discovered that another student in my graduate class submitted a powerpoint slideshow that he had found on the internet (it appears to have come from a high school teacher who actually copied the text on the slides from various websites), recorded his own narration, and then passed it off as his own.  

It says in my school's rules on academic honesty that "intentionally or knowingly helping or attempting to help another to commit an academic dishonesty" is itself academic dishonesty.

Based on this, do I need to report him?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, 3andme said:

I don't think I would report it. The consequences for plagiarism can be quite severe depending on the university. While I don't condone plagiarism, I also wouldn't want to end someone's academic career by reporting it. 

You wouldn't be ending it. That would be between the school and the individual--and the individual already made his or her choice. I can't imagine a grad student not knowing plagiarism is wrong or not knowing what a school's policies are and the risks they are taking. 

  • Like 10
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Need? Probably doesn't fall under those guidelines. Should? I probably would, but I'm in a writing heavy graduate program and that would tick me off. We're in week 10 and people in my cohort are stressed, not eating well, not sleeping enough, dealing with life crises, and STILL doing the work required. We're in a midst of one assignment that would be fairly easy to plagiarize because of the breadth of the assignment, yet we've all had it pounded into our heads since undergraduate that plagiarism is intellectual theft. So, yeah, I'd probably report because it disrespects the work that others ARE putting into the class. 

  • Like 3
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, EKS said:

Thanks all!  (I did end up reporting it.)

 

I would too. Whether they do anything about it is ultimately up to them.

I reported someone for plagiarism in graduate school, and the chairman of the graduate school investigated and suspended the individual for a year. He did return to the program after that and successfully completed his PhD, so I'm sure that there was some discussion and parameters involved. It was on a single assignment, and he confessed once confront with the facts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do not think that you would be obligated under the plagiarism definition listed to report this.   However, many schools have an honor code that would obligate one to report this behavior.  Or, some graduate programs have a separate code of conduct that would require it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, daijobu said:

Just curious:  do you routinely check student work to see if it's plagiarized?  Or did you accidentally stumble on it?  (It doesn't make a difference to your question; I'm just curious.)    

No--I never have before.  I have been taking classes with the same group of people for over a year now, and this particular guy mostly produces rambling, incoherent stuff--except every so often he doesn't.  This was one of those times.  So, just to see, I lifted a sentence out of the slideshow and searched for it on the internet and bingo--there it was.

I ended up going back and looking at some other things of his too.  I found one essay that had been entirely copied from something on the internet, and another thing that must have been run through some sort of paraphrasing app that switched every third word out for a wildly inappropriate synonym.  Most recently, I found that he did the same thing with something *I* wrote, which is just weird.

Anyway, since it goes beyond one class and one assignment, the whole mess has been forwarded to the office that deals with such things.  

Edited by EKS
  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also:  I misunderstood, I thought you were a teacher of the class, not a fellow student.  How annoying that plagiarism seems to be more common.  (My dd sees it in her online classes as well.)   Trouble is, the easier it is to steal, the easier it is to detect by searching on a few key words.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, daijobu said:

Also:  I misunderstood, I thought you were a teacher of the class, not a fellow student.  How annoying that plagiarism seems to be more common.  (My dd sees it in her online classes as well.)   Trouble is, the easier it is to steal, the easier it is to detect by searching on a few key words.  

The thing I didn't know until this episode is that there are also apps/online tools to help, like the paraphrasing app I mentioned.  There is also a thing that will write an entire essay for you given a few key words.

  • Like 2
  • Confused 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is discouraging if, as a fellow student, you are finding this plagiarism that this was not detected by a professor. If he is turning in work with "poor paraphrasing", that in and of itself should have been questioned simply for the poor quality of the work.  

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, jdahlquist said:

It is discouraging if, as a fellow student, you are finding this plagiarism that this was not detected by a professor. If he is turning in work with "poor paraphrasing", that in and of itself should have been questioned simply for the poor quality of the work.  

I totally agree.  The first paraphrasing incident should have sent up a whole bunch of red flags because it was about a novel and the paraphraser (who or whatever it was) actually substituted "synonyms" for the names of the characters!  I suspect that the professor (and all of the instructors are professors, not glorified graders) never even set eyes on it (it was that obvious).  Of course, there is always the possibility that they guy got a zero on that assignment, and I just don't know about it.

Edited by EKS
  • Like 1
  • Confused 2
  • Sad 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Holy cow - this guy goes beyond just the desperate, I'm late for an assignment kind of plagiarism and just dives right in to see how many apps/cheats he can use and get away with it? I'd almost think he was a "secret cheater" (like a secret shopper trying to catch employees goofing off on the job) set up to see if the professors are paying attention... except I doubt anyone bothers to do such things anymore.

I'd be livid. I write every single word of my assignments and to have someone else breeze through without even TRYING would infuriate me.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would be unhappy to find out that a fellow classmate in a graduate class was plagiarizing.  I would be even more unhappy if I were in a graduate program where this was going on in repeated classes and it had not be addressed by the professors.  Because you said that one assignment was about a novel, I am assuming that this is some type of English/literature class, which makes it even more problematic that the student's writing skills are so poor and that it has not been address by faculty teaching those classes.  

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 hours ago, jdahlquist said:

Oh that is terrible!  I hope there have been steps taken by the professors that you just weren't aware of due to privacy reasons.

I do not see how a fellow student would know what steps have been taken by the professor to address dishonesty.

When we have an incident of academic dishonesty, we are required to document it and refer it to a campus office that deals with it. We are not permitted to discipline the student beyond giving a zero on that specific assignment (i.e. we are not permitted to fail the student, or kick them out of the course). We never find out what sanctions are imposed by that office on an individual student. So if the professors themselves don't know, how would another student in the class?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, easypeasy said:

Holy cow - this guy goes beyond just the desperate, I'm late for an assignment kind of plagiarism and just dives right in to see how many apps/cheats he can use and get away with it? I'd almost think he was a "secret cheater" (like a secret shopper trying to catch employees goofing off on the job) set up to see if the professors are paying attention... except I doubt anyone bothers to do such things anymore.

I'd be livid. I write every single word of my assignments and to have someone else breeze through without even TRYING would infuriate me.

Yes--the bolded is something I've wondered myself.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, jdahlquist said:

I would be unhappy to find out that a fellow classmate in a graduate class was plagiarizing.  I would be even more unhappy if I were in a graduate program where this was going on in repeated classes and it had not be addressed by the professors.  Because you said that one assignment was about a novel, I am assuming that this is some type of English/literature class, which makes it even more problematic that the student's writing skills are so poor and that it has not been address by faculty teaching those classes.  

There are several people with terrible writing skills.  This particular guy strikes me as being pretty bright (possibly gifted) and having some sort of language-based learning disability.  Others have absolutely no idea how to write academic text.  And still others haven't heard of proofreading.  Then there are the people who can write coherently, but just summarize the readings, never adding their own thoughts to anything, or if they do have thoughts, they are superficial at best.  The ones who actually can write well and have something to say comprise maybe a quarter of the class.

But yes, it is disturbing that these people continue to pass class after class (a B average is required to stay in the program).

Edited by EKS
  • Confused 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, regentrude said:

I do not see how a fellow student would know what steps have been taken by the professor to address dishonesty.

When we have an incident of academic dishonesty, we are required to document it and refer it to a campus office that deals with it. We are not permitted to discipline the student beyond giving a zero on that specific assignment (i.e. we are not permitted to fail the student, or kick them out of the course). We never find out what sanctions are imposed by that office on an individual student. So if the professors themselves don't know, how would another student in the class?

Exactly.  The only way I am going to find out whether they did anything is if he gets kicked out of the program or if he is required to delete the posts in question.  

What's really funny is that his most recent online discussion post goes on and on about how "plagiarism is a crime" (his words)!  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, EKS said:

Exactly.  The only way I am going to find out whether they did anything is if he gets kicked out of the program or if he is required to delete the posts in question.  

What's really funny is that his most recent online discussion post goes on and on about how "plagiarism is a crime" (his words)!  

Are you sure those are his words ??

Where I teach now, there is a graduate honor code.  Students are elected to serve on a panel which hears honor code violations brought forward by other students.  A report is then sent out to the entire faculty and student body in the graduate program with generic information like, "The panel heard a case and found that the use of unauthorized materials had occurred..."  A particular student isn't named.  This is a separate process from the university dealing with academic dishonesty.  It does not name particular students, and sanctions are fairly limited, but it does let other students know that (at least some) issues are being taken seriously and addressed.  

The university is fairly limited, however, in what information it can provide.  The frustrating thing is that the student can make all types of claims to classmates regarding how they are being mistreated, but the university cannot provide the facts of the situation. 

You bring up an interesting question, however.  It is one thing if a student turns in a plagiarised paper to the professor and only the professor sees it.  If it is posted for the rest of the class to see, and the university knows it is plagiarised, does it have an obligation to remove the item from a post?  If a student gives a plagiarized speech to the class, is it the duty of the university to let the other students know the source of the speech to provide credit to the person who really wrote the speech?   

 

 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On ‎10‎/‎19‎/‎2018 at 4:40 PM, EKS said:

Earlier today I discovered that another student in my graduate class submitted a powerpoint slideshow that he had found on the internet (it appears to have come from a high school teacher who actually copied the text on the slides from various websites), recorded his own narration, and then passed it off as his own.  

It says in my school's rules on academic honesty that "intentionally or knowingly helping or attempting to help another to commit an academic dishonesty" is itself academic dishonesty.

Based on this, do I need to report him?

The school where I teach would not accept a complaint/report anonymously, and I am guessing most other colleges wouldn't, either.  That said, the bar for repercussions when someone cheats is ridiculously high, and the college where I teach won't do a damned thing about it unless the teacher sees it and has evidence of it; the benefit of the doubt in a teacher said-student said situation goes to the student.  Consequently, there are few real, actual consequences for a cheater.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/8/2018 at 8:15 AM, EKS said:

The thing I didn't know until this episode is that there are also apps/online tools to help, like the paraphrasing app I mentioned.  There is also a thing that will write an entire essay for you given a few key words.

There are also apps that can catch plagiarism though. They'll do a "percentage" of similar words and even can link you right to the journal, article, site etc.... that is a match. Unless the paraphrase app happens to change all significant words, I bet the plagiarism could still be flagged. 

On 11/7/2018 at 9:53 PM, EKS said:

I found one essay that had been entirely copied from something on the internet, and another thing that must have been run through some sort of paraphrasing app that switched every third word out for a wildly inappropriate synonym.  Most recently, I found that he did the same thing with something *I* wrote, which is just weird.

You'd think that would have been caught--again, if someone was really reading things. That's so incredibly frustrating!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Reefgazer said:

The school where I teach would not accept a complaint/report anonymously, and I am guessing most other colleges wouldn't, either.  

Actually, mine does (major state university).  But I didn't report it anonymously.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, MerryAtHope said:

There are also apps that can catch plagiarism though. They'll do a "percentage" of similar words and even can link you right to the journal, article, site etc.... that is a match. Unless the paraphrase app happens to change all significant words, I bet the plagiarism could still be flagged. 

You'd think that would have been caught--again, if someone was really reading things. That's so incredibly frustrating!

I have found that these apps do not catch some significant plagiarism.   I had a student this past year that turned in a paper in which she thought she had cleverly hid her plagiarism.  She went to the trouble of inserting fake references in the paper.  Turn-it-in flagged things like "Wall Street Journal", "Gross Domestic Product", and other commonly used terms in economics, but missed the paragraphs that she took from a blog site in India.   

  • Like 2
  • Confused 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/20/2018 at 4:41 PM, 3andme said:

I don't think I would report it. The consequences for plagiarism can be quite severe depending on the university. While I don't condone plagiarism, I also wouldn't want to end someone's academic career by reporting it. 

 

Exactly what are the odds, at the graduate level, that this is the first and only time they've cheated? I'm okay with ending their academic career. They're the ones who decided to cheat.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/10/2018 at 10:15 PM, jdahlquist said:

I have found that these apps do not catch some significant plagiarism.   I had a student this past year that turned in a paper in which she thought she had cleverly hid her plagiarism.  She went to the trouble of inserting fake references in the paper.  Turn-it-in flagged things like "Wall Street Journal", "Gross Domestic Product", and other commonly used terms in economics, but missed the paragraphs that she took from a blog site in India.   

 

Good grief!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/10/2018 at 10:15 PM, jdahlquist said:

I have found that these apps do not catch some significant plagiarism.   I had a student this past year that turned in a paper in which she thought she had cleverly hid her plagiarism.  She went to the trouble of inserting fake references in the paper.  Turn-it-in flagged things like "Wall Street Journal", "Gross Domestic Product", and other commonly used terms in economics, but missed the paragraphs that she took from a blog site in India.   

 

How were you able to catch on then if the apps or programs you're using don't catch it?! That is crazy!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, easypeasy said:

 

How were you able to catch on then if the apps or programs you're using don't catch it?! That is crazy!

There are a number of things that will start jumping out in a paper:

1)  Inconsistent information from one paragraph to the next.  One paragraph has U.S. employment rate as 7.9% and the next paragraph talks about the 8.1% unemployment rate in the US.  This often occurs when students have cut-and-pasted a paragraph here and a paragraph there in their papers.  Another sign is switching tenses, style, or vocabulary from one paragraph to another.

2) When a paper reads something like "When I started the company..."

3) When the language of the paper uses technical vocabulary that it beyond the student's vocabulary.  When there is wording that I know is standard wording in government documents.

4) When the paper is well written, but not quite on topic

In this particular instance there was a paragraph about unemployment (that didn't look quite right) and I looked at the citation which was an article about inflation--not unemployment.

Just putting a sentence from the paper in google, will often find sources as well, or better, than Turn-it-in, in my experience

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/15/2018 at 12:07 PM, jdahlquist said:

There are a number of things that will start jumping out in a paper:

1)  Inconsistent information from one paragraph to the next.  One paragraph has U.S. employment rate as 7.9% and the next paragraph talks about the 8.1% unemployment rate in the US.  This often occurs when students have cut-and-pasted a paragraph here and a paragraph there in their papers.  Another sign is switching tenses, style, or vocabulary from one paragraph to another.

2) When a paper reads something like "When I started the company..."

3) When the language of the paper uses technical vocabulary that it beyond the student's vocabulary.  When there is wording that I know is standard wording in government documents.

4) When the paper is well written, but not quite on topic

In this particular instance there was a paragraph about unemployment (that didn't look quite right) and I looked at the citation which was an article about inflation--not unemployment.

Just putting a sentence from the paper in google, will often find sources as well, or better, than Turn-it-in, in my experience

 

Don't forget "student forgot to remove hyperlinks". 😛 

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/10/2018 at 10:15 PM, jdahlquist said:

I have found that these apps do not catch some significant plagiarism.   I had a student this past year that turned in a paper in which she thought she had cleverly hid her plagiarism.  She went to the trouble of inserting fake references in the paper.  Turn-it-in flagged things like "Wall Street Journal", "Gross Domestic Product", and other commonly used terms in economics, but missed the paragraphs that she took from a blog site in India.   


I'm dealing with a paper like this right now. The student used fake links, switched the citations around so the information was never found at the location the in-text citation referred to. Sometimes it was on another site he had linked, sometimes it was on a more general cite that wouldn't have been acceptable as an academic source. I caught it because Safe Assign flagged one sentence in a way that caught my attention. When I looked that up, the citation was wrong, so I checked the next citation and so on. 8 pages later, not one in-text matched the quoted material. 🙄

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This whole thread has been so.... eye-opening! Wow!! Just... WOWWW!!! Students not even changing the font(s) used when they C&P? Just. Wow.

I'm a naturally speedy writer, so the thought of going through THAT MUCH trouble to fake-write a paper sounds exhausting to me. I'm going to be teaching again once my homeschooled kids are finished with school... and... so much has changed! 😑

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, easypeasy said:

This whole thread has been so.... eye-opening! Wow!! Just... WOWWW!!! Students not even changing the font(s) used when they C&P? Just. Wow.

I'm a naturally speedy writer, so the thought of going through THAT MUCH trouble to fake-write a paper sounds exhausting to me. I'm going to be teaching again once my homeschooled kids are finished with school... and... so much has changed! 😑

 

A lot of my friends in the humanities have said "If they just put as much effort into passing as they do into cheating they'd have an easy C"

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, kiana said:

 

A lot of my friends in the humanities have said "If they just put as much effort into passing as they do into cheating they'd have an easy C"

 

I keep thinking that too! Some of the descriptions of the lengths people go to to cheat--seriously, how can that be "easier" than just writing a paper?!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...