Comments on: How to not get caught plagiarizing

By: John Mashey

John Mashey — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 04:28:33 +0000

In early 1970s, I was teaching CMPSC at Penn State, including an operating systems course usually rated the most work/credit. A big chunk of the grade was a final programming project, for which I gave out suggestions at beginning of course. I told them anyone caught plagiarizing would get flunked, and a few did each term.
a) The overall project was the same, but suggestions were subtly different, so copying a deck of cards from previous term was obvious.
b) They didn’t know that every week I got a list by student of every job they’d run. Needless to say, someone who turned in 1000-line program having run it once or twice was also obvious.
But most important, I often got thanked by honest students. This was in era when many would be working late in computer center to get faster turnaround and they knew who they never saw there.
They did not want their hard work devalued.
Some mentioned employment prospects – they figured that companies who were happy with earlier graduates would hire more.
Anyway, I always thought the real purpose of plagiarism detection was protection of the honest students.

By: Christopher Winter

Christopher Winter — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 20:40:19 +0000

You wrote: 3) It does not matter if you did not mean to plagiarize or if you did it by accident or if your dog did it while you were not looking or whatever. Plagiarism is when you hand in work that consists wholly or in part of the work of another, unattributed. It does not matter how it got there. It does not matter what your intent was. It only matters that someone else’s work was passed off as yours. While I take all of the points you make in this article, I must point out that there could be extenuating circumstances for the accidental case you describe. Those circumstances would be that the student had always been careful in prior work to attribute his or her sources. In that case, I think the possibility of leniency should exist.

By: dean

dean — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 19:10:51 +0000

We require semester papers from students in our introductory stat classes: some faculty assign a basic bit of data analysis to perform and write up, some post a list of journal articles (nursing, management) that are at an appropriate level and require students select three to review. The assignments are usually quite popular but there will typically be two or three duplicate papers submitted by kids who wait until the final days to do the work. The duplication of material is always immensely high, and quite often the efforts of those responsible are so lame that the “information” items in Word will show that one paper has had a long editing time, the other only a minute or two, and they have the same author and were typed on the same person’s computer.

Which brings me to my favorite case. I had two projects turned in by guys in two different sections. The same project: same title page, same APA errors, same text, same length. Both authored by the same person, a woman. I assign zeros, do the paper work, and go to the required meetings with each of them and our chair. The first guy admits that it was his girlfriend who typed his paper. Meeting with the second guy: “It was my girlfriend who typed the paper.” We initially wrote it off as a standard ploy: further digging around to find the real author showed both guys were telling the truth: she was dating both of them but neither knew. Hilarity ensued for us — I’m assuming it didn’t for them.

So another way to avoid being caught cheating/plagiarizing: don’t be an idiot.

By: How to not get caught plagiarizing - Greg Laden's Blog

How to not get caught plagiarizing - Greg Laden's Blog — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 01:48:23 +0000

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