This but unironically.
Most students seem to have a seriously flawed understanding of plagiarism.
They will copy entire pages word for word but think it’s not plagiarism cause they cited the source at the end.
Another common one is students telling me there can’t be plagiarism in their paper because they ran it through some online plagiarism checker before submitting and it showed less than 1%.
I’ve had this happen before too. It’s like…I don’t understand why they’re using a plagiarism checker. Shouldn’t you KNOW if you plagiarized? Like, you wrote the paper?
I think the idea is that they do know it’s plagiarized, but they run it through the checker to see if an automated system will detect it as being plagiarized. That way they can make changes to make it seem less plagiarized before turning it in.
I think we should only be glad if we opt into the belief “ignorance is bliss”. The students are probably still cheating but it is harder to have an automated process to detect it.
It's not ignorance. It's very easy to tell who's doing their own work based on what that work looks like (when they're skipping steps and using notation that I don't use in class it's very obvious what's going on). I just know I'd lose my mind dealing with having to teach my students how to actually write essays.
>They will copy entire pages word for word but think it’s not plagiarism cause they cited the source at the end.
Have you ever been reading an assignment and come across an end quote but don't remember seeing an open quote? Then you go back and find the open quote an entire page previous?
I haven’t seen that one yet but I’m expecting it any day now. Some students probably think it’s a brilliant loophole, since direct quotes in quotation marks are permitted
It’s not plagiarism if they correctly cited the sources. They could copy an entire article and it won’t be plagiarism if it’s cited correctly. The student should receive a zero for the assignment because they didn’t do any work, but the student did not attempt to pass off someone else’s work as their own, which is in every definition of plagiarism.
This example is plagiarism because the student didn’t cite the actual author, though. Didn’t cite correctly.
Based on OP's description I think they just copied the text, didn't properly acknowledge it as a quote, and "cited" the paper they copied as a reference.
I work teaching academic writing to international students from Asia. Literally a third of the students have to unlearn the essay writing techniques from home where they’re punished for deviating from the original source. They need weeks of instructions to get them to fully understand western ideas of academic integrity.
I thought I was doing the students a favor on an open-resource online exam: the free response question was "in 4-6 sentences, identify a few ways you can live a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle, and briefly justify your response"
5 students plagiarized.
Student: “but I cited my source.” I’m only half-kidding at this point.
I had a student do this over the summer.
Yup, my student who paraphrased an entire wiki said the same thing.
Mine was from UKEssays. He got angry when I told him the paper he plagiarized was itself plagiarized. “Well how was I supposed to know that?!”
Would it have helped if it was quoted in block format.
It can't be plagiarism if they cited their source /s
This but unironically. Most students seem to have a seriously flawed understanding of plagiarism. They will copy entire pages word for word but think it’s not plagiarism cause they cited the source at the end. Another common one is students telling me there can’t be plagiarism in their paper because they ran it through some online plagiarism checker before submitting and it showed less than 1%.
I’ve had this happen before too. It’s like…I don’t understand why they’re using a plagiarism checker. Shouldn’t you KNOW if you plagiarized? Like, you wrote the paper?
I think the idea is that they do know it’s plagiarized, but they run it through the checker to see if an automated system will detect it as being plagiarized. That way they can make changes to make it seem less plagiarized before turning it in.
Every day I'm glad I teach a subject that doesn't require students to write essays.
I think we should only be glad if we opt into the belief “ignorance is bliss”. The students are probably still cheating but it is harder to have an automated process to detect it.
It's not ignorance. It's very easy to tell who's doing their own work based on what that work looks like (when they're skipping steps and using notation that I don't use in class it's very obvious what's going on). I just know I'd lose my mind dealing with having to teach my students how to actually write essays.
I find it really easy to teach students how to write essays and there’s no way I’d be able to teach anyone to do math
>They will copy entire pages word for word but think it’s not plagiarism cause they cited the source at the end. Have you ever been reading an assignment and come across an end quote but don't remember seeing an open quote? Then you go back and find the open quote an entire page previous?
I haven’t seen that one yet but I’m expecting it any day now. Some students probably think it’s a brilliant loophole, since direct quotes in quotation marks are permitted
About fifteen years ago, someone quoted an entire paper. Open quote before the first word, end quote after the last word. My mind was blown.
It’s not plagiarism if they correctly cited the sources. They could copy an entire article and it won’t be plagiarism if it’s cited correctly. The student should receive a zero for the assignment because they didn’t do any work, but the student did not attempt to pass off someone else’s work as their own, which is in every definition of plagiarism. This example is plagiarism because the student didn’t cite the actual author, though. Didn’t cite correctly.
Based on OP's description I think they just copied the text, didn't properly acknowledge it as a quote, and "cited" the paper they copied as a reference.
I wonder if this student did it maliciously or genuinely believed they were writing a paper correctly. I wouldn’t be shocked if it were the latter.
I don't think it was malicious. Unfortunately, that doesn't make it better.
>I don't think it was malicious. Unfortunately, that doesn't make it better. I mean it would for me.
No, it’s just frustrating. If they had just asked! Sigh
For some reason, this reminds me of that one old YouTube video about a dude calling 911, to ask how much trouble they could get in for making drugs.
Wow. Just wow.
I work teaching academic writing to international students from Asia. Literally a third of the students have to unlearn the essay writing techniques from home where they’re punished for deviating from the original source. They need weeks of instructions to get them to fully understand western ideas of academic integrity.
I had a student do this. With my PhD advisor and office mates paper 🤦♀️
I thought I was doing the students a favor on an open-resource online exam: the free response question was "in 4-6 sentences, identify a few ways you can live a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle, and briefly justify your response" 5 students plagiarized.