[Air-l] RE: plagiarism

Ed Lamoureux ell at hilltop.bradley.edu
Thu Mar 21 14:11:54 PST 2002


Bradley's university-wide policy can not be ammended by individual
professors. If a student is accused of plagiarism, a report must be filed
with our judicial system. The student can get a "0"/ "F" on the
assignment, but not in the course (unless the loss of points leads to an
overall low % and earned failure). The faculty member would expect to be
asked for proof.

I had a student sub in an entire paper last year. He flunked the
assignment. I caught him by reading the paper, deciding that it wasn't
student work, and searching for it. Found it right off. 

I spin assignments (never the same one twice); I make my assignments very
specialized to my course (making it somewhat difficult to use
foreign/imported/lifted stuff) and I grade very carefully.

"The trouble" isn't much worse, from my experience, than it was
"before." In fact, I think it's generally easier to catch cheaters now
than it was before search engines. I gave up spending long nights in the
library trying to track down obscure references . . . the kids would just
come back with "well, I found that at the library AT HOME" . . . and I was
pretty much outta luck.

One addition: our students are increasingly worse at differentiating
between quality information and junk (let alone between good and bad
research). [all undergrads here]
peace


Edward Lee Lamoureux, Ph. D.
Associate Professor, 
Speech Communication and Multimedia
Editor, Journal of Communication and Religion
Bradley University
Peoria IL 61625
ell at bradley.edu
http://hilltop.bradley.edu/~ell
Fax: 309-677-3446






More information about the Air-L mailing list