[Air-L] Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age

Gerry McKiernan gerrymckiernan at live.com
Mon Aug 2 14:52:05 PDT 2010


[snip]
 
TRIP GABRIEL / August 1, 2010 / NYTimes
 
[snip]
 
Professors used to deal with plagiarism by admonishing students to give credit to others and to follow the style guide for citations, and pretty much left it at that. 
 
But these cases — typical ones, according to writing tutors and officials responsible for discipline at the three schools who described the plagiarism — suggest that many students simply do not grasp that using words they did not write is a serious misdeed
 
It is a disconnect that is growing in the Internet age as concepts of intellectual property, copyright and originality are under assault in the unbridled exchange of online information, say educators who study plagiarism.
 
Digital technology makes copying and pasting easy, of course. But that is the least of it. The Internet may also be redefining how students — who came of age with music file-sharing, Wikipedia and Web-linking — understand the concept of authorship and the singularity of any text or image. 
 
[snip]
 
Ms. Brookover, who works at the campus library, has pondered the differences between researching in the stacks and online. 
 
“Because you’re not walking into a library, you’re not physically holding the article, which takes you closer to ‘this doesn’t belong to me,’ ” she said. Online, “everything can belong to you really easily.” 
 
In an interview, ... [Susan D. Blum University of Notre Dame anthropologist ... and author of "Word!: Plagiarism and College Culture" [Cornell Universiy Press, 2009],  said the idea of an author whose singular effort creates an original work is rooted in Enlightenment ideas of the individual. It is buttressed by the Western concept of intellectual property rights as secured by copyright law. But both traditions are being challenged.
 
[snip]
 
In an interview, she said the idea of an author whose singular effort creates an original work is rooted in Enlightenment ideas of the individual. It is buttressed by the Western concept of intellectual property rights as secured by copyright law. But both traditions are being challenged.
 
[more] 

A few years ago I gave a keynote at the 3rd International Plagiarism  Conference / 23 - 25 June 2008 / City Campus East, Northumbria University  / Newcastle-upon-tyne, UK /  
 
"Disruptive Scholarship: An Idea Whose Time Has Come: (Re)Use / (Re)Mix / (Re)New" 

Abstract 
 
Hadrian's Wall is a stone and turf fortification built by the Roman Empire  across the width of modern-day England. ... [It was] 117 kilometres long, 

... [I]ts width and height [were] dependent on the construction materials [that] ... were available nearby. 

... [T]he wall in the east follow[ed] the outcrop of a hard, resistant igneous diabase rock escarpment ... Local limestone was used in the construction, except for ... section[s] in the west ... where turf was used instead ... . 

The Broad Wall was initially built with a clay-bonded rubble core and  mortared dressed rubble facing stones, but this seems to have made it vulnerable to collapse, and repair with a mortared core was sometimes  necessary.... [I]n time ... [Hadrian's] Wall was abandoned and fell into ruin. Over the centuries and even into the twentieth century a large  proportion of the stone was reused in other local buildings.
 
Throughout history, humans have (re)used local resources to create not only buildings and fortifications, but monuments, roads, and a wide variety of other structures. For countless generations, artists, composers, and writers have freely incorporated elements from local and  distant cultures to create new visual, musical, and textual forms. 
 
In The Web 2.0 World, the open (re)combination of multiple media has  become commonplace in many venues, practices that Lawrence Lessig [snip],  founder of Creative Commons [snip]and others, would characterize as emblematic of a 'Remix ' or 'Read/Write' culture. Indeed, from his point  of view, “the health, progress, and wealth creation of a culture is fundamentally tied to this participatory remix process” [snip] 
 
In the recently-released Horizon Report 2008 - a joint publication of the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), six emerging information technologies and practices that are expected to  significantly impact educational organizations are profiled: Grassroots  Video, Collaborative Webs, Mobile Broadband, Data Mashups, Collaborative  Intelligence, and Social Operating Systems. 
 
In this presentation, we will review the Read/Write Traditions of the  Arts, Humanities, and Sciences; analyze key Past / Present / Future  Participatory Technologies; and explore the potential of Web 2.0 for creating/fostering Disruptive Learning / Scholarship / Teaching in the  21st century.
 
Links To NYTimes Article And The Director's Cut of the (150+ Slides) PPT is available from my  _Scholarship 2.0_ blog at 
 
[ http://bit.ly/bEYvK7 ] 
 
I hope The Title and Abstract indicate that That I Have A Different View  Of The P-Word [:-) 
 
Regards, 
 
/Gerry 
 
Gerry McKiernan 
Associate Professor 
Science and Technology Librarian 
Iowa State University Library 
Ames IA 50011 
 
Follow Me On Twitter > http://twitter.com/GMcKBlogs
 
" !!! Our Minds Must Not Be Confined Nor Defined By Our Place Or Time Or Technology !!! "
 
[ http://bit.ly/cQWU8U ] 		 	   		  


More information about the Air-L mailing list