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No one is accusing you of cheating. Do you refuse to let professors grade your papers, because if they do they're implying that you have gotten every question w
by Zev 16y ago
No one is accusing you of cheating. Do you refuse to let professors grade your papers, because if they do they're implying that you have gotten every question wrong?
Well, the head of the department all but accused me of cheating because I went and spoke to her about the use of TurnItIn. If I had to guess, I'd say that the only reason she didn't do so outright was because I hadn't turned in (or written, at that) anything yet. Nor is it like I refused to have my work graded; I tried to find alternate methods of handing my work in.
And any professor who talks about academic trust is someone you should avoid, because they're lying. Part of academia is about verification and refutation. If you can't validate work, you don't believe it. Now it may be the case that you choose not to validate it, maybe due to trust of the author, but that trust has been gained not something granted to all academics.
"Academic Trust" is usually mentioned in the context of "school policy" and something thats required on the syllabus. I've never had a professor say "Well, I trust you. You don't have to use any sources." (However nice that would be.)
I'm not saying to not verify or validate the work. I am saying that if I take the time to cite my sources in whatever format the professor specifies, the professor should be able to determine if I plagiarized or not on their own. Really now, if someone doesn't cite their work, that should be a giveaway that there is a potential problem.
And honestly, for undergraduate work, the issue of validation isn't exactly going to be important. An overwhelmingly large majority of the time, no original research is being conducted.
- kenjackson 16y ago"I am saying that if I take the time to cite my sources in whatever format the professor specifies, the professor should be able to determine if I plagiarized or not on their own. Really now, if someone doesn't cite their work, that should be a giveaway that there is a potential problem." Do you expect people who plagiarize to site: "Cheap A+ Essays" in their references? No, you buy an essay from an essay mill. Change a few things here and there to make it fit for the class, and turn it in. You actually expect the professor to subscribe to every essay service in the world? If I was a professor the only way I could deal with this problem is to write a program that catalogued all essays from this service and do some type of text match against them. Essentially I'd write TurnItIn, but as a "theoretical" History professor with no programming skills, this is probably not easy. I just don't get how students expect professors to actually detect plagiarism in most cases otherwise. I used to grade papers in high school of my peers and while I could often spot cheating, I could almost never prove it. How did I spot cheating? I could often tell from within the context of a single paper the writing goes from horrible to exceptionally good.and then back to horrible. Likewise, I'd sometimes get 2 or 3 really poor papers and then get a paper where the student is John Hawkes. In the first couple of papers, no citations or horrible citations. In this paper the citations are perfect, page numbers, referencing hard to find journals and the whole nine. But yet, you're still often left with your hands tied.
- Zev 16y agoHow people actually cheat is beyond me; I've never had the inclination to do so. I do expect the papers to be read by a real person. And in the case you described, that should be enough for the professor to call the student in and talk to them. Whats the difference between a person going "I think you're plagiarizing" and a machine doing the same? Besides a machine doing it faster. Keep in mind what my objection is here: the storage and use of my works, not the service itself. Why can't TurnItIn do what you suggested (perhaps in a sarcastic manner) and subscribe to these services instead?