Weekend and stuff

[cjtremlett]

It was an awesome weekend. Starting with some SciFi - an awesome episode of B5, where it starts to show how amazing that show got to be, the Doctor Who christmas special, which was better than I'd thought it was when I saw a lousy downloaded version (sound out of sync for about half of it), and more amazing BSG. I -really- hope the ending of the

Comments

[je_reviens]

There was an article in the local paper today about plagiarism not being taken seriously enough by universities, bc the accused are high ranking faculty at academic institutions. One really big example in the article was the head of the engineering dept at a big university. Apparently the overseeing committee decided that while yes, whole sections of his thesis --sometimes half a page or more -- were lifted wholesale from other sources and not cited, engineering only requires that the writer be able to solve the problem in the thesis. Not how he got there.

[cjtremlett]

This is a five page class paper. Policy is, as far as I know, that the assignment gets a zero and we keep a record of the plagiarism. If the same student plagiarizes again, I think the standard is they fail the course, though there may be variations. If the same student is caught three times, they're expelled. This is for stuff like class papers. Bigger things have more serious consequences, at least on the books.

I've heard of any number of cases like the one you mentioned. Sure doesn't make the profession look good. And yes, there seems to be a greater likelihood to take action the smaller the assignment is and the lighter the consequences. It's easy to give an undergrad a zero for one assignment. It's more complicated to get any student expelled, and of course it's a huge deal to prove a professor, especially a tenured professor, has plagiarized, which should lead to them being thrown out in disgrace, and having their degree revoked.

[je_reviens]

The article mentioned they now run these through software programs to detect plagiarism. How do you do it? Do students have to actually print out their papers any more or are they allowed to simply email them to you? Do you have an online service you use or do you simply know every single book and website they might possibly use in their research?

[cjtremlett]

I'm a bit old-fashioned - I don't like marking papers electronically. I prefer to print them out and write comments by hand. (And make them suffer with my handwriting

[disarray2]

I totally didn't even think that Chief's kid was half cyclon until this episode. Then when I saw that kid, it was like o shit.

[lordling]

Oh hay tharr. Uhh, just moved to this account from direharbinger, so I've added you from here. ^^