Study and read what your text has to say about plagiarism on pages 351 and 355-3
ID: 335216 • Letter: S
Question
Study and read what your text has to say about plagiarism on pages 351 and 355-359. Discuss the following questions from page 357 of your text:
1. What are the main approaches to student plagiarism on many college campuses?
2. According to Blum, why do traditional methods of trying to prevent plagiarism often fail?
3. How have our notions of originality in college writing changed since the 1960's and 1970's and why?
4. What solution(s) does Blum offers for dealing with student plagiarism?
Part 1 -
Remember to write at least 300 words and to cite sources.
Explanation / Answer
1.
The main approaches to student plagiarism today are to remind them about original work, the professors keep reminding their students about the importance of original work and keep reminding them to follow it.
Susan Blum in her article "Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age" have very clearly written that despite the efforts of the college professors the students consider copying material for their work as common knowledge and they are not even defensive when asked about it. Seeing this behaviour of students the colleges have started to promote students for giving credit to the original author for his work while copying his idea or words. The other ways colleges have opted are promoting new ideas and implementing strict measures to stop plagiarism stating that copying words and ideas kills the generation of new thoughts, ideas and creative thinking amongst students.
2.
The traditional methods of trying to prevent plagiarism often fail because of the generation gap, the students today are born and brought up in digital age and they believe that everything which is present on the internet can be copied as they are free. They are less sensitive about the thought that someone has given time and hard work to find out the words and ideas they are copying.
According to Blum the thought of originality was born, flourished and is now waning, the newer generation has less belief in original work and after the research she saw that many of the excellent and honest students also do not consider copying as a bad example of presenting themselves.
The digital technology and media which makes it extremely easy to cut copy paste and find the relevant information in a click is also one of the reasons due to which the traditional methods are failing.
3.
The thought of originality in college writing has changed since the 1960's and 70's primarily because the generation itself has changed.
The ease in writing a document by copying and pasting has promoted it more, the students have become tech savy the methods and mediums of sharing information has become more sophisticated.
The concept of copyright, intellectual property and originality is waning in the internet age. since 1960's the world has changed a lot, it is the modern age which is also known as the age of computers where most of the things are done by computers and are done on computers.
It is also the thought of students who think that intellectual property is just "text" that is hanging in the cyberspace and it is killing creativity in college writing.
4.
The solutions offered by Blum in her article to deal with student plagiarism are: