Blog Post #8

Statement of Purpose:

• I'm doing a research project on plagiarism. I hope to discover if students use the internet as a crutch when writing papers and what they feel is the underlying reason for that.

A more detailed statement:

•  I want to really see if maybe students unintentionally plagiarize because they lack techniques that help them with their writing process or if they think their assignments make it too easy to use information online and just change it around.  I mainly want to focus on what students think plagiarism actually is, how students may plagiarize unintentionally, and why they really think it happens.

A preliminary list of sources:

• So far I have one article that explains all the things I am trying to discover but from the professors perspective. I feel this article is enough for me to help organize my study but in terms of the students perspective so my research is almost the other side of theirs. I also have about 3 subjects who I plan to interview, a former student, and two current students. All different majors.

My Plan for gathering your information :

• I will be studying students, current students, or recent graduates who have taken a variety of classes that required writing papers. I decided that it doesn't have to be all English majors since there are many other majors that require written work. As I mentioned in my statement, I want to  see what they think plagiarism actually is, how they may plagiarize unintentionally, and why they really think it happens. I plan to collect my information from my subjects at a mutual meeting place, such as a coffee shop or maybe even at their homes so they are more comfortable. So far I have 3 subjects but I want to have at least 5 to collect my data and compare. The method I plan on using is strictly interviewing since I don't really see any other way to gather my info for this!