Plagiarism
steadily seems to be on the rise as students today have unlimited access
to the web and know their way around it. They have the luxury of typing into a
search engine exactly what they’re looking for and finding countless papers up
for sale, or summaries written by professionals analyzing and giving a
shortened version of the finest literature. Over the years, we’ve all been told
by our teachers that plagiarism is wrong and that committing such an act can
lead to severe consequences. But now that we are living in an age where the web
is literally at our fingertips all the time, can it be that the web helps
today’s students to develop better researching skills? How do the students feel
about plagiarism and its guidelines? In
an effort to dig deeper into the true definition of plagiarism, I’ll be
investigating how students today really feel about it through discourse
analysis, and even what positive skills they may have picked up from relying on
the use of the web.
Over the
past few years, there have been quite a few studies that have taken a closer
look into the reasons students feel compelled to plagiarize. In most of these
studies, teachers were asked about times they've had to deal with their
students cheating, samples were examined and scholars were interviewed on their
thoughts about plagiarism and why it seems to be such a big issue. In the
article, “It wasn’t me, was it?” Plagiarism and the Web” By Dànielle DeVoss and
Annette C. Rosati, a few stories about plagiarism and either the students
confusion on the term or lack of confidence in their own work were examined
from the faculty member’s perspective. But what do the students think about plagiarism and why they seem to be doing
it more and more? Regardless of the findings in these studies, there aren’t any
researchers who have looked through the lens of a student who is actually
committing these acts. Based on an in-depth interview conducted by myself, this
study will focus on how students really feel about plagiarism, and why they
think their peers (and themselves) are so compelled to use the web for
"help", through their own perspective.
Plagiarism
in a Digital Age
Because of the many complexities that
accompany plagiarism, researchers try to look at several angles and analyze
different stories to come up with a reason why. In “It wasn’t me, was it?” Plagiarism and the
Web” By Dànielle DeVoss and Annette C. Rosati , plagiarism is scrutinized in
comparison to modern day issues where the internet serves as the main source of
students’ academic dishonesty. Both teachers believe that new research spaces,
such as the internet, has led to deeper complexities when it comes to
plagiarism. They share several stories on their experiences as teachers and
dealing with students who have committed acts of plagiarism, and share their
ideas on tools that they believe will help their students to do more appropriate research with and without
the use of the internet.
In Annette Rosati’s story, her Intro-to-Literature
student’s didn’t seem to quite understand what fell under plagiarism and what
didn’t. After her efforts to teach plagiarism in depth in the beginning of the
school year, she tells a story about a time she read through various papers on
the infamous “King Lear” that all seemed just as familiar as the last. Out of
curiosity, Rosati searched the web for whatever came up for “King Lear” and
discovered three of her students had downloaded previously written papers
straight off the web and handed them in as their own. In the next class, she
asked those three people (without calling them out) to turn themselves in
during her office hours if they wanted to save their grades. To Rosati’s
surprise, a student who was not suspected of plagiarism came to her office
asking if it was him. She asked him why he might have thought this, and he
explained that he used Cliff Notes to gain a clearer understanding of the text.
Rosati told him that was not
plagiarism and he was free to go. But to her surprise, a total of 14 other
students stood outside of her door.
In the article, they also give us several reasons as to
why they believe students plagiarize. Some of those reasons include a lack of
confidence in their work, a lack of understanding the assignment, according to
DeVoss and Rosati, some students may even commit plagiarism by not properly
citing their sources. The reasons range from complicated to simple, such as
students solely focusing on the amount of quotes and sources in their papers
that they forget to incorporate their original ideas, and students simply
wanting to free up time to work on an assignment for another class they may
feel more obligated to.
Methods
This study focuses
solely on a student’s perspective of plagiarism and the use of web for extra
help. In order to dig deeper into the student’s thoughts on the subject, I conducted
a short series of interviews with specific questions about my subject’s writing
process and how he uses the web to formulate his papers, what he does when it
comes to paraphrasing, how it helps him gather data and even how the web is
used to help his looming ideas flourish into something more analytical. I
recorded and transcribed my primary interview and based on my findings, decided
to give a follow up interview in which I recorded and transcribed as well in
order to learn more about his personal experiences when it comes to plagiarism.
In addition to taking into account what my participant blatantly said his views
were on plagiarism, I used discourse analysis to interpret deeper how the
student feels about his (and his opinion on his peers) experiences with
academic dishonesty.
Analysis of transcripts
The
interview conducted was between me and a fellow college student, J, who has
survived his entire college career up to this point without ever being found
guilty or even accused of plagiarism. During
the course of the first interview I was able to see how J used laughter to make
different meanings. J was very honest with his answers, even when it came to
the questions that revealed a bit more of his academic character. I began to
notice a pattern of laughter in his more thorough answer. After analyzing my
interview transcript, I’ll show you how my participant uses laughter to make
different meanings.
J and I dove right into the first interview after some
very brief small talk. I asked him how he gets ready to write a big paper and
he said:
“ J: Well the first thing I usually
do is write down the directions again. I like to be able to reference what I'm
really being asked to do in the paper so I don't fall off track. Then I would
start outlining some main points I want to get across in the paragraphs
following my introduction and I go from there, really.
B: Okay, sounds really similar to what I do! So when you're done with your outline and you start to actually write your paper, when do you think it's a good idea to paraphrase?
J: I actually paraphrase a lot. I think it's always a good time for paraphrasing! (laughs) It definitely helps to add in some extra info to your paper instead of just your own made up ideas, and I think it helps because it makes your paper look a lot more accurate.”
B: Okay, sounds really similar to what I do! So when you're done with your outline and you start to actually write your paper, when do you think it's a good idea to paraphrase?
J: I actually paraphrase a lot. I think it's always a good time for paraphrasing! (laughs) It definitely helps to add in some extra info to your paper instead of just your own made up ideas, and I think it helps because it makes your paper look a lot more accurate.”
When asked about his
overall writing process, J was very stern in the beginning of his answer. There
was no hesitation as he explained his usual sequence of planning. In this
excerpt, J’s laugh indicated hesitation in his answer. The laugh was more
nervous than of something humorous. Culturally, paraphrasing isn’t really a
writing technique that is favored amongst teachers and professors, there really
aren’t any set of rules as to what paraphrasing is and the concept can get a
little fuzzy for most students. J is giving the impression that paraphrasing
helps to mask the body of a paper by giving it a better appearance. The use of
his laughter here, led me to believe J was nervous and even unsure of whether
his answer was culturally acceptable or not.
The interview continued to flow and J told me how he
cites some of his sources. After explaining his logic for citing some things
and leaving out others, I asked him how he avoids plagiarism altogether. His
answer started with, “Well, I never copy and paste. (laughs)” It is
very common throughout the student culture to believe that as long as you’re
not copying material word for word, plagiarism isn’t being committed. This
belief is controversial, as not copying word for word would lead to
paraphrasing. J’s use of laughter after that statement indicates that he
doesn’t fully believe himself and it was almost funny to him. The use of “well”
in this sentence, gives the impression that not copy and pasting was good enough, in terms of not committing
plagiarism.
I proceeded to ask him one of the core questions for my
interview:
“B:
Do you think a lot of your peers reference the internet a lot when writing
different kinds of papers to help them out with ideas?
J: Yeah for sure. There are soooooo many sites out there that can help out with ideas. I don't really see it as plagiarizing though and I don't think a lot of students do either. Like for example, it's a lot easier to do this with literature classes or pys classes, or things where it's a lot of just recapping. You can ask people online what they think and get a whole bunch of ideas and play off that. Or put your own spin on things that have already been discussed online. Message boards are a great place for this, or even yahoo answers or just some sites that professors don't really like us using (giggles). Not only is it easy but it's almost like a tool if you have writers block.”
J: Yeah for sure. There are soooooo many sites out there that can help out with ideas. I don't really see it as plagiarizing though and I don't think a lot of students do either. Like for example, it's a lot easier to do this with literature classes or pys classes, or things where it's a lot of just recapping. You can ask people online what they think and get a whole bunch of ideas and play off that. Or put your own spin on things that have already been discussed online. Message boards are a great place for this, or even yahoo answers or just some sites that professors don't really like us using (giggles). Not only is it easy but it's almost like a tool if you have writers block.”
This time, by saying “or just some sites that professors don't really like us using” J creates a genre of sites that professors prefer their students not use for reliable information. Laughing afterwards, shows he doesn’t take that genre seriously, and also implies that students may just use them anyway.
“B: Would you ever add these sites to your
work cited page? or are these some of the sites you'd paraphrase on and just
leave unknown?
J: yeah these i'd just leave those out (laughs). I feel like once a professor sees those names on a paper, it's automatically trash.”
J: yeah these i'd just leave those out (laughs). I feel like once a professor sees those names on a paper, it's automatically trash.”
In the excerpt above, not only does J’s laughter indicate
that he knows leaving these sites out contribute to committing plagiarism, but
the sentence that follows helps to confirm this belief. J “feels” that these
sites will discredit his work. The word “trash” is a strong here, because no
student wants to consider their work as garbage. Knowing that his efforts may
be overlooked due to the name of a site, and not wanting his work to be
“trash”, he deliberately leaves those sites out of his paper and knows this is a part of plagiarism. Clearly,
he knows it’s wrong, but he’s also being very practical about his grades and
kind of doesn’t care if that involves doing something that may or may not even
be considered plagarism.
J’s practicality really sets the tone for his last
outburst of laughter in the next excerpt:
“B: So you're
willing to take the risk so you aren't embarrassed?
J: Ummmm... It's not really about being embarrassed, I just wouldn't want to do it over because the professor thinks the info is useless. But when they don't know I get the grade. (laughs)”
J: Ummmm... It's not really about being embarrassed, I just wouldn't want to do it over because the professor thinks the info is useless. But when they don't know I get the grade. (laughs)”
It is clear that in the
end, J’s laughter derives from being able to get one over on his professor and
get his grade without getting caught for plagiarism. J thinks it’s funny
because it’s he seems to think it is obvious this is what students do in order
to please their professor. Of course, he did not say this so bluntly. But the
use of laughter in his language helps to mask this serious issue into one that
isn’t such a big deal.
In
my follow up interview, I wanted to find out if students feel they need to
rely on the internet or have they just
learned an effective way to incorporate the use of the web in
their writing process?
B: …. So last time, I remember you said
that a lot of sites “help” you with ideas and you even mentioned using the
internet and paraphrasing was almost like a “tool” for writers block. Do you
think you can tell me about some of the ways that using the internet has helped
you positively in expanding your papers?
J:
Positively like in what sense?
B:
What has it taught you? Like since you referred to it as a tool last time, What
kind of skills have you picked up from it?
J: Uhhh….. Ok, I would say that while
i’m surfing the web for new things to put in my paper, or like while I’m on
forums or asking questions on Answers (hahaha) I think over time I learned just
what to ask the other people im talking to online. Or I learned what to type
into my search and which links to click on to find what I really need.
Basically I feel like im getting better info because I’m asking things we
didn’t go over in class or that’s not in plain sight in the book we read or
something. A lot of times you can ask your professor these things but they are
kinda vague because they never want to GIVE you the answer. Which I mean I get
it but sometimes it’s good to see all the different responses you get, all of
them right and you can pick which ones you want to draw your own ideas off.
Does that make sense? (laughs)
My data clearly shows that this student is fully aware of
the negative stigma that comes along with using the web loosely to gather valid
information, but it also shows how this student, and probably others, feel the
internet helps contribute to their writing process in several ways. J
feels that by endlessly searching the web and deeming some things and
appropriate and others as not, he is learning how to identify validity in his
sources in comparison to sites he considers to contain nothing with strong
facts. In addition, he also feels that he is digging deeper into the assignment
outside of the classroom, furthering
his own knowledge on the subject, by searching for answers to questions that
derive from the newfound information he is stumbling upon while using the web
for help. These skills are skills that can be very beneficial to so many
students in and outside of the classroom. Things only seem to get fuzzy when it
comes to the definition of plagiarism, that is seemingly subject to change from
teacher to institution.
J describes plagiarism, just how most students (or
anyone) would describe plagiarism. He says, “I would define plagiarism as....
taking another person's complete work or even a piece of it word
for word and claiming it as your own, original idea. That is definitely
plagiarism.” In the article “It wasn’t me, was it?” Plagiarism and the Web” By
Dànielle DeVoss and Annette C. Rosati, unfortunately, we are never really given
a definition as to what plagiarism even is. Although Rosati explains that she
teaches her class the ins and outs of plagiarism, she never defines it for us.
Limitations of the
Study
The limitations of my
study include the fact that I only interviewed one student out of the many
students out there. Due to time and the length of research required for my
paper, I was not able to gather more data as it may have exceeded the
requirements. If I was able to, I would interview more students from a variety
of majors and even different class levels (freshmen, sophomores, juniors,
seniors) and maybe even see how the ideas and thoughts on plagiarism vary
between educational experience.
Conclusion
To conclude, the
perspective of plagiarism to students is a lot different from that of the
teacher’s. Having a closer look into the student’s mind shows us how students
actually learn a lot useful skills from using the web for help. We are also
better able to see how tech savvy students have a fuzzy understanding of what
plagiarism is and long for some knowledge on how to use the internet’s sources
efficiently while still being “safe” from cheating. In the future, further
research should include seeking out effective tactics on teaching plagiarism,
using the web to better help develop research skills, and possibly rethinking
the criteria for plagiarism altogether so that it is more specific and up to
date with the times.
