Blog Post 17

Some of the questions I came up with in my new research plans are as follows:

1. Do students rely on the internet or have they just learned an effective way to incorporate the use of the internet in their writing process?
2. Do they still consider this plagiarism? 
3. Do students feel the guidelines to what plagiarism is should be altered or somehow updated?

•  For question one, I picked this section in my transcript:

 "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."

-Here, I feel my participant is almost referring to him and his peers use of the internet to help them write papers as almost a part of their writing process. I'm not sure if he is RELYING on the internet or if he has adapted a new way of using it effectively by getting feedback from possibly other students who are online and seeking the same help.

• In the case of question 2, I'm not quite sure I have any data that helps to answer this question. This is something I plan to bring up in my short follow up interview.
• For question 3, I would ask a little more about it in my follow up interview, but I could also see that I can find part of my answer in this section of my transcript:

"B: I see. Why do you think students are compelled to do this though? Do you think students don't have a good writing process that works for them?

J: That could definitely be a possibility. I think a lot of us students are expected to know how to come up with all these great ideas, or expected to know how to write a good paper. I'm a psychology major and my first few years I had a bunch of just general English classes and almost every professor had different expectations and had different ideas on what was right and what wasn't. Coming out of high school, not everything I was taught was acceptable but I didn't know that. There just wasn't anything I had learned in between to bridge that gap on learning how to write a GOOD paper that met all the right guidelines you know what I mean? So I just had to wing it depending on who was grading my paper. And when I could use the internet I did, without hesitation. But I wouldn't say I was cheating though."

-In this section, I feel my participant is partially answering my question by saying "There just wasn't anything I had learned in between to bridge that gap on learning how to write a GOOD paper that met all the right guidelines..." & "almost every professor had different expectations and had different ideas on what was right and what wasn't. Coming out of high school, not everything I was taught was acceptable but I didn't know that." I feel like he is expressing the complications within plagiarism and how the level of importance changes from professor to professor so he must "wing it" which would lead him to always change the criteria for what exactly plagiarism is.