Fighting the Fear:Plagiarism as an Expression of

Technophobia

Lanette CadleMissouri State University

A Plagiarism Pop Culture Moment

The Middleman. “The Boy-Band Superfan Interrogation.” Episode 6, original air date 7/21/08.

Clip one: 1:45 – 3:05 Clip two: 8:40 – 9:28

From Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices

Definition: In an instructional setting, plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone else’s language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without acknowledging its source.

This definition applies to texts published in print or on-line, to manuscripts, and to the work of other student writers.

Most current discussions of plagiarism fail to distinguish between:

1. submitting someone else’s text as one’s own or attempting to blur the line between one’s own ideas or words and those borrowed from another source, and

2. carelessly or inadequately citing ideas and words borrowed from another source.

Such discussions conflate plagiarism with the misuse of sources.

From Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices

Ethical writers make every effort to acknowledge sources fully and appropriately in accordance with the contexts and genres of their writing. A student who attempts (even if clumsily) to identify and credit his or her source, but who misuses a specific citation format or incorrectly uses quotation marks or other forms of identifying material taken from other sources, has not plagiarized. Instead, such a student should be considered to have failed to cite and document sources appropriately.

Plagiarism Fear Metaphors

Metaphor One: Plagiarism as Disease Diseases can be inoculated against

Metaphor Two: Plagiarism as Crime Police can fight crime

Internet Fear Metaphors

Metaphor: Three: Internet as a thinking machine without a soul Fear what we cannot control

Metaphor Four: Internet as the Wild West It's wild and wooly out there

Root Fear: Loss of Control

Writing as a subversion of control The move from mass media control to a

public sphere The breakdown of economic/social status

control. With the internet, access is increasingly less reliant on the established filters for authoritative texts (mass media, print publishers).

Plagiarism and the Internet: The Sequence from Fear to

Resistance

Fear of the unknown Technology minimalists Fear of change Resistance

Pedagogy Connections

Simplistic metaphors for a complex teaching situation lead to

Simplistic solutions that match the metaphor

Enter plagiarism detection services

From the WPA Council:

When assignments are highly generic and not classroom-specific, when there is no instruction on plagiarism and appropriate source attribution, and when students are not led through the iterative processes of writing and revising, teachers often find themselves playing an adversarial role as “plagiarism police” instead of a coaching role as educators. Just as students must live up to their responsibility to behave ethically and honestly as learners, teachers must recognize that they can encourage or discourage plagiarism not just by policy and admonition, but also in the way they structure assignments and in the processes they use to help students define and gain interest in topics developed for papers and projects.

In short,

Avoid generic, not classroom-specific writing assignments

Give instruction on plagiarism policy Give instruction on appropriate source

attribution See the teacher's role as a coach rather

than as police. Facilitation, not prosecution.

About Plagiarism Detection Services

Looks like a good solution, especially when responding to one of the fear metaphors.

Not supported by the Council of Writing Program Administrators or the Conference on College Composition and Communication's Intellectual Property Caucus.

CCCC-IP Caucus Recommendations Regarding Academic Integrity and the

Use of Plagiarism Detection Services

Before using plagiarism detection services, educators need to be aware of the ways in which such services compromise academic integrity and effective teaching. The CCCC-IP Caucus recommends that compositionists (a) take a leadership role in educating their institutions about the limitations of these services and that they (b) conduct empirical research to understand better how these technological services affect students' writing and the educational environment.

How PDS Shifts the Teacher Role

Shift from co-mentor/coach to “policing” writing

Narrows the view of originality just when, due to new media, the definition is expanding

When writing is seen as primarily property, other important and more complex views of writing become secondary or dismissed.

Fighting the Fear

Teach best practices Teach new media Facilitate (student-centered, not teacher-

centered pedagogy) Share our best practices with colleagues

outside of Composition Studies