Thursday, May 03, 2007

Academic Dishonesty


Several years ago I started the process of accusing a student of academic dishonesty for handing in the same paper to two different courses. But I was advised that I didn't have a strong case, because Clemson's statement about academic integrity doesn't specifically cover that. Since then I have had a statement in my syllabus that cheating includes handing in the same paper to two different courses without permission of the instructors.

A few weeks ago I received a paper that Turnitin.com rated as 89% duplicating a paper turned in to another course at Clemson University a year and a half ago. I filed my statement charging the student with academic dishonesty. I've had several of these before, usually plagiarism from the web, and in the other cases the students have waived their right to a hearing. This student requested a hearing, which was held today. As he talked about how he was so proud of the paper he had written for another course and then submitted again, I felt sorry for him.

The shocker came when he was found guilty. I was prepared to give him a 0 on the assignment as his penalty. Instead I was told that I wasn't being asked to determine the penalty because this was a second offense. Suddenly the whole situation looked different.

1 comment:

Joann said...

We start the process of teaching our 9th graders about citations, but they don't understand why it's so important to us. They treat it as some kind of teacher quirk, but feel they own anything on the web and that all is as valuable as any There is not discriminating taste, nor judgement, nor understanding about intellectual property. I find it very surprising that we're teaching the idea in the 9th grade. Why hasn't this been introduced much earlier?