Logic for students

[robinturner]

I just wrote the following in my feedback on an essay:

1. Don't plagiarise;
2. Don't quote Wikipedia;
3. Therefore, don't plagiarise from Wikipedia.

Actually, the student in question is a decent chap who was probably just having a brainstorm at the time, though it's amazing how many students don't get this simple logic. Maybe he was so embarrassed at having used Wikipedia he couldn't bear to put in the citation.

Comments

[vret.livejournal.com]

I hope you checked that he wasn't the author of the Wikipedia article.

[mr-um2312.livejournal.com]

You know how TinyUrl hides ugly URLS's by redirecting from a short pretty one? You could imagine creating a side that redirects to Wikipedia articles from URL's that look like they are research papers!

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

I haven't had anyone plagiarize from Wikipedia, but I've caught two or three students using chunks of other people's arts reviews in my class this term. They are allowed the opportunity to re-do it, only because I've been a complete wuss. If I ever teach again, I'm going to be far less forgiving.

[vret.livejournal.com]

You are a Bad Educator! I know this because Mr. Wikipedia says so.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7130325.stm"

You're too kind

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

"a decent chap who was probably just having a brainstorm at the time"
How does "brainstorming" explain it?

My primary research is always excessive and I always end up with 4 or 5 times as much material as I need. The day I realized a method that was at once effective and honest, Ah! It's as though I saw the sun for the first time!

I found that usually a quote I really wanted to use had a nut or core that I had a hard time re-phrasing in my own words. When I thought of that as the other's legitimate IP, I then approached it differently and found myself writing around it i.e. I came up with the style that's so common in scientific papers, where the bulk of a paragraph is my own writing and the key points are comprised of slight extracts from others works, complete with that pretty little (Author, date) snippet that sets things up so dramatically.

My point: when in brainstorm mode I'm /least/ likely to need other's verbiage i.e. in that mode I'm /most/ likely to have my own wording at the tip of my pen.

p.s. I was just starting a major paper when I had my accident; I captured a snapshot of it in my wiki.

Re: You're too kind

[solri.livejournal.com]

By "brainstorm", I meant some kind of neural convulsion, not brainstorming as in coming up with ideas.

I try to get students to use tiny quotations in the way you suggest, but it's a bit of an advanced skill for them at this stage - they're first-year undergraduate non-native speakers, so I'm usually happy if they can write something like "Jones argues that 'blablabla.'"

I clicked on the link to your paper, but the Internet is incredibly slow today.

Re: You're too kind

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

s/brainstorm/brain fart
;-P

It ain't elegant, but yaa the "Jones argues that yada-yada, "Bla-bla-blah"" form I think engages the right set of gears.
And you know, in common usage it's commonplace. "Jones told me he saw the movie but didn't like it ... said "It sucked the big one"".
Now just why folk disconnect from their perfectly applicable skill set ... me.no.know ... my first faculty friend was doing well in the English department but (I think I've already told you this story.) shifted over to the agriculture department to help folk get their arms around report-writing ... a real avatar, he is.

cheers

p.s. if ever my life becomes a lot easier I think I'm going to finish that paper ... it really isn't a dumb idea: cog-psych and psycholinguistics has, methinks, something to say about post-modernism that would, I suggest, contribute to historiography.