Dear English Department,
I had a good talk with my group yesterday at the Write Boston PD. I presented the problem of plagiarism to my group; I wonder sometimes if my students even know they are doing it. My group advised me to maintain zero tolerance for copying and to do some explicit instructions on what constitutes plagiarism. Those people are rockstars.
To all, especially Jennifer,
ReplyDeleteWhile discussing the problems with preventing and detecting plagiarism, my group came up with a solution that may help the entire department. Maybe we could enlist the help of the librarians to develop a video (or other format of presentation) on plagiarism which could be shown each year? The first district I worked in had a video that the librarian made which covered all aspects of plagiarism: what it is, real life consequences, how to avoid it by properly imbedding quotes and using citations, etc.
Our group thought this could be very beneficial as it would provide consistency and take the initial burden off the classroom teacher. We may still need to give some mini-lessons with modeling, but the foundation would be there.
We would know the students had been taught this material and that would enable us to have a zero tolerance policy on plagiarism.
The protocol for this session was helpful - everyone in our group had problems that we could all relate to which was simultaneously comforting and frustrating.
This is an interesting idea, Andrea. And this is the first time I've heard about plagiarism this year, which surprises me - it was a huge issue in my last district.
ReplyDeleteDo me a favor, folks... if you ever find a situation of plagiarism, will you make a copy of the offensive paper for me and refer the student to me? I can "interview" the student (and probably scare them a little). More importantly, I have found that finding out the reasons for plagiarism can be helpful in developing a plan to combat it. I'd love to do some investigating so we know what direction to take with it. In the meantime, I'll post some interesting resources on combating plagiarism on this blog.