Comments on: To Copy or Not to Copy – That is the Question! http://grantmiller.edublogs.org/2008/07/01/to-copy-or-not-to-copy-that-is-the-questiona-follow-up-to-my-blog-entry-entitled-%e2%80%9cplagiarism-angelic-cut-paste-or-demonic-duplication%e2%80%9d/ Just another Edublogs.org weblog Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:10:48 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 hourly 1 By: elai http://grantmiller.edublogs.org/2008/07/01/to-copy-or-not-to-copy-that-is-the-questiona-follow-up-to-my-blog-entry-entitled-%e2%80%9cplagiarism-angelic-cut-paste-or-demonic-duplication%e2%80%9d/comment-page-1/#comment-11 elai Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:10:48 +0000 http://grantmiller.edublogs.org/?p=18#comment-11 You bring up some excellent points about plagiarism. The unlimited and instantly obtainable resources available on the Internet have definitely made what is plagiarism quite blurry. This year, I had a calculus 12 student that copied homework from another student so blatantly that he copied the infinity symbol as an 8. He couldn’t even copy correctly! The student obviously did not deny that he cheated and accepted his zero with no questions asked. He seemed genuinely embarrassed and ashamed that he cheated. Despite the notion accepted by many that today’s youth is more oblivious to the ethics and morality issues associated with cheating, I feel that most senior students do have a good understanding of what is right and what is wrong. As an educator, I am always aware that much of what I do can be considered a form of plagiarism. I sometimes take questions out of textbooks that my students do not have and use them as examples for my lessons. In the context of mathematics, no one really has ownership of most of the questions discussed at the K-12 level. Who owns the equation 2x+5=11 ? Furthermore, I always take into consideration whether or not someone is being assessed and evaluated when determining what is plagiarism. This is why I do not think it is wrong to “cut and paste educational materials that someone else created in order to educate our students”. If I were submitting an article to a math journal on how to teach a particular topic, then taking questions out of a textbook to use as examples would be plagiarism. It is our job to evaluate and assess our students but not vice versa. Perhaps this distinction has to be explained to our students so that they understand what plagiarism is and why it is wrong. You bring up some excellent points about plagiarism. The unlimited and instantly obtainable resources available on the Internet have definitely made what is plagiarism quite blurry.

This year, I had a calculus 12 student that copied homework from another student so blatantly that he copied the infinity symbol as an 8. He couldn’t even copy correctly! The student obviously did not deny that he cheated and accepted his zero with no questions asked. He seemed genuinely embarrassed and ashamed that he cheated. Despite the notion accepted by many that today’s youth is more oblivious to the ethics and morality issues associated with cheating, I feel that most senior students do have a good understanding of what is right and what is wrong.

As an educator, I am always aware that much of what I do can be considered a form of plagiarism. I sometimes take questions out of textbooks that my students do not have and use them as examples for my lessons. In the context of mathematics, no one really has ownership of most of the questions discussed at the K-12 level. Who owns the equation 2x+5=11 ? Furthermore, I always take into consideration whether or not someone is being assessed and evaluated when determining what is plagiarism. This is why I do not think it is wrong to “cut and paste educational materials that someone else created in order to educate our students”. If I were submitting an article to a math journal on how to teach a particular topic, then taking questions out of a textbook to use as examples would be plagiarism.

It is our job to evaluate and assess our students but not vice versa. Perhaps this distinction has to be explained to our students so that they understand what plagiarism is and why it is wrong.

]]>