Cheating, etc
Lots of presentations talking about all the possible forms of cheating today. It makes sense, after all being a University our product, the value we really add to the world is new knowledge. Therefore if you are in some way not doing it, or pretend to been doing it or geting someone elses knowledge and treating it as yours is about the same as taking a car home if you work on a car industry, or taking money out of the vaults if you work in a bank. By the emnphasis given to that matter today it looks like this is quite an usual issue It remindes me of a situation that happened when I was finishing my economy degree, in which a good friend of mine was caught copying stuff for his final dissertation. We shared the same supervisor - great teacher, by the way - and this guy out of shame just disapeared. He ended up being allowed to try to submit something new in 6 months time, did it properly, graduated and as far as I know is doing well.
Anyway, I`ve got two complaints about this discussion today. It is a very important matter, no doubt about that but we had to go through that discussion at least 3 times in the day. The second is that I got a bit annoyed by the tone of one of the lecturers. Was a very well fundamented presentation about a very important matter, but in some moments I think it was a bit harsh, it felt a bit like we were all guilty until proven innocent when it should be the other way around. But thats my only complaint, and a very litlle one too, about the program so far. I`m really impressed and proud. All the lectures were very inteligent, professional people who had really done they work before coming to talk to us.
That`s a bit of what I`ve learned today.
02 Oct 2008 20:45
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Lee Davis
Despite all the warnings on plagiarism there is nearly always still at least one person who gets caught for doing just that.
02 Oct 2008, 23:59
Sue
It’s funny isn’t it, when my son was very little his teacher put them all into groups of five and each one had the name of a wild animal, he was in the “Cheetahs” and I remember him coming home from school that first day and being so proud that he was in the group named after the fastest animal on earth, he was dead chuffed about it throughout the whole year. Yet when it’s spelt another way it’s something to be frowned upon.
03 Oct 2008, 10:38
Scott Bowler
The funny thing is that while at school and university cheating is frowned upon – as soon as you get into the real world and business its the people who know how to cheat (or bend the rules) who tend to get the results. I personally don’t “cheat” but I believe the thought process behind it is actually very valuable for critical thinking and coming up with ideas that others may not have thought of.
03 Oct 2008, 16:24
I never had problem with plagiarism when i was studying before, but I can see how it is a problem for English as second language students, very often the temptation of “his English is better than mine” or “I can’t put my meaning into words” becomes too great. At the end of the day, we’re all paying a lot of money for this course, what is the point if we learn nothing except for a simple act of copyand paste which some 5 yr kid can do just as well if not better.
04 Oct 2008, 13:07
Paul Roberts
As we discussed, plagiarism has been an increasing problem over the past few years. It is a matter of academic integrity. How can a qualification be of any value when a significant percentage of it is the work of other people? Can there be any learning if much of the work is the result of cut and paste? As Louis said, studying at Warwick for a year costs a lot of money and it is only good value if skills of comprehension, analysis and communication are enhanced through effective study.
Most people who plagiarize are easily caught and those who make it difficult to detect would better spend their time and ingenuity learning instead of cheating and this in turn, would enable staff to spend more time helping everyone to learn rather than detecting cases of plagiarism. So if the message came over in a stern manner, it was so that it would be remembered in a few months time when the ease of taking short cuts to get a piece of work submitted on time could become a temptation.
One of the best ways of avoiding this temptation is to spend some time in the early phase of this course when the time pressures are not great, on time management. Even if you take two weeks holiday during this study year, only about 25% of the week needs to be spent in study which surely leaves sufficient time for non-academic activities to be fully enjoyed too.
05 Oct 2008, 17:57
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