Plagiarism, and i'm suddenly worried about my chaotic study skills
Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/elearning/showcase/plagiarism/
I'm currently working on an interactive learning object that aims to teach students and staff about plagiarism, both blatant and unintentional, and the study skills that can be used to avoid it. The text for this was written by Piotr Kuhiwczak of the Centre for Translation Studies.
At the same time i'm working on writing a PhD proposal. This writing process has almost imediately converted a small room in our house into a chaotic array of books opened out at key points, along with scraps of paper with quotations and notes scribbled on them. Slowly this is being synthesised into a new text that is, hopefully, quite innovative and definitely my own.
And now I'm somewhat alarmed, because I can see exactly what Piotr means when he says that a lack of good study skills can cause inadvertant plagiarism. For exampe, if I don't keep good references with those scribbled notes, how easy would it be for Deleuze's words to accidentally be rephrased as my own? I can do something about this now, and I will try to be more organized. But it makes me quite amazed that i've managed to get through years of education, three different university courses, without ever learning good study skills.
Something must be done about this right away! Perhaps some helpful learning objects and a Warwick Skills Programme should be invented? Oh, of course they already have been invented. I wish they were available when I was an undergraduate. Young people today don't know just how lucky they are.
Robert O'Toole
07 Sep 2004 08:12
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[Skip to the latest comment]Steven Carpenter
What you need is a Notes and References category in your blog.
07 Sep 2004, 08:59
Robert O'Toole
See the Klee entry? That's a quote with some notes. Collecting items like that is a major part of how I write, and I guess that is true of most Arts and Humanities work. We could have a template for them in which the correct referencing of the quotation has to be made. It could even get the reference from Amazon or the library.
But beyond that there needs to be a way of connecting up these entries into some kind of manageable organisation. We shouldn't go overboard on categories, they are too inflexible and too simple, so a Quotes category will be fine. It's the links between entries that are important. At the moment there are follow up 1-to-1 links. I'm finding that too limited. There needs to be 1-to-many and even many-to-many. Perhaps even different types of link such as "summarises" when one entry summarises a group of other entries. Add to that a way of visually representing the links, and I think we have a superb writing tool.
07 Sep 2004, 09:18
I almost inadvertently fell into plagarism when writing up my MA dissertation. I took copious notes in various notepads, and of course when I came to pull it all together had a job of locating a few references and making sure I wasn't simply re-writing someone elses thoughts. I wasn't offered any help on such study skills, and I can see how some guidelines beforehand would help avoid the pitfalls.
07 Sep 2004, 09:52
Robert O'Toole
Our planned use of plagiarism detection software is very sensitive to this. We don't want lots of students to get into trouble just because they have mixed up their notes, so any use of the detection software must be matched by support for the students in understanding how to avoid plagiarism.
07 Sep 2004, 10:06
I honestly think the whole problem is overblown and I can't believe anyone else hasn't mentioned this. The fact is, we spend our whole lives rephrasing other people's words and thoughts with a little spice of our own…..Being paranoid about it actually cripples the academic thinking process. "on the shoulders of giants" and all…. Oh, and was it T.S. Eliot who said, "Bad writers borrow other's ideas, brilliant writers steal them."?
09 Sep 2004, 09:09
I beg to disagree with J Jameson. While no one would deny the value of learning from great masters it is simply wrong to make use of their words or ideas without admitting it or acknowledging it. The issue of plagiarism is not overblown, in fact it requires more attention from all those involved in (higher) education. You only need to mark a few student papers to realise the serious implication of poor referencing.
I tried the plagiarism test and was surprised I didn't get all 5 questions right:
link
07 Oct 2004, 22:11
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