Is The Term Paper Dead?

Reader gyges writes in to tell us that the Washington Post has picked up a piece he wrote about cut-and-paste plagiarism: "Plagiarism today is heavily invested with morality surrounding intellectual honesty. That is laudable. But truly distinguishing plagiarism is a matter of intent. Did I mean to copy, was it accidental (a trick of memory), was it polygenesis[?] ... Young people today are simply too far ahead of anything schools might do to curb their recycling efforts. Beyond simply selling used term papers online, Web sites such as StudentofFortune.com allow students to post specific questions and pay for answers." The author argues that in the era we're entering, schools need to rely far less on term papers in assessing students.

Comments

Re:One possible idea...

[jimicus]

But maybe you could do something like spend 15 minutes with everyone (this would take a while, I know) and ask them questions about what they wrote, or have them give a presentation on the topic. That way even if they cheated on the paper itself, at least you know it wasn't a case of just downloading it and handing it in, and that they actually know the material.

What a good idea. We've been using it in the UK for years, it's called a viva though it's generally reserved for your final, major project in University.

It's not intimidating at all if you've done the work - just a 15 minute or so face to face chat about your work with a lecturer. I imagine cheating would probably be fairly obvious within the first 2 minutes to any lecturer who's even vaguely awake.

Re:My own experience.

[hahiss]

Plagiarism isn't just about using the the same words, it is presenting the work of others as your own. Even if you paraphrase, you must cite your sources. (This is pretty standard in university academic honesty policies.)

Granted, this is tricky to master---and the details of the case make all the difference. If a student tries to slide by a sophisticated bit of reasoning from the secondary literature, that's going to cause more problems than failing to cite the source for what appears to be (but isn't) a more commonly believed datum.