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

I had a recent experience with this

[zappepcs]

My step daughter is taking a class in biology. The first quiz is a bit of a doozy when tasked against my own knowledge, but it did bring out an aspect of this story. Today's kids are tasked with finding answers in what equates to an ocean of information compared to what was available when I was in school. Plagiarism is not good, but in this 'ocean of information' it is difficult to know what that really is. When studying, an answer from wikipedia is as good as one from another paper available on the Internet.

I think it leads to lax standards as to where the answer came from when the point is to find the answer. Term papers and those efforts required of students that require actual personal thought and effort are not dead, they simply need to be pressed with more effort. Finding information is no longer the problem that it used to be. Expressing your own thoughts on the question at hand is a skill that many people never learn, never mind figure out how to express when they are 18-ish.

It is problematic to discuss things in a black and white manner as this story seems to. The issue is not plagiarism or term papers, it is expression of thought, and that is what is endangered most by the 'ocean of information' that is now available to us all.

Re:I had a recent experience with this

[Riktov]

I know what you mean.

My step daughter is taking a class in biology. The first quiz is a bit of a doozy when tasked against my own knowledge, but it did bring out an aspect of this story. Today's kids are tasked with finding answers in what equates to an ocean of information compared to what was available when I was in school. Plagiarism is not good, but in this 'ocean of information' it is difficult to know what that really is. When studying, an answer from wikipedia is as good as one from another paper available on the Internet.

I think it leads to lax standards as to where the answer came from when the point is to find the answer. Term papers and those efforts required of students that require actual personal thought and effort are not dead, they simply need to be pressed with more effort. Finding information is no longer the problem that it used to be. Expressing your own thoughts on the question at hand is a skill that many people never learn, never mind figure out how to express when they are 18-ish.

It is problematic to discuss things in a black and white manner as this story seems to. The issue is not plagiarism or term papers, it is expression of thought, and that is what is endangered most by the 'ocean of information' that is now available to us all.

Re:I had a recent experience with this

[EvanED]

I know this joke has been used a few times here... but I laughed. If I didn't want to post in the topic, I would mod you funny.

(That's the problem with the mod system here; the topics I read enough to moderate I also want to post on. I think I've only used up all my points once...)

Re:I had a recent experience with this

[value_added]

Today's kids are tasked with finding answers in what equates to an ocean of information compared to what was available when I was in school. Plagiarism is not good, but in this 'ocean of information' it is difficult to know what that really is. When studying, an answer from wikipedia is as good as one from another paper available on the Internet.

I think the article concerns itself with the writing itself, and not so much the information per se, which, admittedly, is somewhat akin to flotsam and jetsam.

On the one hand, he writes:

My transfer from education to the world of business has reminded me just how important it is to be able to synthesize content from multiple sources, put structure around it and edit it into a coherent, single-voiced whole. Students who are able to create convincing amalgamations have gained a valuable business skill.

All well and good, right? You take information, construct a thesis, then fashion it into a coherent form. But then he goes on to dismiss the above by saying:

So let's declare "The paper is dead" before the database makes the declaration for us.

and cites rampant plagiarism as his rationale. Frankly, I don't get it. I'm not sure it even makes sense.

His other argument about students not being able to write another original statement on the subject of Jane Eyre because so many have already done so is somehow supposed to support the assertion that the problem of plagiarism is unsurmountable and we should declare defeat and run away, but I see it as misleading. People write new melodies for pop songs every day. Are we supposed to believe that someday soon we'll be out of new melodies and that pop music as we know it is really dead?

Anyone who has stood in front of a classroom knows that students often surprise you with their ideas and can offer up new ways of looking at things. Some of those same students grow up and write books or do research on subjects that have may already been written about or researched to death, the Brontes or [insert favourite dead person] included.

Plagiarism is a problem. And originality is hard, and possibly increasingly rare. Declaring the term paper "dead" is a solution in search of some other problem.

Re:I had a recent experience with this

[Admiral Ag]

I'm a professor, and student cheating in papers is pretty easy to get around. You simply keep the general knowledge of the subject questions for the in class tests, and you make sure the papers are on some particularly obscure part of the text, and require a hefty amount of the student's own argument.

Papers are supposed to test the research and argumentation skills of the students. What better way to do this than make them write ten pages on some obscure argument from Aristotle or some random lines from Milton? If I, as an expert in the field, know that it is something obscure, the students aren't going to be able to find anything to copy on the internet.

The problem here is often lazy professors who set the same paper topics every year. Then again, universities are currently set up to pass as many students as possible, rather than work them hard so that their future employers benefit.

Re:I had a recent experience with this

[Fred_A]

Or you could get them to do something that hasn't been done before. That way they can't copy it from elsewhere.

"Ok class, for your term papers, you have 3 months to turn in a working design for a (select which one applies to your students) working FTL drive, self replicating nanomachine, self-aware AI, generic cancer cure, flying car, functional economy. Now get to work."

Re:I had a recent experience with this

[jimicus]

Then again, universities are currently set up to pass as many students as possible, rather than work them hard so that their future employers benefit.

Students who drop out don't tend to contribute much to the university's coffers.

Re:I had a recent experience with this

[DDLKermit007]

Or another way is to do what my flipped out History teacher did. She made us do creative writing. Was quite the curve ball personally, but certainly set the tone for the class. Damn I never enjoyed history so much since then.

Re:I had a recent experience with this

[Gablar]

The problem here is often lazy professors who set the same paper topics every year. Then again, universities are currently set up to pass as many students as possible, rather than work them hard so that their future employers benefit.

I agree that in many cases it's true that the professors are lazy, but sometimes the problem is much worse than that. The problem sometimes is that the professors or teachers simply don't have the internet searching skills that the students have. Also most undergraduate level knowledge is already widely available on the web. So what can a professor assign you that it is within the scope of the course and is not available a click away? I think that many schools and colleges are simply not challenging the creativity of the students.

Re:I had a recent experience with this

[Teancum]

Being older (I'm 40+) and having taken a freshman biology course in the past 10 years, I hardly think this is necessarily a fair assessment of the situation.

I will admit that particularly in terms of biology, that there have been huge gains and leaps of knowledge. In the past, biology was largely an empirical science, with an attempt to build up knowledge through examples. That is why many biology research libraries have (especially older ones) huge catalogs of specimens of creatures, especially things like insects or stuffed animals, and have often turned these collections into museums. For this field there really is an "ocean of information" that has taken quite a bit of time to try and grasp to really find out what is going on.

Of course you have people like Gregor Mendel who have been working toward trying to turn Biology into a real science, and in the past couple of decades Biology has been turning more and more into something akin to a "hard science" similar to astronomy, chemistry, and physics. We understand DNA now far better than we did right after it was discovered, and the basic mechanisms of how living things work is understood at a much deeper level than was understood in the past. When I compare what was talked about in my textbook to the college biology textbook my mother had from the late 1950's, the science was so different that it is hard to believe that it was the same field. Computational power has also significantly improved to the point that problems which were previously unsolvable (at least within the modest budget of an assistant professor at a small college), can now routinely be done on equipment that is now headed to the city dump. Certainly Biology has benefited from technological developments in the 20th Century. Discussions that there may be construction of a completely artificial eukaryote, while technically beyond current biological sciences, is not nearly as far fetched as once thought possible, and a complete mapping of the human genome was throught to be impossible (or many decades into the future) but is now an accomplished fact.

Getting back to the plagiarism:.... I think the problem is not so much the students and their academic environment, other than the fact that the professors have gone through a cycle of knowledge where even their own relevance in the field is being questioned, particularly if they have been lazy and not really tried to keep up with the field. And if these professors are close to retirement, why should they bother to keep up.... other than the fact that some of their students may know more about the subject than they do, even as undergrads.

I will also say that you can find quite a bit of information "on line" about any given topic, but that information is at best a general overview and can't really be considered in depth... unless you are good at accessing original research papers on-line. Certainly stopping at Wikipedia as the final and best source of information (a common mistake for many undergrads) is not only bad but intellectually dishonest. And many web pages don't even have this degree of peer review but are random musings of one individual or another. More like a blog than anything else. To get real information, you have to dust off your skills in a university library and be able to go after other sources of information that simply can't be "googled".

If a student is lazy and tries to "cheat" on getting this basic knowledge, they are really cheating themselves. Of course somebody with a basic knowledge about a topic has often been capable of writing term papers that were filled with B.S. and made up references in the past. Today is no different.

Re:I had a recent experience with this

[mr_mischief]

Plagiarism, of course, is a matter of degree. A quote or a few quotes is not plagiarism. Properly credited quotes can be supporting evidence for a position, although it's often better to write one's own explanation of something with a footnote (or endnote, internal reference, etc) to where the fact was found. It shows much better understanding, and makes a piece of prose flow better since it's written by one author and not assembled like Frankenstein's monster. Quotes should be left to actual speech, firsthand witness reporting, or examples reinforcing a point made in the author's own words as well.

One good way to mitigate the problems of term papers is to require fewer multiple choice and more essay answer tests throughout the term, so the students have a sample of their writing on record already.

A good way to measure student ability without a term paper at all is to have academic projects instead. Students learn much more about a topic from interviewing people on camera or on audio recorder than by searching the web or reading an encyclopedia entry. Interviewing scientific researchers makes science seem much more interesting than reading science-for-laypeople magazines. Interviewing military vets is a very educational experience, too. Science projects are a good idea. Civics projects, in which students for example write letters to government officials or help (maybe even start) nonprofit groups and document their unique experience, are very educational too. History projects for periods with no living survivors are a bit more difficult, as having a whole class approach a handful of historians at the local universities and museums could be overwhelming, especially if the same topic is required of all students. Projects in lieu of papers altogether may not be a solution, but they'd make a nice addition for the students and for those concerned about plagiarism.

Plagiarism is much like any other negative activity, or indeed any activity at all (leaving morality ad ethics out of it for now). If the rewards outweigh the risks, many people are going to choose the rewards. Rewards for plagiarizing a term paper are high: good grade, less time invested, and the paper often makes up an inordinate amount of the grade. The risks are pretty low if there's no time to evaluate someone's writing. Despite what many people think, it's very difficult to determine a person's writing style from his or her speaking style, too. Only a sample of earlier writings really makes it difficult to rip off another's writing. Sifting through millions or billions of other written works to find a match is much less likely to work than to simply find a mismatch between that student's earlier writing and the current project. Making the term paper less important in the overall grade structure creates a smaller incentive to cheat. Evaluating students in a balanced way across papers, projects, quizzes, and large tests make it much more difficult to game the system, and less rewarding to do so.

When I mod, I purposely look for topics interesting enough to read but about which I can resist commenting. That way, not only do i use all my mod points (most times), but I find I'm much more objective. When your first instinct is to rip into some idiot with a post, it's hard not to find a virtual "-1, pinhead" in the moderations list. Likewise, it's far too easy to up-mod a post with which I just want to agree.

I find that with this method, I sometimes mod a post up because the author really did make an insightful post with a good point even if I disagree with their conclusion. I also sometimes mod posts down when I agree with the conclusion but find the argument faulty or trolling. If I'm overwhelmingly drawn to post, I don't think I can be so impartial in my moderation.

Countermeasures

[The One and Only]

Yes, students have ways to cheat on term papers. Professors have ways to catch cheaters though. If you assign lots of small writing assignments along with a term paper, for instance, you can pick up on your students' writing styles enough to catch a term paper that was clearly not written by them. This of course assumes your TAs can spare the time to analyze writing styles, or are capable of easily recognizing a writing style...

By the way, are the bottom-of-page MOTD's getting most and more surreal or what? Right now I'm getting "Did YOU find a DIGITAL WATCH in YOUR box of VELVEETA?". Didn't Slashdot use to have Knuth quotes and shit down there?

Re:Countermeasures

[Dahamma]

students have ways to cheat on term papers. Professors have ways to catch cheaters though. If you assign lots of small writing assignments along with a term paper, for instance, you can pick up on your students' writing styles enough to catch a term paper that was clearly not written by them.

Exactly! I was just about to say almost the same thing...

My aunt teaches geology and last year was telling me about an experience she had with a couple of students in her class. She gave an extra credit paper assignment and of course a number of students took her up on it. One was a Japanese student with fairly poor English skills, but who otherwise understood the point of the assignment. The paper was not the best gramatically, but it covered all of the points very thoroughly - she gave him a 10/10. Another was a sorority girl who was one of the worst students she had - all of her previous papers/midterm essays were barely comprehensible. She turned in something way beyond anything she had written before and received a 0/10 because it was completely obvious someone else wrote her paper.

Moral to the story? Basically what you said - have professors (yeah right)/lecturers/TAs who actually pay enough attention to know their students and what they are capable of (ouch, dangle that preposition, MY English teacher would not be pleased!)

Re:Countermeasures

[SanityInAnarchy]

She turned in something way beyond anything she had written before and received a 0/10 because it was completely obvious someone else wrote her paper.

Which, in another light, could mean you're punishing her for doing too well. I understand it probably seemed obvious, and you're probably right, but it might've been a good idea to pull her in and see if she knows what she's talking about.

One trick: Get them to read their own paper. If they are tripping over spelling and pronunciation -- and indeed, don't actually know what half of the words are -- then it's probably not their work. But again, be thorough -- maybe it's a stuttering problem?

Plagiarism is usually pretty blatant -- the more work the student spends polishing the plagiarized work, the more likely it is that going legit would be easier. So, I think you should be very careful not to have any false positives.

I find opinions like this sad

[thealsir]

Really, I like writing. I think a term paper provides a convenient package by which to express what one has learned over the course of a semester.

Anyone plagiarizing should not be in class anyway.

Re:I find opinions like this sad

[muridae]

It makes perfect sense for plagiarism software to mark a 10-word verbatim sentence as potentially plagiarized.

No, it doesn't, and that is the point. With professors reusing and borrowing term paper topic, how many ways are there for students to word a thesis statement? In high school and college English 101, the textbooks had guidelines and suggestions for turning a topic into a thesis statement that would frame the rest of the paper. These rules were drilled into my head in high school. Ask 100 students who were taught from the same book, or even just the same guidelines, to write just an introduction to a report on any one topic and I suspect you would have more then a few that over lap. In a final report, these sentences might not even show up in the same order making them much harder for a human to look at and spot the 'copying,' but a machine could spot the shared lines easily.

That's the problem. Even if a human grader noticed the same sentence in two reports they are more likely to recognize it as a statement of topic and not as potential plagiarism. With professors now having to resort to computerized means to catch plagiarism, how are they going to determine what is actually plagiarized and what just happens to be worded the same? Will the professors set an arbitrary point scale, that if a scanner reports more then 5 incidents of 'potential plagiarism' then the paper is failed? Simply by using this automated scanning the professors have admitted to needing help, so at what point is the software trusted to be right, and how easy is it for an innocent student and paper to some how end up with a failing grade or worse?

Start with cut and pate speeling

[EmbeddedJanitor]

and. grammer

Re:Start with cut and pate speeling

[heinousjay]

You laughed, but the joke's on you.

It will still get caught - it's done to be lazy

[dbIII]

On the things I've marked (some time back) there are many times when the students copied in an answer to something barely related to the question - and then three or four of their friends copied that from them. It was good to mark one, staple them all together, and divide the mark among the number of students with the same answers.

If people are too lazy to work out the answer they will often be too lazy to work out whether the thing they have copied is correct or not.

Cut and Pate

[RuBLed]

"Reader gyges writes in to tell us that the Washington Post has picked up a piece he wrote about cut-and-pate plagiarism:..."

Define:pate in google comes up with this = "liver or meat or fowl finely minced or ground and variously seasoned"

Ahhh... I'm not so sure if Chefs could plagiarize this though...

Re:Cut and Pate

[Riktov]

It's a truly fowl practice, among the wurst around. These plagiarists steal the meat of others' writing, and then, when goosed into confessing their crime, spread the blame on others.

Less Papers more projects

[cgoody]

As student in computer engineering I have never been asked to write a paper. I feel that this is the way it should be because someone can talk about a topic all they want and appear to have knowledge on it. However, if they are required to demonstrate the concept, most people will fail. This is probably why all of my classes are based on exams and programming and/or demonstration assignments. Anyone can fake a paper via plagiarism . It is much harder to fake a programming assignment short of copying someones work and making it blatantly obvious you have done so.

Re:Less Papers more projects

[EvanED]

As student in computer engineering...

What you say is highly subject-sensitive though. For instance, I had to write a paper (a literature survey) in my computer architecture course on superpipelining. Others in that class did superscalar processors, VLIW/EPIC, etc. Each of these papers went much more in depth in the given topic than anything we did in class. So if not the paper, what should we have done? In any of these cases anything demonstration-line I can think of would have been well beyond the scope of what you can do in a semester, especially in an undergrad class.

Re:Less Papers more projects

[Brandybuck]

As student in computer engineering I have never been asked to write a paper.

What!?!? No reading and composition classes? No literature, history or philosophy? No humanity courses at all? No science classes where you have to write reports? What a shallow education you are getting.

Re:Less Papers more projects

[putaro]

Definitely an emphasis on being able to actually do things is important. However, once you're out in the real world you'll find that being able to clearly communicate is as important as being able to do things. When I was in high school I wrote lots and lots of papers and my teachers (in history and English) would continually tell me how important it was to do this since I would be writing lots of papers in college. When I got to college, studying CS, my experience was similar to yours - I wrote very few papers. The epiphany was when I realized that my high school teachers had not been lying - were I to have majored in English or history the way they did I would have been continually writing papers. They simply didn't realize that their college experience would be different from other majors.

However, my writing skills have been invaluable to me since. Thanks to those endless term papers that I wrote back in high school I can:

Write a technical specification
Write a manual
Write a business plan
Put together a presentation that explains a concept or a product and explain it to another group of engineers or a group of customers or investors.

As a result (and along with my technical abilities) I've been a tech lead, a manager, a vice president and now the CEO of a company (small but growing rapidly). I've worked with a number of engineers along the way who were technically competent but unable to communicate what they were doing to anyone else which is just not useful in a team engineering environment and makes them much less valuable.

Also, when I was in college I remember in my compiler construction class at least one student had someone's compiler from the year before and was passing it off as their own. It's no harder to plagarize code than it is to plagarize a paper. You're only cheating yourself though.

Really, the right way to handle these things would be to have you write the code, then write a paper explaining how it works and the design decisions you made and then have you defend that in front of the class and take questions. That'll separate those who actually did the work from those who did not pretty quickly but it takes a lot of time to do that (which is why it's usually only done for graduate theses)

One possible idea...

[EvanED]

I don't think dropping the paper is a good idea, as it's the project-type things that are really the best indicators barring this sort of cheating.

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.

I've thought about this in the context of, say, an intro CS class. I think that a good way to do the evaluations would be to let people work in groups, but then for each assignment randomly choose 5 or 10 people who you ask about their design and implementation, "if the question changed in this way, how would that affect your solution", etc.

But if you drop the paper, what's left? Tests? They aren't really a good indication. Heck, I had a semester-long class in high school that only met formally a few times and effectively had one assigment: write and present a paper.

Re:One possible idea...

[hazem]

In one class I had that had a large term paper, the teacher required that we turn in 2 drafts throughout the term before we turned in the final version. The drafts were reviewed by her, as well as read and marked up by a fellow student.

When we turned in our final, we also had to submit the drafts with the markups. This was ostensibly to see our progress in editing and revising our papers, but I imagine it also served as a good foil against plagiarism.

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.

What's with cheating anyway?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

If a kid is motivated to be learning, then grades should be the least of their worries because cheating does not improve learning.

Anyone who cheats to get good grades is being very inefficient. It is far easier to just use Photoshop/Gimp to make yourself a diploma.

Re:What's with cheating anyway?

[The One and Only]

Well, suppose you want to be a physicist but have to take a class in art history or something to satisfy university requirements. You probably don't care about actually learning any art history, so you cheat and focus on your physics instead.

Re:What's with cheating anyway?

[grcumb]

Well, suppose you want to be a physicist but have to take a class in art history or something to satisfy university requirements. You probably don't care about actually learning any art history, so you cheat and focus on your physics instead.

Well, no offense, but that's bloody stupid. The student who thinks that art history and physics don't have any relation to one another, and that there's nothing to be learned outside the immediate confines of one's field of study... well, suffice it to say that they need to adjust their logic.

I have a fairly good reason for saying this, as someone who did a double degree in Theatre and English Lit, but ended up working as an application developer and systems integrator. If it weren't for the fact that I'm omnivorous when it comes to learning, I'd have never made the leap. And don't for a second think that there's no application for what I learned in Theatre in the world of computers, or vice versa.

Incidentally, one of my Theatre term papers was a study of the interaction of Ernst Mach and his contemporary scientists with the Dadaist art movement. And for those of you who don't see the point of such a study, consider that Einstein, Lenin, James Joyce and Tristan Tzara (who founded the Dada movement) all lived within spitting distance of one another at one point in time.

Summary: The greatest cost of cheating is borne by the cheater.

Re:What's with cheating anyway?

[hazem]

And for those of you who don't see the point of such a study, consider that Einstein, Lenin, James Joyce and Tristan Tzara (who founded the Dada movement) all lived within spitting distance of one another at one point in time.

Leonard Shlain wrote an interesting book called Art & Physics. In it, he relates some of the great breakthroughs in science to similar breakthroughs in art. That somehow, the new way of seeing the world in a growing art movement helped inspire scientific thinking.

From the websites: http://www.artandphysics.com/

Leonard Shlain proposes that the visionary artist is the first member of a culture to see the world in a new way. Then, nearly simultaneously, a revolutionary physicist discovers a new way to think about the world. Escorting the reader through the classical, medieval, Renaissance and modern eras, Shlain shows how the artists' images when superimposed on the physicists' concepts create a compelling fit.

His other books, Alphabet vs. The Goddess and Sex, Time, and Power were very fascinating too.

Re:What's with cheating anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I partially agree with your point, I think you are missing the parent's point. Even students who are in it for the learning and not the grades might be motivated to cheat if part of the requirements of learning what they want to learn are to get good grades in something they don't want to learn.

And I would certainly argue that an art history class generally pertains less to physics than a physics class does. And even if we grant them equality, there are certainly some basket-weaving classes that would pertain less.

I See This Already

[CWRUisTakingMyMoney]

Where I go to college, one of my professors (in a social science) has a standing bet with all his students: if we ever have to write a term paper for our job in the real world (i.e., not academia), he'll donate $25 to the charity of our choice. He's been teaching since the 1970s and has never had to pay up. Whatever papers he writes, he insists on being done in a memorandum format, with no cover pages or in-text cites, and MAYBE something akin to a references page on the end. The focus is much more about getting facts on paper from whatever sources we deem suitable, not doing elaborate research to look impressive.

Another benefit of the memo style over a term paper is that we can't be long-winded. We're given a maximum page length, not a minimum (usually around four to five pages), into which we have to cram 15 or so term-paper-pages' worth of material. It's surprisingly difficult, but (according to him; I'm not yet in the real world full-time) that kind of skill is vastly important and not taught enough. Real-world types: does this sound accurate (and/or wise)?

Re:I See This Already

[JanneM]

Well, it's social science after all - a post-graduation food-service career doesn't require a lot of writing.

Re:I See This Already

[Coryoth]

Where I go to college, one of my professors (in a social science) has a standing bet with all his students: if we ever have to write a term paper for our job in the real world (i.e., not academia), he'll donate $25 to the charity of our choice. He's been teaching since the 1970s and has never had to pay up... Well I've certainly had jobs outside of academia that involved writing research papers. Then again those were research positions, just within private industry and government as opposed to academia.

We're given a maximum page length, not a minimum (usually around four to five pages), into which we have to cram 15 or so term-paper-pages' worth of material. It's surprisingly difficult, but (according to him; I'm not yet in the real world full-time) that kind of skill is vastly important and not taught enough. Real-world types: does this sound accurate (and/or wise)? I can certainly say that being able to condense, rather than bloat, material is a vital skill. When writing papers outside of academia what mattered was managing to sell whatever research you've just done -- the aim is to get the project moved out of research and into production, the other option being you watching all your hard work get mothballed. Often, after putting in months on a project, you have a lot you would like to say. Paring that down to something that really emphasises they key points and gets that across efficiently is important. You often have to leave out weeks worth of work that, while good, is just going to distract, and that's painful. Knowing how to do that well is a very valuable skill, and it makes the difference between being the guy who sees his work turn into something, and the guy who sees all his projects get shelved.

Re:I See This Already

[DerekLyons]

Where I go to college, one of my professors (in a social science) has a standing bet with all his students: if we ever have to write a term paper for our job in the real world (i.e., not academia), he'll donate $25 to the charity of our choice. He's been teaching since the 1970s and has never had to pay up.

Then he's probably defining the term 'term paper' in some nonstandard or unusual way. Virtually every serious professional I know writes at least one, and in some cases many more, research reports of one form or another as part of their job.
 
 

Whatever papers he writes, he insists on being done in a memorandum format, with no cover pages or in-text cites, and MAYBE something akin to a references page on the end. The focus is much more about getting facts on paper from whatever sources we deem suitable, not doing elaborate research to look impressive.

What he's doing here is making his job easier - because grading is simpler. He's also cheaping out the education he provides to his students, as a properly written term paper is much more than just reguritating facts.
 
 

Another benefit of the memo style over a term paper is that we can't be long-winded. We're given a maximum page length, not a minimum (usually around four to five pages), into which we have to cram 15 or so term-paper-pages' worth of material. It's surprisingly difficult, but (according to him; I'm not yet in the real world full-time) that kind of skill is vastly important and not taught enough. Real-world types: does this sound accurate (and/or wise)?

No, it doesn't sound wise. It sounds like he's avoiding having to think about whether or not his students are thinking, and able to form cogent and clear arguements and to support them. (Which at the college level is the purpose of a term paper.)

The role of universities is changing

[Anonymous Coward]

Universites are the new daycare, for young adults. The cost of appropriating/distibuting Information is approaching zero. If an expert can organize the material and the student is willing to read it, then the middle man university is becoming less important much like the MPAA/RIAA, and work experience more important. It will take much longer for universities, however, to change as employers will need new ways to test knowledge and skill. Universities will only be useful in that they generate peer discussion, which doesn't happen as much for drunken undergraduate students anyways.

Re:The role of universities is changing

[zappepcs]

I am with you. Original thought requires that we think, speak, be opinionated. Not many want to risk that when they have $120k debt riding on getting the right answers. I was lucky, I'm in a CS type field, but when I should have gone to college the information that was available has LONG since been lost or deprecated. I know the same or more than college grads now, and I use the Internet as much of my resource. In fact, with experience I know more than college graduates.

There was a time when you had to go to college to garner that information, but now you can join a group on the internet and learn how to design ASIC chips. The information age has surpassed the learning institutional system by leaps and bounds. I no longer feel that a college education means something. My military background and ability to learn from the Internet makes for a strong ME. No class ring required.

Re:The role of universities is changing

[Coryoth]

If an expert can organize the material and the student is willing to read it, then the middle man university is becoming less important much like the MPAA/RIAA, and work experience more important. It will take much longer for universities, however, to change as employers will need new ways to test knowledge and skill. Universities will only be useful in that they generate peer discussion, which doesn't happen as much for drunken undergraduate students anyways. In theory universities always were useful as a place to generate peer discussion -- that was their primary purpose. Somewhere along the line, however, people have gotten universities confused with trade schools (and indeed, the universities themselves perpetuate this confusion), and view university as a place to get career training and a degree as nothing more than a ticket to a job. Certainly this function of universities is likely to slowly dry up over the next few decades. Hopefully then universities can get back to being what they used to be.

Abolish Grades

[fyoder]

Get rid of grading altogether. Education shouldn't be some stupid game where students quite legitimately ask, 'Is this going to be on the exam?', because if you're going for high score you don't want to waste a lot of time on stuff that won't score you points. The only exams should be at the start of term to determine if a student possesses the prerequisite knowledge to handle the course material. Fail prereq exams, don't get necessary courses, don't graduate. Anyone who graduates has to have known enough to do so. Beyond that, place emphasis on the aquisition of knowledge -- wouldn't that be revolutionary? Education that emphasized the aquisition of knowledge? What a concept.

As long as it's just a game I really can't get that upset about students gaming the game. As is, it's just bullshit anyway. Get through it any way you can.

Re:Abolish Grades

[Teancum]

This is presuming that the purpose of a college education (especially a "liberal arts" education) is to acquire knowledge and critical thinking skills. And to discover a diversity of viewpoints.

While these are all laudable goals, it is so far from the truth about what higher education is all about that if you really believe any of these points above... see a local psychiatrist, or at least a competent educational counselor.

The real truth of the matter is that a college degree (particularly the B.S., but the grad degrees as well) are really a form of the classic "guild certification" or "union card", but applied to professional occupations. Some professions require things like a Juris Doctorate or some other specialized degree, but a bachelor's degree is pretty typical... especially for things like engineers.

And of course you need the PhD if you want to be involved with teaching at a university.

While it is a good idea to try and pick up some knowledge while you are going through the meat grinder of a college education, you should keep foremost that the knowledge is not the point. The real point is to "punch the ticket", build up credits in required courses, and get the best grades you can. How you can talk the instructors into getting those grades is of course a matter of style and attitude, with demonstration of knowledge being but one of the ways you can do that.

And keep in mind that most university programs are not designed to give you knowledge either. If they were, they wouldn't be having Computer Science instructors with accents so thick that they might as well be speaking a foreign language. Or in some cases they are, but somehow got past the dean of the college and got hired anyway and speak a dialect of Klingon, with Esperanto as their second language.

The purpose of most university programs is to control the rate of entry for people entering a given profession. The American Medical Association is very blunt and obvious about this, by only certifying select schools and controlling the number of graduates that are produced. If one million students with the same skills (or better!) as the last recipient of the Nobel prize in Medicine applied to med school, the number of students actually graduating would still be largely the same. The standards for graduation would merely be raised to nearly impossible standards to control the rate of graduation. And if there is a shortfall in the number of doctors, those standards will be lowered to permit more to graduate. There may be problems with specific specialities, but the over all number of medical doctors will be maintained.

The same could be said about lawyers (and the bar exam) as well as other professions. Many of the classes are designed explicitly to scare the heck out of you to ever enter into a given profession and consider an alternative path in life, and certainly act as a way to "weed" students out who don't have views of society that meshes with those of the faculty. If you stick up like a rusty nail in a board, prepare to get wacked and beaten down. And never, ever, try to show that you know more about the subject than your instructor. While it is fun to be cocky and show off that you've been a Linux hacker since you were 12 and have contributed over 40,000 lines into the Linux kernel by the time you graduated from High School, don't you ever dare let your professor know that was the case. You will be surely marked for heresy and doomed to drop out of college. They will make it a point to see you get flushed out in one way or another.

Oh, there are some professors and a few (very few) college/universty environments that actually do care about their students and go against this orthodoxy, but I am telling you and anybody else reading this that this is a rare exception and not the general rule. Some colleges even brag about a 30% graduation rate.... to show just how successful they are at telling students where to go and scare them out of trying to finish the programs.

Of cour

Re:Abolish Grades

[jellomizer]

Education is no longer education it is more of a certification. The better grade you get the more stars on your certification. I just started Grad School this year but I had an interview before I could get accepted it seemed that while my GPA was good enough I had a huge variance in my grades A Lot of A's Some C's and Mostly B's. She was mostly wondering about the C Grades. And I told her the classes I got a C in were the ones I learned the most in, and actually worked harder for. The Classes I got an A in were easy classes where I already had a good handle of the information and Bs were in the middle. What I found most curious was the fact this really intreaged her. The problem with education is the relitivly closed mindedness of it. You Grow up spending most of you awake life in school or working for school, then if you choose to be a teacher or a professor. You spend the rest of your professional waking like in school or doing work for school. You spend little time with real world education, realizing the wisdom of some people who are less educated actually know some useful things just because their process was slightly different. As this goes on Education becomes more and more of an inbreed institution. So people who made good grades become the teachers and professors they got good grades because they worked to get good grades and they teach in a way so students can get good grades, Then they get promoted and the demand that all students get these grades. Companies who are looking for the best students to do work for them will look at grades because that is the easiest quantifiable way of getting good student. I would say get rid of grades Make Passing 75% (C) or better. When giving tests give a wider verity of tests and quizzes, Multible Choice, Essay, Short Answer and Personal Interviews. That way you can focus on teaching skills not getting good grades on the test, Students have freedom to experiment with there classes and concepts see how well they hold up.

Garbage in...garbage out.

[Kadin2048]

Education has changed. It used to be difficult to find already answered questions. Not so anymore because of Google. The age of solving problem 1-10 from the book are over and the what of what is what is over.

All that needs to be done to address this is for the teachers to create new unique questions. Students will have pleasure of answering questions not solved by anyone before and also need to adapt all the content they have access to towards a term paper.

Bingo. The only way that students can really plagiarize their term paper is if the question being asked is so banal that thousands of other students have already beaten it to death.

If you make the question unique, then there's really not much of a way to rip off a paper that you find on the internet. At best, all students will be able to do are copy introductory paragraphs, but the critical stuff will all have to be recreated (making the lifted text stand out against the other writing, but more importantly, retaining the more important parts of the exercise).

Ask dried-up, tired questions, and you'll probably get dried-up, tired term papers. Who'da thunk it?

Re:Garbage in...garbage out.

[Have Brain Will Rent]

I agree, next English 101 assignment: relate Einstein's famous E=MC**2 to the concept of a positively curved space-time and discuss how the interaction of the two concepts could relate to common sub-texts of beat generation poetry... yeah, let them try and plagiarize with that! Heh heh heh....

Re:Garbage in...garbage out.

[WasteOfAmmo]

A couple of points to consider:

• Have you every tried to come up with an *intelligent* original question? For that matter I'm sure if you Googled even the dumb question you can come up with you would not only find others asking very similar questions but many suitable answers. I don't remember the exact quote or who said it but basically we have reached the critical mass where there is not an original unique idea out there. Yes there are many with the same or similar original ideas developing them in parallel.
• I ran into a case where and exam I wrote was over 80% the same as a copy of an exam I had aquired from a few years before. Sure it provided me with an easy mark but I actually felt somewhat guilty as I had lucked out on getting the old exam and other than a few friends I had shared it with no one else in the class had one (I found this out after the marks were given out; the class average was less than 60%). It felt like I had somehow cheated because basically I had an answer key to the exam. I talked to the professor about it and he related the fact that over the years he had tried the track of not recycling exam questions. The problem he ran into is that when teaching the same course material there is only so many ways you can ask questions about the same topics (this was a sciences related course so simple teaching something completely new is not possible). Because of this his exam questions started to suffer from a form of "feature creep" where the questions slowly (over iterations of exams) became harder and harder. In the end he returned to recycling older exam questions but tried to keep several years of separation between cycles. I left the conversation with a better understanding of why professors recycle papers and exams.
• Finally, even if you could create unique questions for assignments and term papers there is always the case of students using "rent-a-[insertprofessionhere]" services like rentacoder.com for CS assignments. I suspect that not only will these types of educational exploits become more common but they are also extremely hard to catch and prove (short of court orders for records from these types of web sites and the related ISPs). The old saying of foolproof something and the world will invent a better fool applies to cheating also.

Re:Garbage in...garbage out.

[apoc.famine]

As a HS teacher, my response to this sort of problem is "show me that you can". I've moved a bit away from "tell me what you know", precisely because of how easy it is now to find information. Having or finding knowledge is trivial these days. Actually being able to make use of it, and applying it to different situations is really what it's all about anyway.

What I run into is that students panic and freeze up, because the vast bulk of their schooling career was all about "spit out the right answer", and that's all they know how to do. I spend the first 3/4 of the year breaking them of the "is this the right answer" habit. I want to see the process, not the final result. It frustrates the hell out of them when I respond to "is this right" with "show me how you did it". If there's one thing I've learned in teaching, it's that kids can get the right answer with the wrong method, and they can get the wrong answer with the right method. Really, the only thing worth looking at at the HS level is the process.

When it comes to papers, I generally follow the same thought process. Research some information, and then SHOW me that you can do something new with it. Use it as a basis for estimation. Prove that it is currently infeasible technology based on energy requirements or current manufacturing abilities. Actually make something new with it. Sure, you could pay someone to do it for you, but at least at the HS level, I can be a part of the process, and I'll know if either A) 6 pages magically show up overnight, or B) the final paper is substantially different than the versions I've been seeing. If you're teaching hands-on, interacting with your students, it's harder to cheat. If you're teaching by "go do this all by yourself", it's far easier to cheat. My preference is to teach by being a part of the process, because to me, the process is the most important part.

would hate to take a class with that guy

[Schlemphfer]

>Where I go to college, one of my professors (in a social science) has a standing bet with all his students:
>if we ever have to write a term paper for our job in the real world (i.e., not academia), he'll donate $25 to
>the charity of our choice. He's been teaching since the 1970s and has >never had to pay up.

Of course he never has to pay up. But the underlying point he's trying to make is idiotic. There's no such thing as a term paper in business or government. But there are tons of important tasks that draw on exactly that skill set. Should we hire a team of people to redesign our packaging; does the potential added sales justify the expense? What mistakes did we make in our last government bid, and how can they be avoided next time? Why does Sally deserve to get the ax for her abrasive attitude towards people who report to her?

These are all things often handled with the very same writing structure that you learn writing term papers. Much of your potential to reach leadership positions within industry depends on how effectively you can explain, and how persuasively you can argue. Nothing in academia develops these skills like a good, old fashioned, term paper. It's really galling to see somebody within academia who is seemingly oblivious to how important these skills are. The fact is most college students can't write for shit, and if they could, they would be better decision-makers, they would carry greater influence at work, and they would go further in life.

Plus, being able to express yourself clearly is just cool regardless of how it affects your career potential.

Re:would hate to take a class with that guy

[Talgrath]

Bullshit. That's exactly what a paper is full of, bullshit; 90% of the papers I wrote in college were bullshit. You quote some of the book, you do some research and quote them, and you basically regurgitate what you've read/discussed in class and add in what looks to be an opinion or position if necessary. The only papers I wrote without bullshitting were papers in fields I was actually interested in, philosophy, computer science and history; all the paper teaches you is the skill (yes it is a skill) of bullshitting. Useful if you want to climb that social ladder, but ultimately corrosive to society.

You REALLY want to teach students to set forth their ideas clearly, then you need more in-class discussion and more philosophy (philosophy's grounding point, after all, is debate). You want students to be better decision makers? Put them in charge of something besides themselves, force them to make decisions and deal with the consequences (even that might not knock sense into some people). The paper is simply busywork and bullshittingfor the student; if anything, preparation for the mounds of paperwork they'll need to wade through in their life and all the asshats they'll have to be polite with to climb that all-important social ladder (the last part is sarcasm, if you couldn't tell).

Re:It all depends on how you define plagiarism.

[Antony-Kyre]

Never mind. I don't think I turned what I said into a paper. I did find what I wrote about though. To summarize it though, and I don't claim the following as my own ideas for obvious reason...

There is a grey area with plagiarism. The grey area involves the concept of borrowing ideas. We're bombarded with information on television and other media, whether such information is public knowledge enough brings with it the issue of whether it's cheating to use the information without citing the source because it has been mushed into our minds so much.

Not dead yet.

[AndOne]

The term paper as such doesn't need to be done away with. What needs to be happening is that over the course of the 3 or 4 weeks the students are writing the paper and researching the paper they should also be giving a series of presentations and/or meeting with the professor at least 1 or 2 times to discuss their progress. Sure, it may sound like babying the student, but status reports are a fact of life. Hell I meet with my adviser(grad school) at least once a week just to touch base and let him know what's happening. Since this is /. as an example when I was taking computer architecture we had to do a paper on some given facet of the field or a specific architecture. Really whatever most interested us at the time. We had to provide references and brief status reports, and give a presentation on the paper at the end. You might be able to fake a paper you turn in but it's much harder to fake the presentation and the status reports if you don't actually know the material. Of course this all presumes the professor cares/has the energy to deal with this level of effort.

My own experience.

[KyoMamoru]

Well, I thought I'd chime in one this. My mother is a High School English teacher, and she isn't quiet up on the technology behind cheating. Often times if I'm visiting, I'll help her grade her English Papers, like any good son should. During my mom's first year of teaching at a new High School, the students evidently thought that they could fool the new teacher on a paper about the Crucible. I caught 90% of the students plagiarizing. Most of them were word for word, others were modifications of adjectives, but the prior work shined through.

I suppose you're thinking that the children would have been suspended, or failed for the whole term? Unfortunately, they were all given a slap on the wrist, and my mom was only allowed to give them F's for that single paper. There were no write ups, no detention, no community service, nothing. The schools just refused to buckle down on it, which sickened me. Now, anytime my mother has papers to grade, I make sure she sends me a fax of any suspicious writing, and I do research on it.

More often than not, I catch five percent of her class plagiarizing per paper. This is after she extensively tells them that she had caught her countless before. Some children even have the gall to copy and paste Wikipedia articles word for word. It's sad times that we live in, and the United States government simply isn't proving a means to deal with it.

Re:My own experience.

[Architect_sasyr]

OTOH I recall failing a class a few years back for so-called plagiarizing of works.

Turns out I had taken a document, re-written it for my own words and submitted it to a friend for review. The friend suggested that I make it sound more technical than it did, so I proceeded to take my re-write and re-write it. Unfortunately my vocabulary at the time meant that I re-wrote it to sound almost identical to the original source, which in my case was a genuine mistake.

Perhaps I'm just a part of the nth percentile in this, but it begs the question of how many students fail because of similar circumstances.

Incidentally, I'm all for getting rid of the term paper, out here in Australia I have found it to be a useless venture (albeit profitable when co-students pay you for your work).

Re:My own experience.

[king-manic]

Heres a story. When I was in university I had a group of casual friends that I took classes with. 4 out of these 5 guys cheated their asses off. Copying from each other, from internet sources, buying papers, etc.. Myself and one of the other guys refused to do that and went it our own way. Myself and the other guy got okay marks couldn't find a good job and ended up in sales and tech support. The 4 others got good marks and each have a job with a major company (3 of them work for big blue). My anecdotal story high lights that I should teach my children to cheat their asses off because honesty doesn't pay.

Re:My own experience.

[cunina]

Turns out I had taken a document, re-written it for my own words and submitted it to a friend for review.

That is generally considered to be plagiarism. It's not just words but ideas that can be plagiarized. If you didn't cite the source of the ideas (the document you paraphrased), then you are effectively claiming its ideas and information as your original work.

Re:My own experience.

[packeteer]

good teacher would have a working history of what the student is capable.

That's why a good cheater knows to STFU in class. Might as well sleep through class.

Re:My own experience.

[oddman]

No, the moral of the story is that you need to be an active member of your ethical community, not just a passive observer of immoral agents. You knew that your friends were acting immorally and breaking the rules of the university, and you chose to do nothing about it. The cheaters prospered because they cheated, but they cheated successfully because you allowed them to. You let them harm you by allowing them to gain an unfair advantage over you. Who's fault is that?

When you know someone is acting against the interests of the group in order to gain an unfair advantage and you do nothing about it, you shouldn't complain about the results.

You know the line about evil needing nothing to succeed but that good men do nothing? It applies to people like you in situations like this.

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.

Re:My own experience.

[DudeTheMath]

Mod parent up!

My wife is an English professor and has to deal with this all the time. "But I didn't mean to!" doesn't cut it: she takes class time to explain plagiarism, and then she quizzes them on it, and then keeps the quiz as evidence that the student understands what constitutes plagiarism.

There is always some ding-a-ling who thinks he (and it's usually, although not always, "he") can fool her by pulling pieces from random web sources and vaguely stitching them together. C'mon, she's a literature prof; part of her job is analyzing style in a work. She can spot style changes a mile away.

On the rare occasion she can't actually pull up the source on the web (or, for the enterprising cheater, in the library; and don't bother hiding the book, 'cause there's such a thing as inter-library loan), she can almost always simply fail the paper on grammar/usage errors or on simple factual errors.

We have entertained the notion that those paper mills sell papers with deliberate errors ( only slightly more subtle than "After Hamlet murders Ophelia, ..."), probably written by other English professors for a laugh.

Sure, there are probably students good enough to take diverse sources and make a decent paper out of it with proper transitions, etc.; but if they've done that much work, they were probably better off writing their own paper!

Re:My own experience.

[cowscows]

When I was in school, we had a class where the exams were basically the professor giving us all a copy of the test, then telling us to drop them off to him in his office (in a different building) in an hour or so. He then left the building and went to his office to read the newspaper or whatever and wait. As you can probably imagine, there was much cheating, apparently a large portion of the class left the building, went to the park, and all sat under a tree and figured out the test together. This apparently was a tradition within the school.

A number of us took the test honestly, it wasn't even particularly difficult. Anyways, a few of the more honest people did mention the fact that this cheating was taking place to the school administration, who did investigate. The majority of the class was found to have cheated. The end result was something to the effect that the test was declared invalid for everyone in the class, instead your grade for that class that semester was to be determined only by your score on the final exam. People who were caught cheating were to be docked a letter grade. Oh, and a different professor taught the class the next year. Pretty weak punishment.

My school was a fairly high ranked institution, well respected, and they certainly made a big deal about honor code and no cheating and whatnot when I got there. But for the most part they did not seem very vigilant about looking for cheating, and when the situation forced them to look for it, they found it so widespread that the proper response would've been extremely destructive to the school in a number of ways. Basically, it's so widespread and common that if they purged out all the guilty parties, they wouldn't have much of a school left. And so they generally ignore it, and when forced to take action, they do the bare minimum that they can.

Re:My own experience.

[Odin The Ravager]

The Air Force Honor Code:

I will not lie, steal, cheat, nor tolerate any among us who does

Re:My own experience.

[bkr1_2k]

"but I find it very difficult to believe that anybody cheated their way through a degree; not an engineering degree anyhow."

I've attended 7 different college level schools. If you honestly believe people can't cheat their way to a degree, you're wearing blinders. Plenty of people do it all the time. I've seen people at every school I've attended do it, with the exception of one, and that was because people were active duty military members and were being paid to be there (and could be put in jail for cheating, not just expelled.)

I informed a professor at one school, during a final, that several students were cheating. I then spoke with him after the class to find out why he didn't investigate and his answer was "it's an undergraduate course, it doesn't matter."

Several of us took it to the Dean of the Engineering School and were told basically they wouldn't investigate unless the professor agreed that there was a need to do so. Obviously he didn't agree or we wouldn't have been there. The people who cheated all got As in the course and generally continued that trend (with As and Bs) to graduate.

Does it really matter in the end? Who knows...I know those people are all getting paid well, and apparently their employers don't mind that they don't have all the knowlege they supposedly should. I think that points the finger more accurately, the fact that most college level courses teach you things (even in engineering) that you will never need on the job. Having a strong basis of theoretical understanding is great, but it isn't really necessary for most jobs.

In the end the cheating didn't really hurt me much though I did get a lower grade as a result of no curve (but it could be said that's my fault for not studying hard enough to do well in the first place) and it apparently hasn't really hurt society. Is it a bad precedent, yes. Is it the end of the world, no.

Re:My own experience.

[SpectralDesign]

I couldn't agree more... I recently took a "mature student entrance exam" for college, because after dropping out of high-school 20 years ago, I finally decided to get off my arse and get a diploma (and maybe a degree too). Anyway, while testing, I saw a pair of the testees (think testis) doing some wholesale cheating.

One could try to argue "they're only hurting themselves" but the fact is, they're hurting anyone who applies for the same program(s) as them but didn't score as high as they did -- if they get in by cheating, then *someone* get's knocked-out who presumably didn't cheat. If they enroll and continue to cheat, they continue to take advantage of the others in the program(s).

Despite there being three teachers overseeing the test, none noticed the cheating. So, I brought it to their attention.

Later that week I was in a work-group-session discussing ethics. I mentioned parts of this experience (up to, but excluding getting personally involved) and sought feedback from the other people at the meeting -- they were unanimous in feeling that it was wrong for the cheaters to do what they did -- *and* they were unanimous that they'd not get personally involved.

Only then did I "fess-up" to taking action. I'm left to wonder, however, just what do these other people think of me now? Snitch? Hero? Indiffernt? Honestly, I don't really care all that much -- certainly if I find myself in the same situation again, I will get involved, again.

You misunderstand universities

[apt_user]

The internet is for appropriating/distributing information. Universities are for archiving, dissiminating, and perhaps most importantly *generating* knowledge. Information and knowledge are fundamentally different things, too. As for drunken undergraduates, I've known many whose insights and genius have been far greater than mine, requiring only that they learn to focus and make trained use of their potential.

Let's not misrepresent what papers are either. Term papers are not tests in disguise; they are exercises that hone and shape a mind much as lifting weights tones and strengthens muscles. If a university has any greater purpose than the knowledge or information that is churned out, it is the task of producing fine human minds. The kind that direct the course of our civilization. The internet won't do that for us.

Same difference

[The Amazing Fish Boy]

The only exams should be at the start of term to determine if a student possesses the prerequisite knowledge to handle the course material.

Is that really any different than what we have now? We have exams at the end of courses, to verify we learned what we need to know. Passing those courses is a prerequisite for attending other courses. And even under your proposed system, we would still have the question, "Is this going to be on next year's exam?"

The only real change I see your system adding is a free-ride for the last year of your education, since you won't be graded for doing any work. Unless your statement that "anyone who graduates has to have known enough to do so" means final exams in your last year. Which is still flawed, because someone might drop out without passing, but still have the "1 year university experience" on their resume.

have fun down in the mailroom

[xeno]

Bullshit. Bull. Shit. Just because there's a growing ocean of (mis)information and lots of tools to search through the disorganized mess doesn't mean that being lazy is ok, or that taxonomy has lost its usefulness. The same goes for txt-ing fools and 1337-speak d00dz; just because you can doesn't mean you should. (Or that your misapplied, sloppy comunicashunz skilz are worthy of respect.)

I lead teams of consultants giving advice about information to big organizations (big whoop, but it's usually the personal kind, like medical or financial data that might be personally damaging or hurtful if disclosed). Half the time this work takes the form of technology advice, but just as often it's process and governance advising that borders on legal advice. If I or any of these guys crib an opinion from the Intarwebs, we will be busted. If citations are not properly given, we will be busted. If we don't express a complete chain of reasoning that supports each and every considered opinion, we will be busted. You get the idea. Anything less is disrespectful to the people who pay us good money for finding information, considering it, and making decisions about it. It's exactly the kind of thing for which a term paper is good practice.

The same goes for presentations, articles, books, proposals, sales agreements, and even resumes. If you want to establish a fact, convince someone of a position, or persuade someone else to help you, you *must* be able to express a structured, supported opinion, and know the difference between verbatim quotes, derived ideas, and the rare original thought.

Writing is as important as it ever has been.
Research is as important as it ever has been.
And reasoning is even more important.

I'm sure as hell teaching *my* kids how to do term papers, because I do one for every client every couple of weeks. Some of it may be formulaic drivel, but some of it is really enjoyable stuff worthy of some professional pride. If the unwashed masses don't want to practice for nice jobs in the real world, then fine. Ditch the term papers. And have fun sorting my mail down in the mailroom aspiring to a first-level helpdesk gig, or painting my garage.

J

Also in the UK

[Flying pig]

Nowadays there is a kind of prejudice against exams because men do better at them than women. The move to continuous assessment has caused girls to do better at schools than boys, so it can work both ways. But I came up through the system where the only thing that really mattered was the exam, and I am grateful. I am inherently lazy and will only work if there is a positive outcome at the end, and teacher approval was not a significant positive outcome. In today's world I would probably fail both school and university. On the other hand the present system has benefited my daughters and given them a definite advantage over equally intelligent boys.

I reassure myself by thinking, having read his biography, that in today's world an Alan Turing would probably have failed to get into Cambridge.

The best thing about sudden-death exams is that they virtually eliminate cheating if they are properly run, at least in subjects where thought is needed. And the experience of Cambridge physics practical - walk into a room where there is a joke piece of apparatus never seen before, a short paper describing what is to be measured and a few equations, and have a day to make something of it - that has benefited me the rest of my life. I only recently thought about it when trying to understand why staff going onto client sites nowadays seemed so much less confident and unable to make decisions than my generation. Then I thought back to those practical exams. The new generation is better at solving problems by googling for relevant data and trying to extract the pattern, but we had to try and wing it from scratch. I'm not saying either is necessarily better or worse, but if I was ever trapped on a desert island I know which group I would rather be with.

Re:Also in the UK

[rubypossum]

I am torn between modding this up or commenting on it, I have obviously decided to do the latter. In nearly every aspect of modern education (at least in the United States) the hands-on application of theory is under emphasized. How many years do we learn math fundamentals before we actually get to practical application of the principles? I think this has the negative outcome of discouraging students from jobs in the hard sciences. It is difficult for a student to see how useful a skill will be without actual application of that skill.

Wouldn't algebra seem a great deal more interesting if it was taught in a basic electronics class? Ohms law is a great way to demonstrate applied algebra. At the very least it shows how math can be useful. Later portions of the class could be taught using computer programming. Fractals could show how imaginary numbers are useful and graphic demos could show how to use trig functions to create cool patterns. This would be something ANYONE could get into, not just geeks. The knowledge must seem useful in order for someone to want to study it.

Which brings us to the fundamental problem; the subject matter is critical but students don't take it seriously. As citizens of a modern world we must exercise a wide variety of skills in order to be successful. Yet, most students don't realize this or make any effort. If students did consider writing important to their success in life then they would write their own research papers. This problem is an exponent of educational culture and I'm not really sure what we can do about it.

The Term Paper is far from Dead

[dfoulger]

Six years ago I left the software development world for the world of University teaching. I encountered a fair amount of plagiarism in the first year, but very little since. Catch a few and the word gets around.

The biggest problem, by the way, hasn't been the Internet. It has been copying directly out of the textbook on take home and open book exams. The real world me says that such exams are a good thing because we almost always have the ability to look things up when our boss asks us to research something, but the pragmatic professor in me has come to the conclusion that open book tests, in any of their forms, are simply an invitation to copy things out of the book rather than put it in your own words.

The best way to fight plagiarism, in my experience, is to give them papers that will be difficult to copy and paste into. Every semester and every class that I assign term paper projects with distinctive features tied, in general, to my research program. The general research question under the papers makes it unlikely that they'll be able to find a paper to copy from, as I almost always pick under-researched topics or push them to engage content that is too new to have attracted scholarship. Students occasionally try, but it is humorous to read a paper bought from a term paper site that plagiarizes one of my own papers. It is not fun to confront them over it (there is nothing like having a student deny to your face that they plagiarized when you have them dead to rights), but it has to be done.

The second best way is to make the term paper a semester long development project that involves lots of little assignments that have to be accomplished along the way. I do a lot of that too. By the time my students get to actually assembling the term paper, they've already turned most of it in in pieces. Its a good approach, I think, because it draws the student into the task. I usually get strong indicators of the possibility of plagiarism as the due date approaches, moreover, as students start to approach me about changing the topic they've been working on all semester. I don't let them do that, but I have been warned.

Actually, the biggest problem with term papers I encounter is people who simply never turn them in, which is unfortunate, because the research and thinking process associated with writing a term paper is one of the best ways to get students to learn by applying class concepts on their own.

Society's requirements vs. proper education

[demon driver]

Summary: The greatest cost of cheating is borne by the cheater.

In general, I could not agree more.

Unfortunately, society's expectations towards its members do not care about such notions. Society expects its members to efficiently adjust to their tasks of getting jobs, lest their chances of earning their living will be diminished. It's not simply laziness or some blameworthy inclination to take the path of least resistance, it's also society's vital requirements which coerce competing students to resort to methods which are bound to contradict what we might wish to be the essence of education.

To improve the foundation for "real education", society would have to get rid of quite a lot of adverse competitiveness. As things are now, and I think the tendency is that it's continually getting worse, people are more and more obliged to learn what pays, and to learn in a way that pays, not to really learn what would be interesting or valuable to know from an intellectual or even cultural point of view.

Re:Agreed, but with reservations.

[jez9999]

Mock footnotes? It's called IEEE Citation.

Ouch.

[Slashdot Parent]

Well, I thought I'd chime in one this. My mother is a High School[sic] English teacher, and she isn't quiet[sic] up on the technology behind cheating. Often times if I'm visiting, I'll help her grade her English Papers[sic], like any good son should.

Jumpin' Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick.

What on earth makes you feel qualified to grade English papers?

Quotes are not plagiarism

[tgibbs]

Plagiarism, of course, is a matter of degree. A quote or a few quotes is not plagiarism. Properly credited quotes can be supporting evidence for a position, although it's often better to write one's own explanation of something with a footnote (or endnote, internal reference, etc) to where the fact was found.

A properly credited quote is never plagiarism. The essence of plagiarism is fraud; misrepresenting somebody else's work or ideas as your own. It is not not a matter of degree, but of intent. But the more you do it, the more likely it is that you will be caught. It tends to be a slippery slope--the more you rely upon other people's words, the less practice you get at saying things in your own words, and the more you feel the need to steal.

Overuse of quotations may be lazy writing or bad writing, and will not necessarily net you a good grade on an essay, but it is never plagiarism.