Net-Age Students Have Different View of Plagiarism
This article from The Associated Press on Education Week kind of annoyed me. Just because information is out there and available does not mean students can copy it wholesale and not understand that what they're doing is wrong. They may think that it being available on the internet makes it common knowledge, but copying and pasting is still copying and pasting not stating something that is common knowledge. This situation isn't just a problem of not being able to determine ownership. If the student in this article had used information or ideas from an online source to help him write his business plan then the situation would have been very different from what he did, which was directly copying parts of an online business plan. I think we as teachers simply need to make it clear that if you copy anything (hardcopy or digital) word for word without quotation marks and a citation, then it is plagiarism. Perhaps we should go over plagiarism and appropriate citations in every class and then students wouldn't have not knowing as an excuse.
No comments:
Post a Comment