Sunday, November 27, 2011

got smacked

This week’s article University Students Perceptions of Plagiarism is about a study that was done on plagiarism among college students.  The study focused on the reasons students gave for plagiarizing.  It separated these reasons into 2 themes and 11 different categories.  The two themes are called Agency and  Externalization. It’s a lengthy article to tackle it in a blog so I thought I would concentrate on a section of it.  The section is called Agency and is located on pg 651.  In this section it talks about how students feel about the way their teachers approach the subject of plagiarism.  It seems the consensus among these students is that their professors are trying to bully them into not doing it.  The students seem to be aching for an explanation as to why they shouldn’t plagiarize.  They also express a need for there to be a structure to the rules instead of these rules for this class and these rules for the other.  I’ve never had a problem with plagiarizing on a personal level.  I don’t know what they are teaching kids in high school these days, but I was taught that if you read it in research you should cite it because it may show up in your perception of your own knowledge even if you don’t directly quote it.  Thinking back to my freshman English classes and any core classes I had to take I remember the traditional students just fresh out of high school all seemed to have a problem with this subject.  Most of them where asking what MLA is under their breath.  Most of my knowledge of MLA and APA came from the classes I was required to take before the University would allow me to take regular college courses.  It baffles me how little high school actually teaches kids these days.  I understand the students’ frustration.  They come out of high school thinking they are prepared for college. Then the very first class they take the delusion of being prepared crashes down and they have this professor who is most likely projecting anger from past experience onto them by passing ideal threats of what will happen if they plagiarize yet never really explaining what constitutes plagiarism.   I imagine that can be a slap in the face.

No comments:

Post a Comment