Chapter 9 Prompt: Imagine that you are a high school social science teacher. You have assigned students a ten-page research paper. How do you set-up the assignment to make it clear that plagiarism will not be tolerated and what tools would you use to check for plagiarism? What steps would you take if a student’s paper is found to have been copied in parts from the Internet? This prompt is definitely ironic considering that I dealt with this very issue in my Zoology class back in the spring. As a new teacher, I was trying to be considerate of different learning styles and gave my students a choice of end-of-unit assessments. They could take a traditional test, write a 2-page essay on the topic of my choosing, or record a 10-minute presentation on the topic of my choosing. To say this experiment failed was an understatement, largely because I was not clear enough in my intent/instructions/rubric. In my second unit, I had 10 students choose to write the essay. When I started to read/grade the first one, some of the wording (without quotation marks or citation) seemed odd. It didn’t take me much research to find the source the student plagiarized. A little frustrated, I went on to the next paper, and found that the student had plagiarized the entire 2-page essay verbatim without citation or quotations. After reading all 10 essays and having only 1 written without plagiarism, I was pulling my hair out to say the least. As I previously mentioned, I do take partial blame for not being clear enough, so I came up with a solution. My solution was that the students that had plagiarized their essay had three choices: 1) re-write/ re-submit their essay within a week, 2) take the zero as their grade or 3) attend a plagiarism workshop that I would conduct after school. Well all of them picked choice #3, which ultimately ended up as a packet on plagiarism due to the fact that the school kept canceling tutoring for the day I choose for the workshop (Tutoring= a late bus to take students home). You would not believe the flak and push-back I had from both the students AND their parents for how I decided to handle the issue. Most thought that as a science teacher, it was outside my purview to be concerned with issues of academic plagiarism and let their opinions be known to my principle and district-level administrators. Needless to say, I have learned from this experience. In the future, if I assign an essay for the students to complete, I plan to first devote a significant portion of instruction towards essay construction/ planning and what plagiarism is in addition to building multiple steps where students have to submit their thesis statement, an outline, and at least 1 rough draft to ensure that they are on the correct path. Additionally, I am going to have the students turn it in electronically via Turnitin, and time will be provided to students to have access to a computer or Chromebook during class time or after school if they do not have access at home to technology. I believe that it is definitely part of my purpose as an educator to ensure that my students know how to write an essay correctly even as a science teacher and will not shrink from that manifest despite the opinions of others. For those students advancing to higher education, academic plagiarism is a huge deal, and most colleges/universities have very strict, no tolerance policies regarding it. Better students learn about it and take it seriously in high school before they stake their entire college career on a mishap, in my opinion.
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AuthorHi! My name is Nicole, and I am a high school science teacher. Blog Roll
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