Friday, September 30, 2016

Blog post P2 David Kimmey

David Kimmey
Blog Post 2


I chose to discuss the issue of plagiarism, specifically amongst college students.  I read several articles in the EHE to help me become more informed on the issue.  While not all of the information from each article agreed with each other, there were some general conclusions that can be drawn from the text.  Cheating is still a prevalent issue amongst college students.  The causes of the issue seem to be a mix between the morality of students and certain situations that students find themselves in.  The solution therefore must lie in influencing the morality of students who find it acceptable to cheat as well as creating situations for students that do not encourage cheating.  I chose to view this problem from the student’s point of view making them the main stakeholder.

One of the articles in the EHE called “Rise in Student Plagiarism Cases Attributed to Blurred Lines of Digital World” talks about how technology is changing plagiarism.  There is a common conception that plagiarism is on the rise.  However Simpson points out that most studies have shown incidents of plagiarism to fluctuate by only 3-4 percentage (Simpson 251).  Instead what has changed is the ability for educators to catch cheaters with new advancements in plagiarism checking software and tools (Simpson 251).   These new tools allow instructors to find plagiarism easier.  With the risk on being caught cheating higher, the amount of students who decide to cheat may decrease.

One of the biggest issues surrounding plagiarism is the use of “common knowledge”.  This grey area is one that I would like to address in my P2.    Simpson gives the example that students often have confusion when using ideas from resources such as Wikipedia (Simpson 251).  Wikipedia is communally written and meant for anyone to use, but not all of what is found on Wikipedia may be common knowledge (Simpson 251).   I propose that what constitutes common knowledge is not taught well at any level of education.  The term is very vague and ambiguous.   To illustrate my point here is a link that describes what MIT believes to be common knowledge: https://integrity.mit.edu/handbook/citing-your-sources/what-common-knowledge.  I found this definition to be particularly interesting because the last line of the definition includes the following statement:However, what may be common knowledge in one culture, nation, academic discipline or peer group may not be common knowledge in another” (Academic).  This is vitally important to remember, especially at a diverse college such as CSU.   An international student from China will have a very different idea of what constitutes common knowledge than the student from a small town in Iowa.  A student that grew up in a very religious environment may believe certain versus from the bible to be common knowledge while other students would assume that quoting the bible would need citation.  Common knowledge changes with each culture and each generation.  My proposal to end some of the ambiguity surrounding common knowledge is to have CSU create certain rules that can be used by students to help them determine if something is common knowledge.  Since comp 150 is a required class for the vast majority of students it would be fairly easy to replace one of the projects with a course on what constitutes common knowledge.  CSU can also build a data base on their website of facts that constitute common knowledge.  Students will be able to send in facts that they believe is common knowledge and someone can verify if it is common knowledge or not.   The data base would have the ability to grow quickly and soon students will be able to search their “fact” they are trying to use and they will be able to see if it is in the CSU data base of common knowledge.


Since I am arguing from a students point of view with the students as the main stakeholder I believe this argument will appeal to students because it will help them become more aware of plagiarism while minimally increasing what they have to do to stop plagiarism.  Incorporating a database of “CSU approved common knowledge” into the CSU website would be a fairly easy technological feat.   This argument also takes much of the blame off the student by giving them the benefit of the doubt that their plagiarism was accidental.  This lack of blame is likely to allow them to read my paper without being defensive.

































Simpson, Kevin. "Rise in Student Plagiarism Cases Attributed to Blurred Lines of Digital World." 2002. Ethics in Higher Education. 1st ed. Ed. Nancy Henke, Lisa Langstraat, Adam Mackie, and Emily Morgan. Southlake, TX: Fountainhead, 2013. 249-254. Print.


"Academic Integrity at MIT." What Is Common Knowledge? Massachusetts Institute of Technology, n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2016.

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