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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