Plagiarism at San Francisco State University

To whom it may concern,

Plagiarism is a problem for students, especially those in the university level. A lot of students get a college education so that they can get better jobs. If students’ tendency to plagiarize is not stopped within the university, their habit would form, resulting in dire consequences. There are different ways the problem can be approached. The way students are taught to write, informing them of what plagiarism is, and acknowledging that it is a problem at SFSU are important steps that will help plagiarism become less of a problem.

To ratify this problem, multiple steps can be taken. One important way, would be to adapt a better definition for plagiarism, university wide. The policies that SFSU as a school follows sometimes differ from the departments. Even within a department, teachers have their terms and policies that differ from their colleagues. An example of the discrepancies would be the debate if students should be allowed to reuse a paper they wrote for a different class. There are some teachers who allow students to reuse their papers, but there are also some who would consider that as a form of plagiarism.

The way teachers teach has a big impact on the problem. In Plagiarism and the culture of multilingual students in higher education abroad, Colin Sowden points out that many teachers use patch writing, copying pieces of text altering it a little and putting it into a paper (kind of like a big quilt…), to teach students who are learning English as a second language. Doing so allows them to teach about the grammatical structure of the language, and exposes them to new topics but adds to the plagiarism problem. Not knowing that the technique they use is a temporary stepping stone, those students will continue using that technique, assuming that it is an acceptable method of writing. With that in mind, they may continue to write in that method throughout their time at SFSU. The problem is not that small; students talk and compare notes a lot of times. Students that were taught using the patch writing technique might share this ‘technique’ for writing papers with their friends, causing the method to spread like a wildfire at the university. Since a teacher taught it, majority of the students will assume that the method is acceptable, and start using it in their own writing; thus causing a cycle effect that helps patch writing spread in the university.

As we are discussing teaching, it is important to teach and emphasis the importance of proper citation. Students often find themselves struggling to decide on what needs to be cited, and what does not. Not only that, but once they decided that something should be cited they are faced with another question: how to properly cite the source. The issue of proper citation can be addressed in English and/or introductory (or more basic) classes that all students have to take before they graduate (something like comm. 150) to ensure that students can learn about citation, and use the time they spend at SFSU to master the skills of using them. Taking into consideration that different departments have different expectations when it comes to citation, proper citation can be explained in more detail in introductory classes (maybe a class on what kind of citation is expected). As the classes get more advanced, teachers should have a file or link to the department policy, which would accessible to students in case they forget what kind of citation goes with their class. The second concern is about what to cite, which can be reworded to ‘common knowledge’. Only information that is not common knowledge needs to be cited, but that leads to the problem of finding common ground of what should be considered common knowledge. In smaller classes, teachers can mark places where they think the student should have cited, and take some points off. To get points back, it would then be the student’s responsibility to talk to the teacher and explain why that bit of information was not cited in the original paper. Thus allowing students to realize that they forgot to cite something, and offers them a chance to explain the reason they did or did not do something. In a larger class setting, teachers can emphasize what they want the students to look up. One example from laboratory classes is when the grading sheet asks for the literature value of something. Students are not expected to know the literature value, thus letting them know that the information will have to be researched on their own time. Hints like that would also remind students that they need to cite the information, since it is not common knowledge.

Another way to discourage plagiarism through teaching would be to encourage students to write original papers. If this method is used, ‘original’ needs to be clearly defined to the students. More emphasis can be placed on the fact that students need to analyze things, and write about it in their own words (like offering their own perspective on the information from the source). Doing so would lessen the pressure students have when they are told to write an original paper. This way, their papers will be original, since no one else sees things exactly the same; making learning a two way process and more interesting for the student and teacher. Students go to school to learn, but for the teachers being able to learn from the students would keep them interested. As a teacher, when grading essays, reading the same thing over and over again gets boring. When they read something new or see something analyzed differently from the majority, not only do they learn about a new perspective, they can also see that the paper is not plagiarized (killing two birds with one stone). In one of my English classes, we did a research on students and plagiarism, looking to see if there is a trend between different factors and plagiarism. The writing assignment for the project was to write a report of the findings, and since all the information is first hand data from the surveys and interviews, students have to write their own reports. Projects like those gets students more involved, and more interested in what they have to write, which in turn lessens the chances of them knowingly plagiarizing.
There is a system some stores use for shoplifters; when they are caught shoplifting, they have to take a picture with the item they stole, and the picture would then be posted on a wall for anyone to see. If a student is caught plagiarizing, a warning can be given, but if no changes come from it, they can be added to a list of people who plagiarize (maybe the names of the students should not be on the list that the whole student body can see). The list can then be posted in the Xpress so that students can see that plagiarism is a problem at SFSU, and that people do get caught. One of the best ways to get people to stop doing things they are not supposed to, can be to publically acknowledge that they did wrong. Sometimes, even the thought of their peers mocking them for doing something is enough to keep people from doing something they should not do (in this case plagiarize on their paper). Creating and using a system where people who do wrong are mocked or made uncomfortable is a method that works in the real world. CBS did a story about a sheriff in Texas, who got the idea from another sheriff, to paint the walls of the jail pink, and to have the inmates wear pink jumpsuits. A lot of the inmates choose to stay inside the jail, because they do not want to be seen wearing the pink jumpsuits. Since they do not want to wear the pink jump suit again, the numbers of re-offenders decrease.

What did you find?

There wasn't anything really surprising about the responses from the interview. In the survey data, I found it funny that a category had 100% of the people plagiarizing. Looking into it, there was only one person who fit the category, and just happened to plagiarize. Some of the numbers is not what I expected. For instance, I expected people who felt pressured to go out would have a higher percentage of people plagiarizing than people who don't really feel the pressure... so the numbers for that was really interesting to me.