Beyond Plagiarism: Helping Students Use Digital Sources Responsibly Elizabeth Kleinfeld Metropolitan...
Transcript of Beyond Plagiarism: Helping Students Use Digital Sources Responsibly Elizabeth Kleinfeld Metropolitan...
Beyond Plagiarism: Helping Students Use Digital Sources Responsibly
Elizabeth KleinfeldMetropolitan State College of Denver
Grouchy Rant, part 1
•Our conversations have focused on how we catch plagiarism rather than on how we prevent it
•Telling students about plagiarism isn’t teaching students about plagiarism
Grouchy Rant, part 2
•Digital sources can be abused in many ways, and most students don't even know when they've done it.
•Even more alarming: their instructors usually don't know.
Grouchy Rant, part 3
•We need to address issues of media and information literacy with our students rather than taking up pitchforks and torches and rallying against them!
Not about catching
plagiarism but about preventingplagiarism.
The Citation Project • Multi-institution research project
▫ 15 colleges from across the country Community colleges, 4-year colleges, universities Public and private Religious and secular
▫ Online courses and f2f
• Aims to describe how student writers use their sources▫ Methodology: Citation Analysis ▫ Emphasizes description over judgment
Citation Project Preliminary Findings•Of 441 source citations
Source Use Percentage
Copying w/o quotation marks
6.6%
Copying w/quotation marks 38.3%
Patchwriting 29.7%
Paraphrase 17.7%
Summary 7.7%
What this means
•44.9% of citations are direct quotation or copying
*no evidence of understanding or engagement with source
•When you add patchwriting, 74.6% of citations are not transformative
Citation Project Preliminary Findings•Of 441 source citations
Length of source Percentage
One page 20%
Two pages 19%
Three pages 18%
57% of sources are 1-3 pages long
Citation Project Preliminary Findings•Of 441 source citations
Page of citation Percentage
Page 1 52%
Page 2 24%
76% of citations come from the first two pages of the source
But wait, there’s more!
Thanks to Rebecca Moore Howard
Thanks to Rebecca Moore Howard
Thanks to Rebecca Moore Howard
What this means
•Students are copying from, quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing sources that are themselves summaries.
•Students are using sources that look to them—and US—like peer-reviewed scholarly sources.
Best Practices
•Accept that digital sources are here to stay.
Restructure research writing assignments
•Research first, write second. ▫Have students work in groups to read and
discuss sources connected to their research. ▫Have students present sources to class for
discussion. ▫Position yourself as a researcher/learner
rather than an expert. •Reconsider whether students should be
required to cite peer-reviewed/scholarly sources.
Focus on longer sources
•Require students to read beyond page 3. •Support students in making sense of long
sources. ▫Consider assigning a book to the class. Have
students write about the book in chunks. ▫Teach students how to summarize.
Could have students work in groups to summarize a book the whole class has read; each group presents their summary for critique.
Analyze digital sources
•Go beyond author’s credentials. Help students understand that publishers matter.
Craft better writing assignments•Create assignments that require students
to transform their sources. ▫Multigenre approaches▫Multimodal approaches
•Assign reflective writing.
Questions? Ideas?
•Elizabeth Kleinfeld•[email protected]•http://delicious.com/lizkleinfeld/
plagiarism •http://delicious.com/lizkleinfeld/citation