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ERIC Number: EJ682589
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2004-Sep
Pages: 4
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0024-1822
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Reflections on the Cultural Climate of Plagiarism
Willen, Matthew S.
Liberal Education, v90 n 4 p55-58 Fall 2004
If frequiency of e-mail distribution is any indication, college professors and administrators indeed took notice of last fall's article in the New York Times, "A Campus Fad That's Being Copied: Internet Plagiarism" (Rimer 2003), on Rutgers Professor Donald L. McCabe's recent study of cheating in college and universities. Four copies of the article: two from faculty colleagues on my campus, one from a campus administrator and another from a colleague at a university where I formerly worked were received. As a writing teacher, the author receives many articles and announcements about cheating from colleagues, though never four of the same piece. The figures cited in the Times article are worthy of attention38 percent of surveyed college students admitted to cut and paste plagiarism from the Internet during the year surveyed, while a slightly higher number (40 percent) that probably overlaps with the first group acknowledged plagiarizing from written sources. These numbers demonstrate that cheating is a problem on college campuses and that the Internet is probably not making matters better, but plagiarism is certainly not a new phenomenon. Educators have attended and continue to attend to plagiarism in positive ways that help students better recognize, understand, and avoid it: we educate students on how to properly work with sources; teach them about standards of academic integrity; help them to understand academic culture; and explain the ramifications, both intellectual and ethical, of cheating. Some schools have developed pledges and honor codes to help cultivate an ethos of integrity on campus. As an extra measure, many instructors address the problem by designing projects which make plagiarizing difficult.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: Association of American Colleges and Universities, Washington, DC
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A