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spiral78
Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 11534
Location: On a Short Leash
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 Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 12:11 pm Post subject: |
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| Maybe, but not sure how much help they would be if the student grabs one written in chinese, runs it through Google translator and (maybe) pretties it up a little or adds a few sentences. |
No, you're correct. Won't help. Unless another student has been through the same process with the same paper, and it's been uploaded somewhere.
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| Even copying from a classmate that has a different class with you, though easy to catch, can be time consuming if you have enough students. I had about 900 students and it really threw a hitch in things to notice a copy then go back through 400 assignments to find the one you remember. You read about the aunt in hong Kong cooking some dish for dinner in assignment 37 then you read it again on assignment 452 and think it's very familiar...then go back through to find the first one..argh.... |
In this case it works if you put all papers submitted in all your classes through the software. Or have the students upload them themselves as the submission process (what those of us with larger student populations usually do).
Plagiarism detection systems don't usually work for just checking the one or two papers you might suspect - they all need to go through to establish a base of student work.
They are also very useful as teaching tools - citation, referencing, paraphrasing are developed skills and having their work checked through software can help enlighten students about good practices in this respect. Much plagiarism is unintentional, and/or they just don't realize it's a problem (culture, simply haven't been taught, etc.). |
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buravirgil
Joined: 23 Jan 2014
Posts: 967
Location: Jiangxi Province, China
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spiral78
Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 11534
Location: On a Short Leash
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| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 1:34 pm Post subject: |
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The systems I have used over the years do indeed archive student work, but it is anonymous (the student is assumed to own the copyright to the work) and the only way I know of for it to be released is through a system that asks the student if s/he will agree for an instructor at ABC university (not the teacher to whom the original student submitted the work) to see it in the original form.
In other words, it is protected.
No, the systems do not detect 'plagiarism' despite their catchy names:-)
They detect matching scores.
For example, two papers which each scored at 18% of matching can be very different.
One may have matching references, cited quotations, titles, etc., and be perfectly fine. The other may have text matching excerpts from an uncited source and hence be an example of plagiarism.
It is possible to prove plagiarism using these tools, but yes, one must know how to read the results. |
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buravirgil
Joined: 23 Jan 2014
Posts: 967
Location: Jiangxi Province, China
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| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 1:49 pm Post subject: |
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| spiral78 wrote: |
The systems I have used over the years do indeed archive student work, but it is anonymous (the student is assumed to own the copyright to the work) and the only way I know of for it to be released is through a system that asks the student if s/he will agree for an instructor at ABC university (not the teacher to whom the original student submitted the work) to see it in the original form.
In other words, it is protected. |
emphasis mine
Informative as usual, Spiral78. But there's some dissonance between anonymity and the assumption of a copyright. I imagine a solution is through encryption.
I don't have a cite, and it's anecdotal, but because the systems compete on a market, I recall a case where a student's work was flagged for their own work. Because the systems are marketed and can maintain their own databases and institutions are the consumers, ie, big bucks, how these databases are managed in perpetuity and how they might be sold, or merged, some day (and all the other "big data" issues) has piqued the interest of academics about its ethical challenges.
I hope you read both links as I did, and wish to add your actual experience with these systems in enlightening.
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spiral78
Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 11534
Location: On a Short Leash
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| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 2:15 pm Post subject: |
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| I recall a case where a student's work was flagged for their own work. |
Yes, this is termed 'recycling.' It is entirely ethical so long as the original work is cited (self-citation), and the student was not supposed to be writing an entirely new text for some pedagogical reason.
Recycling occurs frequently at the graduate and post-graduate level, where of course students are building and expanding upon work they've already done.
It's very useful for students to be aware of this; I've had a few cases where PhD students were 'caught' by journals for self-plagiarism, when if they'd only cited their own earlier work, their articles would have been entirely acceptable.
We generally tell our students that if they are using parts of their own earlier work in a text, it's best to ensure that the professor involved is aware - and to be sure to cite their earlier work to avoid confusion. This is equally true for professors submitting work to journals, obviously!!
In Western universities, these 'plagiarism' systems are usually applied by university policy as a standard for all student texts submitted (this has been the case over my past 15 years of employment). I hope and expect that the practice will become standard in Asia (and Central/Eastern Europe, where I know it is currently spreading).
It's useful to know something about them. I've learned by necessity, as I've been required to use them for quite a few years now, and have served (am serving) on exam boards which must make professional judgements regarding student work.
Again, the systems are even more useful as a teaching tool, IMO. Very helpful for students to see what is/isn't acceptable. |
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buravirgil
Joined: 23 Jan 2014
Posts: 967
Location: Jiangxi Province, China
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| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 3:13 pm Post subject: |
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| spiral78 wrote: |
| In Western universities, these 'plagiarism' systems are usually applied by university policy as a standard for all student texts submitted (this has been the case over my past 15 years of employment). I hope and expect that the practice will become standard in Asia (and Central/Eastern Europe, where I know it is currently spreading). |
15 years ago? There were databases/systems before a ubiquity of http? Universities were the first to evolve the Internet through the last half of the twentieth century, but not until Berners Lee's protocol (and commodity based hardware) did larger society have a web, so that fact surprises me. Email wasn't largely adopted until the mid 1990s.
And am reading you to believe the ethical issues are resolved. But, despite your direct experience and reporting of it, I am reluctant to accept the notion that original work by undergrads (a quantity by factors larger than post-graduates) should be uploaded and managed by private entities and termed a western standard that you hope and expect to find export. |
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The_Philadelphianist
Joined: 07 Aug 2014
Posts: 18
Location: Little Pete's, at the counter, after midnight, w/ a steaming plate of scrambled eggs & scrapple
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| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 3:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Bud Powell wrote: |
I'd skip Shakespeare altogether except for a few sonnets. If you were teaching Lit over the course of two or four semesters, you could attempt a novella, but I'd suggest short stories that reveal something about western culture.
For poetry, I wouldn't emphasize meter or form. Make them aware of it, give a few examples, and move on. Take , for example, Poe's Annabel Lee. If you were to discuss the meter of the first line, the student would be hit with anapest followed by an iamb. Do you really need to get bogged down in that?
Pick several classic stories and discuss the characterization, plot, perhaps a few devices and move on.
Certainly, make them aware of the different types of criticism such as New Criticism and New Historicism, but how about a little feminist theory?
That'll wake 'em and shake 'em up.
One more thing: I was told that I'd teach literature on my first job in China. It was a ruse to get me over there. I have an MA and an MFA. |
For the survey course, I'm going to stick mostly to poetry, simply b/c we only have one semester each to cover both Brit Lit (in the Fall) & American Lit (in the Spring) and poems are (usually) a great deal shorter than novels, short stories, or plays. The uni also wants me to teach it as an historical overview of the two traditions, so I'm going to go through the Nortons and pick out some more-or-less representative pieces for each historical period and assign those as readings.
Since I'll be teaching literature and not literary theory specifically (I asked, and the department doesn't offer any courses in lit theory), I was thinking it would be better to just give the students some easy, basic tools to allow them to talk and write about the texts as literature without too much prerequisite background knowledge. Formalist criticism & close reading are probably the best approaches if this is the goal, although in my lectures I'm going to provide some historical and cultural context so that they're not analyzing things in a total vacuum.
As for meter, I actually wouldn't mind getting "bogged down" in that with the students. The basics of meter & scansion are relatively easy to teach -- I've taught them before to middle schoolers in the ROK -- and, after a bit of practice, most of the students shouldn't have any major problems in identifying and scanning poems in relatively simple meters.
A focus on the formal properties of the texts and how different poets have handled them over time is also a pretty easy and straightforward way of structuring the course so that students have some kind of unifying thread to track as we go through the different periods. That way, the readings aren't just one damn thing after another, but actually have an identifiable arc to them.
At least, that's what I'm hoping. It could be that I'm just taking all of this way too seriously and overthinking things, and just making too much work for myself (and the students). But, I want to do a good job, and genuinely teach them something in the hopes that they might actually, y'know, learn something (in contrast to some of my previous gigs). |
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The_Philadelphianist
Joined: 07 Aug 2014
Posts: 18
Location: Little Pete's, at the counter, after midnight, w/ a steaming plate of scrambled eggs & scrapple
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| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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| spiral78 wrote: |
Free plagiarism detection systems, google-able:
Grammarly
Anti-Plagiarism
DupliChecker
Paper Rater
Plagiarisma.net
PlagiarismChecker
Plagium
PlagTracker
See Sources
PlagiarismDetector
Viper
might be useful! |
Thanks for the list, Spiral -- I'll definitely check some of these out. |
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The_Philadelphianist
Joined: 07 Aug 2014
Posts: 18
Location: Little Pete's, at the counter, after midnight, w/ a steaming plate of scrambled eggs & scrapple
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| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 3:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Bud Powell wrote: |
I'd skip Shakespeare altogether except for a few sonnets. If you were teaching Lit over the course of two or four semesters, you could attempt a novella, but I'd suggest short stories that reveal something about western culture.
For poetry, I wouldn't emphasize meter or form. Make them aware of it, give a few examples, and move on. Take , for example, Poe's Annabel Lee. If you were to discuss the meter of the first line, the student would be hit with anapest followed by an iamb. Do you really need to get bogged down in that?
Pick several classic stories and discuss the characterization, plot, perhaps a few devices and move on.
Certainly, make them aware of the different types of criticism such as New Criticism and New Historicism, but how about a little feminist theory?
That'll wake 'em and shake 'em up.
One more thing: I was told that I'd teach literature on my first job in China. It was a ruse to get me over there. I have an MA and an MFA. |
If you don't mind me asking, where did you do your MFA at, Bud? I'm thinking of applying to some fully-funded programs for Fall 2015 -- any suggestions? |
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Bud Powell
Joined: 11 Jul 2013
Posts: 1736
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| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 4:08 pm Post subject: |
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| The_Philadelphianist wrote: |
If you don't mind me asking, where did you do your MFA at, Bud? I'm thinking of applying to some fully-funded programs for Fall 2015 -- any suggestions?[/size] |
I don't share personally-identifying information. I'll tell you that I completed my MFA in the midwest.
I'm having a difficult time with the idea that any Chinese university would employ a westerner with a BA in Literature to teach literature at all. American universities reserve writing-intensive literature classes for Ph.Ds and I believe the same practice is followed in China.
Make your tests true-false and multiple choice. |
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The_Philadelphianist
Joined: 07 Aug 2014
Posts: 18
Location: Little Pete's, at the counter, after midnight, w/ a steaming plate of scrambled eggs & scrapple
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| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 4:20 pm Post subject: |
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| jm21 wrote: |
| The_Philadelphianist wrote: |
| jm21 wrote: |
If it were my students the three main problems I would be concerned about would be
1. No one wants to raise their hand or in any other way volunteer, which makes class discussion difficult.
2. Few do their homework or assigned reading properly.
3. A significant number copy homework from the internet or other students.
I would call on them at random, do in class quizzes about the factual content of the reading, and base part of the grade on class participation... but make sure that that jived with the school's grading aystem from the get go. Lots of powerpoints and maybe throw them up on the web so atudents can review if they want.
Based on my experience teaching public relations last semester. |
These are concerns of mine as well. If their writing skills permit it, I was thinking of having both classes do a weekly, one to two page discussion paper on some aspect of the assigned readings and collecting them as part of their grade in an attempt to incentivize doing the readings, submitting original work, & participation in class discussions (the latter by having them summarize their papers and asking other students for feedback).
On the first day of both classes, I'm going to ask the students to provide an in-class writing sample and collect it to try and assess their writing skills and critical thinking/reading skills a bit, realizing that I may have to take things down a notch from my initial plans and try to meet them where they are if they can't meet me where I'd like them to be. |
Grading homework drove me nuts because so many students copied their work from somewhere. In my English classes too. You would get a few papers in, think "hmm..that looks familiar..."
I will never do written homework again unless required to or for better pay. Finding out who was cheating was a huge time sink and I'm sure I missed some. I talked about it with my girlfriend and she thought it was very common in China. Plagiarism is not a big deal here.
Maybe if you plan to do a lot of assignments and hammer them early on for copying it would sink in...but then you're talking about a lot of work. I don't get paid enough for that. |
The two courses I'll be teaching will each have two sections with 35 students per section, for a total of 70 students per course. I'm hoping that makes things like grading and paperwork a little more manageable than in a course of, say, 400 (!).
I'm going to address plagiarism explicitly with them: briefly, on the first day of class, and then more in depth later on, as I'm contemplating having them do a 3-5 page analytic paper on one or two of the readings in lieu of or as a component of their midterms and finals. |
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buravirgil
Joined: 23 Jan 2014
Posts: 967
Location: Jiangxi Province, China
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| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 4:22 pm Post subject: |
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LOL Bud!
And Spiral and I had such a great derail goin'. . .
Thank you for a voice of experience about what forum we're on and returning me to reality.
But since you've mentioned metrics...MY university training informed me
blah blah...goodnight |
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The_Philadelphianist
Joined: 07 Aug 2014
Posts: 18
Location: Little Pete's, at the counter, after midnight, w/ a steaming plate of scrambled eggs & scrapple
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| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Bud Powell wrote: |
| The_Philadelphianist wrote: |
If you don't mind me asking, where did you do your MFA at, Bud? I'm thinking of applying to some fully-funded programs for Fall 2015 -- any suggestions?[/size] |
I don't share personally-identifying information. I'll tell you that I completed my MFA in the midwest.
I'm having a difficult time with the idea that any Chinese university would employ a westerner with a BA in Literature to teach literature at all. American universities reserve writing-intensive literature classes for Ph.Ds and I believe the same practice is followed in China.
Make your tests true-false and multiple choice. |
Oh, no worries -- I understand about being too free with personal info.
I think I mentioned in one of the previous posts here that the uni is a technical college -- they primarily train scientists and engineers in a very specific discipline for a very specific purpose. The English majors they have at the school are not lit majors, but are specializing instead in translation and business English.
As I understand it, the lit courses are simply supplementary to the main content of their degree programs. I'm guessing it's the fact that the courses are supplementary and more like electives that accounts for the school hiring an FT to teach them. I can PM you the name of the school, if you like. |
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Bud Powell
Joined: 11 Jul 2013
Posts: 1736
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| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 5:46 pm Post subject: |
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Just PM me the name of the city. That's close enough. No need to share where you are.
Your description sounds a lot like the first school where I taught. I hope it is because the English majors are excellent speakers and the administration is quite good.
I DO hope that you are allowed to teach literature. If you go into forms of criticism, there's a GREAT book on criticism by Cleanth Brooks called "An Approach to Literature". It's surprisingly comprehensive and surprisingly concise and readable.
Also, look up "a Handbook to Literature" by William Harmon (if you don't already have it). It's one of those great text books that you can pick up at any point and read or flip through it and find something that you really should know but don't. It's still bedside reading for me.
For Poetry, I suggest Perrine's "Sound and Sense, An Introduction to Poetry." Again, short and sweet and really good reading for the teacher and anyone who is interested in literature.
Good luck. I'm jealous! |
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The_Philadelphianist
Joined: 07 Aug 2014
Posts: 18
Location: Little Pete's, at the counter, after midnight, w/ a steaming plate of scrambled eggs & scrapple
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| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 6:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Bud Powell wrote: |
Just PM me the name of the city. That's close enough. No need to share where you are.
Your description sounds a lot like the first school where I taught. I hope it is because the English majors are excellent speakers and the administration is quite good.
I DO hope that you are allowed to teach literature. If you go into forms of criticism, there's a GREAT book on criticism by Cleanth Brooks called "An Approach to Literature". It's surprisingly comprehensive and surprisingly concise and readable.
Also, look up "a Handbook to Literature" by William Harmon (if you don't already have it). It's one of those great text books that you can pick up at any point and read or flip through it and find something that you really should know but don't. It's still bedside reading for me.
For Poetry, I suggest Perrine's "Sound and Sense, An Introduction to Poetry." Again, short and sweet and really good reading for the teacher and anyone who is interested in literature.
Good luck. I'm jealous! |
Thanks for the suggestions. Are you familiar with M.H. Abrams' A Glossary of Literary Terms? I've found that also to be a great resource. Each entry is like a complete essay in miniature. I have a copy of that, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics and, for poetic form and meter and a review of the traditional understanding and technique of scansion, Paul Fussell's Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. While I don't have a copy of it at present, in the past I've found David Caplan's Poetic Form: An Introduction pretty useful as well. |
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