If I may, I will resituate the argument from the perspective of my day job, internal auditor. In academe the professor is the adminsitrator, analyst, gate-keeper, etc., etc. on all elements of plagarism, as well as setting assignments, grading, etc.. There is no university-assigned group that has an ongoing mandate to plan, discern and report on unethical behaviour. In my world we do this on a ongoing basis [predictably based on primarily accounting-based standards].
Internal auditors have developed tests, methodologies for duplication, high-risk actions/behaviour and the means to identify these same activities. I even belong to the Institute of Internal Auditors - but not the Association of Fraud Examiners.
As an example of internal auditors' powers of discernment I will use an example. I understand some schools maintain a copy of all A+ papers. This is becasue the risk of copying these is greater than the C+ papers. As a point of debate, I would argue the C+ paper is unlikely to elicit a review for plagarism. If the student is willing to lead a C+ life, they may do so with impunity.
Internal audit functions are not cheap. If the university wished to ensure academic integrity [in terms of plagarism] then it would be required to have a dedicated group doing so. It would cost the more or less the same for every auditor as it costs for a professor. Would it be more effective - definitely. Would it be more efficient - highly debatable. What would it prove in the end - especially if the uptake in acaemia were markedly uneven.
I volunteeer for the position of National Commissioner of Plagarism [against plagarism?]. As I retire from the federal government, it would be the type of theoretically needed function that could best be administered from Ottawa and delivered through a multi-lateral provincial and territorial framework. Besides, I hate APA format, and from the offie of Commissisoner I would cancel the Americo-centric usage of APA as my first act. Besides, I find APA so difficult to use, I imagine myself technically defaulted to plagarim any time I do achieve APA standardization - so far these have only been nightmares.
Best regards,
Michael Ryan
Russ Hunt <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Yes, thanks for raising this issue, Tania.
It probably won't surprise anybody that I have some responses to
it. I skimmed the McDermid paper, too, on Tania's
recommendation, and was struck, as she was, that it ends before
it gets to the good part.
But my feeling is that there really is not going to be a good
part, because there isn't any solution to the problem, at least
not that involves
> ...carefully designing our rubrics and arguments about
> evaluation in order to reduce the potential reward for
> undetected plagiarism and increase the potential reward for
> honest research writing.
I'd argue that the problem here is the rewards themselves, and
that changing the arguments for or conditions around them is
something we've all thought of, and which hasn't worked for any
of us. Defining the issue as one of ethics and exhorting people
to "be good" won't work as long as we've structured the whole
thing as a game, to be won or lost in order to gain rewards.
McDermid refers to the purpose of writing as "demonstrating
knowledge." That, I'd contend, (along with "demonstrating
skill"), is a rhetorically catastrophic motive for writing, and
one that promotes a divorcing of the text from any dialogic
situation. If you have authentic rhetorical motives for writing,
plagiarism would be beside the point (even the excessively well
documented examples of scholarly plagiarism are almost all
wreckage from the tenure and promotion wars, where the point of
writing is to get published and score points, or to be regarded
as a Writer).
I'm not arguing that it's easy to make the rhetorical situations
of student writers into ones which don't invite plagiarism, but
I would argue that it's conceivable -- and that constructing a
rubric for evaluation that will effectively discourage it simply
isn't.
Tania says,
> Yet I do wish we could get more field research that would
> analyze (not just theorize) whether or not certain ways of
> evaluating writing, and talking to students about our
> evaluation strategies, really can reduce the motive to
> plagiarize.
I'd be interested in such field research, too, but my prediction
is that if we did it we'd find that the answer is "no," as long
as what we're focally concerned with is evaluating writing.
-- Russ
St. Thomas University
http://www.stu.ca/~hunt/
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its newsletter, and the annual conference, go to
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