Roberta --
Seems to me your colleague's dilemma provides a wonderful
opportunity for talking about assignment design: you could offer to help
him come up with assignments that can't be easily plagiarized -- things
tied to current events, for example, or things that are tied closely to
the course content as it's undfolding over the current semester, maybe
even by getting students to contribute questions/ideas for writing
assignments. (I can think of a number of ways to do that . . . )
So what if he thinks he's avoiding plagiarism and we know you're
encouraging him to use writing in more pedagogically sound and/or
interesting ways? The Internet is a giant Trojan rabbit -- er, horse --
is what I say.
Marcy
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Marcy Bauman
Writing Program, University of Michigan-Dearborn
4901 Evergreen Rd, Dearborn, MI 48128
fax: 313-593-5552
http://www.umd.umich.edu/~marcyb
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