Friday, June 20, 2008
Plagiarism in New Literacies
This is going back a little bit, but I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this past Tuesday's readings discussion of plagiarism. In Leander, they discuss teachers' fear that students would just cut and paste from online sources to write in-class essays. This is criticized in the article, which says "the idea of what it meant to be knowledgeable or to do knowledge work was not challenged. The space of where knowledge was located (in authorized texts and individual memories) and how it was measured (in individual performances) and what it was characterized by (unique voices) was held stable." The articles in general seemed to suggest that plagiarism needs to be redefined as a result of technology. Personally, I think it is great to have access to so many sources, but at the end of the day you still need to be able to formulate your own ideas and put them on paper yourself, rather than taking bits and pieces from other works.
Any thoughts?
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Taking bits and pieces of other people's work is fine, and often makes for a good paper, but they must be assembled in a new and interesting fashion, hopefully creating a conclusion that is unique or that is at least proved in new way. So ultimately, you do still need to be able to form your own ideas. And citation is still important. Not only is intellectual property a concept to be respected and protected, but also it is important to teach students the necessity of evaluating the credibility of (in particular) their online sources. Seeing text as a reference rather than an answer may help.
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