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Kevin Chen writes a post in his blog about incentives and scaling from his two years as a teaching assistant. Specifically in his current post he addresses plagiarism in computer science and why it has still not stopped.
The most important goal is to keep the course fair for students who do honest work. Instructors must assign grades that accurately reflect performance. A student who grapples with a problem — becoming a stronger programmer in the process — should never receive a lower grade than one who copies and pastes.
Finally, as educators, we also hope that the accused student can learn difficult lessons about ethical behavior in the classroom rather than the workplace.
From his experience, every semester somewhere between 10% to 40% of the students carry out blatant, indisputable cases of plagiarism with an unknown amount of less clear cases left unaddressed. How does this match with soylentil's experiences here, either in computer science or other fields? The perspectives are likely quite different from institution to institution as well as whether you are still studying in college or university, recently graduated, or in a teaching role.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Alphatool on Monday March 26 2018, @10:30AM (4 children)
It's not always that easy though, especially in computer science and other subjects where there is a correct answer. It's very possible for multiple students to produce almost identical solutions to a problem even without any actual plagiarism. As an example, in first year computer science I had an assignment automatically flagged as plagiarized from another student, with only the formatting and variable names changed. There is no doubt that we had submitted very similar code - but we'd never even met each other until we were dragged into the plagiarism investigation. Turns out we'd both found the same solution to a fairly trivial assignment. It took a few unpleasant months to get everything cleared up.
The point to the story is that plagiarism isn't always clear cut so things like an automatic expulsion policy can leave honest students in real trouble.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Monday March 26 2018, @01:23PM (3 children)
Not to mention that when one student covertly copies from another there is the problem of deciding which of the two was the plagiarist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @02:43PM (2 children)
This is usually not difficult, because in this case only one of those students will properly understand their solution.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 26 2018, @05:05PM (1 child)
Not necessarily so. Think back over all your years in school. Yes, you saw other student's work before it was collected, whether multiple choice, essays, math, whatever. It happens. Sometimes, you're stuck on something, and you see the other student's paper. For my purposes here, it doesn't even matter whether you looked at that paper intentionally - you saw it. And, his answer nudged your frozen brain fart enough that you remembered what you studied last night, or two, or six days ago.
Not that I'm strongly in disagreement with you. Most likely, the person doing the copying really doesn't understand the subject matter. More, I'll admit that plagiarism is going to be far less obvious in a simple multiple choice, and/or write down some simple responses - that's really going to stick out on an essay type exam. I'm just saying that sometimes, those brain farts can get locked into place, and a little nudge is needed to get them moving.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @10:00PM
Plagiarism means passing off somebody else's work as your own. That is, you are attempting to take credit for something you did not create. This is a Big Deal™ in academia because proper credit is extremely important to academics.
Reading somebody else's solution, even intentionally, is not plagiarism. If this inspires your own work, this is a good thing. Depending on circumstances, it may be appropriate to credit the other person for inspiration.