Karen,
I'd not heard of anti-plagiarism services.
What a great idea. Their use should be routine--a high-tech solution
to
a high-tech problem.
To tell you the truth, I don't know how they would be able to detect
frauds like the Shadow Scholar, in that the papers are one-of-a-kind,
not recycled. Yet some organized effort to combat this really is in
order. This is something that a union of university professors, or
some
other pan-university organization should undertake.
David
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
On Behalf Of Karen Heckert
Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2011 4:03 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] FW: The Shadow Scholar - He writes your students'
papers.
This is not amusing. This is horrifying. (You can tell how old I am.)
I recently finished an MS in I/O Psychology, and one professor made us
submit
everything we handed in to an online anti-plagiarism service.
Personally, I
thought she was nuts and certifiably paranoid. Now I understand.
About fifteen years ago I spent some time in a Ph.D program and
teaching
undergrads. One day I received two exactly identical papers from two
different
students. Some astute questioning uncovered the fact that the best
student in
the class (Chinese) and several American students were pooling their
resources
to write the research papers. Since their exams were all written in
class, this
didn't bother me too much. I just stipulated that each student had to
write up
the work in their very own words for submission. But there wasn't a
question (I
think) of anybody getting paid - it was just a case of uniting in the
face of a
common enemy (the gradebook). Beng a student myself, I understood only
too well.
Besides, I figured, most research these days is done by teams, and
this
was a
little practical experience.
Another cautionary tale: One of my students who had been turning in
acceptable
papers all semester turned in one that read very much like
schizophrenese
word-salad. I called her into conference and asked her point blank,
"Are
you
dyslexic?" She said that she was, but that the student center's
writing
lab had
been helping her write her papers. This time she simply hadn't had
time
to take
her paper to them.
Having just survived another bout of our "educational" system, I
have to
agree
with many of the anonymous writer's points about college, if not with
his/her
ethics. I find this sort of thing a far more serious symptom of "moral
decay"
than abortion or gay marriage. We in the US are supposed to be a
meritocracy and
those things which undermine that threaten our existence in more
crucial
ways.
The "system" is failing the students and in the long run failing us
all.
________________________________
From: David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Thu, January 6, 2011 3:17:56 PM
Subject: [xmca] FW: The Shadow Scholar - He writes your students'
papers.
Not a propos of anything, this is both amusing and disturbing.
David
****************************
From the Chronicle Review [A Weekly Magazine of Ideas/Chronicle of
Higher Education], Friday, November 19, 2010, pp. B6-B9. See
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/
****************************
The Shadow Scholar
The man who writes your students' papers tells his story
By Ed Dante
edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
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