... One of my students (My D+ student who'd turned in the same paper he'd given me at conferences) had a family emergency Monday, so he dropped by class, gave me his rough draft, and left. That was yesterday morning. Tonight, I've finally gotten around to glancing over their rough drafts, and his is not "his." I read the first paragraph, googled a suspicious phrase, and up came Wikipedia. He DID cite a source for that section - but it wasn't Wiki, and that phrase wasn't in quotes. Oh, well - an honest mistake. Next paragraph, I come across something similar - so I word-searched the wiki article, and up came the same sentence (with 3 word changes, and one tense change...). I read the paragraph that the sentence came from in my student's paper, and then the paragraph in the wiki article, and they're very similar. I've stopped reading the paper for now because I don't want to deal with it.
I'll talk to him about it tomorrow... oy.
I am not sure if it makes it any easier to deal with or fail him even though he is your D student. What are you planning to do?
ReplyDeleteHe wasn't at class for me to talk to, and i've sent him an e-mail asking him if I can talk with him Monday after class, but haven't heard back...
ReplyDeleteWe briefly talked today in class about using Wikipedia in our papers, and all of the students gave feedback as to why they think I don't want it in their papers (Anyone can edit it, it's not academic, it's "too easy," etc., etc.); "D" said nothing, and then, after class, I asked if I could talk to him about his paper. He said "sounds bad" and then asked me if it was about using wiki (AND HE LOOKED GUILTY!). So we sat down and talked about it, about why wiki (it's general enough to give information about everything), what it looked like to me as a reader (plagiarism), how I didn't finish the piece (what that makes me think about the writer), and what he could do to fix the issue (go through, mark each place that he used wiki, and bring a copy sans wiki for workshop on Wednesday). He said his paper will probably go from 8-9 pages to 6-7... We'll see. I'm keeping my eye out for anything else; this is a "first offense." I've told him that I'm reading his sources because his paper is so interesting (a truth). The kid is smart, but this is just frustrating. Why do I have to point this out? I wrote it in the prompt: NO WIKI. BLAH.
ReplyDeleteI think you handled this really well. We know how what he did as a next step now, but your approach on the initial issue is really good: you contextualized the issue in relationships between readers and writers.
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