In another class, I've just gone through a bout of plagiarism. In our class, the nature of the assignments has precluded a chance to plagiarize, so I wanted to share my thoughts from the other class. Please take a few moments to read this post. Academic integrity is a lesson you *have* to learn before ENG 112.
Yesterday, a couple of your fellow students said something in the plagiarism conferences about which I spent the night thinking, namely a statement to the effect of: "It was only a single/couple of lines/paragraph. Why didn't I get credit for the rest of my work?"
First, you should know that Jen and I didn't come to the "zero/conference/allow revisions with a 'C' cap" policy with any ease. We spoke with colleagues and our program heads. We talked in the office and then spent most of an afternoon in an email exchange that included Tom. What we were looking for was a policy which would drive a crucial ethical lesson home. Many of our colleagues suggested just a zero for the paper. Some suggested dropping the offending student from the course. However, Jen and I wanted to send the message that even when compromised, reputations/images/ethos can be rebuilt. The student comments got me to rethink the policy.
When I was at the National Portrait Gallary in Washington a few weeks back, I read a quotation by John Randolph, one of your fellow Virginians. It said, "To ask any State to surrender part of her sovereignty is like asking a lady to surrender part of her chastity." Randolph's notion is that sovereignty is an absolute. One either possesses it or one doesn't. The quote stuck with me because it resonated with the basic idea behind the old joke about being a little bit pregnant. Over the past week, as I've discussed and pondered the problem of how best to teach academic integrity, I found myself thinking several times of the Randolph quotation and wondering if having a little bit of integrity is like being a little bit pregnant. I've come to the conclusion that the analogy is not a perfect one.
I think a better analogy is that of monogamy in a committed, monogamous relationship. As I began thinking of the students comments from yesterday, this was the analogy to which I returned. Suppose, in a monogamous relationship one gives the appearance of being monogamous 95 percent of the time. What happens? It is possible to rebuild a relationship based on trust into which one has introduced an element of doubt. It is even possible to rebuild such a relationship if one partner knows the other has cheated. However, in the short term, doubt colors each interpretation of the other.
If a person has integrity, then she is trusted. Her actions aren't given the additional scrutiny needed once one perceives a reasonable reason to doubt. However, once doubt in introduced into the relationship, all things change; and, at least in the short term, each word and action is weighed with the possibility in mind that the other may well act in such a way that their good intent should be questioned. Over time, doubt may be turned back into trust and one's ethos, one's reputations and credibility, rebuilt; but, everyone's life is made much, much easier if even the appearance of a lack of integrity is preserved.
Receiving a zero and a chance to revise to a "C" is meant to drive home the point that in most academic discourse your reputation, that is, the appearance and maintenance of integrity, is an assumption readers have to make. Otherwise, the ability to share research or to make crucial decisions involving the work of those one doesn't know personally disappears. Quite literally, our technological, over-populated society depends on everyone policing and protecting everyone's reputation for integrity. This policing is especially true in the academy.
Why? Because in a global world economy, we have to work at a distance. Those with whom you work don't have the luxury of knowing you well enough to use your work if there is *any* reason to distrust it. Professionals regularly make decisions which will change or cost other's lives. We depend on each other to weed out those who don't show academic integrity. There isn't any room for partial credit or even the appearance of a lack of integrity. This is the reason that those the academy accredits, that is, those the academy says are worth trusting with professional decisions, are taught to police each academic paper, to document early in the process, and when making the decision to document or not are taught to err on the side of being a tad paranoid about one's reputation.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Why the zero score for plagarism?
Yesterday, a couple of your fellow students said something in the plagiarism conferences about which I spent the night thinking, namely a statement to the effect of: "It was only a single/couple of lines/paragraph. Why didn't I get credit for the rest of my work?"
First, you should know that Jen and I didn't come to the "zero/conference/allow revisions with a 'C' cap" policy with any ease. We spoke with colleagues and our program heads. We talked in the office and then spent most of an afternoon in an email exchange that included Tom. What we were looking for was a policy which would drive a crucial ethical lesson home. Many of our colleagues suggested just a zero for the paper. Some suggested dropping the offending student from the course. However, Jen and I wanted to send the message that even when compromised, reputations/images/ethos can be rebuilt. The student comments got me to rethink the policy.
When I was at the National Portrait Gallary in Washington a few weeks back, I read a quotation by John Randolph, one of your fellow Virginians. It said, "To ask any State to surrender part of her sovereignty is like asking a lady to surrender part of her chastity." Randolph's notion is that sovereignty is an absolute. One either possesses it or one doesn't. The quote stuck with me because it resonated with the basic idea behind the old joke about being a little bit pregnant. Over the past week, as I've discussed and pondered the problem of how best to teach academic integrity, I found myself thinking several times of the Randolph quotation and wondering if having a little bit of integrity is like being a little bit pregnant. I've come to the conclusion that the analogy is not a perfect one.
I think a better analogy is that of monogamy in a committed, monogamous relationship. As I began thinking of the students comments from yesterday, this was the analogy to which I returned. Suppose, in a monogamous relationship one gives the appearance of being monogamous 95 percent of the time. What happens? It is possible to rebuild a relationship based on trust into which one has introduced an element of doubt. It is even possible to rebuild such a relationship if one partner knows the other has cheated. However, in the short term, doubt colors each interpretation of the other.
If a person has integrity, then she is trusted. Her actions aren't given the additional scrutiny needed once one perceives a reasonable reason to doubt. However, once doubt in introduced into the relationship, all things change; and, at least in the short term, each word and action is weighed with the possibility in mind that the other may well act in such a way that their good intent should be questioned. Over time, doubt may be turned back into trust and one's ethos, one's reputations and credibility, rebuilt; but, everyone's life is made much, much easier if even the appearance of a lack of integrity is preserved.
Receiving a zero and a chance to revise to a "C" is meant to drive home the point that in most academic discourse your reputation, that is, the appearance and maintenance of integrity, is an assumption readers have to make. Otherwise, the ability to share research or to make crucial decisions involving the work of those one doesn't know personally disappears. Quite literally, our technological, over-populated society depends on everyone policing and protecting everyone's reputation for integrity. This policing is especially true in the academy.
Why? Because in a global world economy, we have to work at a distance. Those with whom you work don't have the luxury of knowing you well enough to use your work if there is *any* reason to distrust it. Professionals regularly make decisions which will change or cost other's lives. We depend on each other to weed out those who don't show academic integrity. There isn't any room for partial credit or even the appearance of a lack of integrity. This is the reason that those the academy accredits, that is, those the academy says are worth trusting with professional decisions, are taught to police each academic paper, to document early in the process, and when making the decision to document or not are taught to err on the side of being a tad paranoid about one's reputation.
First, you should know that Jen and I didn't come to the "zero/conference/allow revisions with a 'C' cap" policy with any ease. We spoke with colleagues and our program heads. We talked in the office and then spent most of an afternoon in an email exchange that included Tom. What we were looking for was a policy which would drive a crucial ethical lesson home. Many of our colleagues suggested just a zero for the paper. Some suggested dropping the offending student from the course. However, Jen and I wanted to send the message that even when compromised, reputations/images/ethos can be rebuilt. The student comments got me to rethink the policy.
When I was at the National Portrait Gallary in Washington a few weeks back, I read a quotation by John Randolph, one of your fellow Virginians. It said, "To ask any State to surrender part of her sovereignty is like asking a lady to surrender part of her chastity." Randolph's notion is that sovereignty is an absolute. One either possesses it or one doesn't. The quote stuck with me because it resonated with the basic idea behind the old joke about being a little bit pregnant. Over the past week, as I've discussed and pondered the problem of how best to teach academic integrity, I found myself thinking several times of the Randolph quotation and wondering if having a little bit of integrity is like being a little bit pregnant. I've come to the conclusion that the analogy is not a perfect one.
I think a better analogy is that of monogamy in a committed, monogamous relationship. As I began thinking of the students comments from yesterday, this was the analogy to which I returned. Suppose, in a monogamous relationship one gives the appearance of being monogamous 95 percent of the time. What happens? It is possible to rebuild a relationship based on trust into which one has introduced an element of doubt. It is even possible to rebuild such a relationship if one partner knows the other has cheated. However, in the short term, doubt colors each interpretation of the other.
If a person has integrity, then she is trusted. Her actions aren't given the additional scrutiny needed once one perceives a reasonable reason to doubt. However, once doubt in introduced into the relationship, all things change; and, at least in the short term, each word and action is weighed with the possibility in mind that the other may well act in such a way that their good intent should be questioned. Over time, doubt may be turned back into trust and one's ethos, one's reputations and credibility, rebuilt; but, everyone's life is made much, much easier if even the appearance of a lack of integrity is preserved.
Receiving a zero and a chance to revise to a "C" is meant to drive home the point that in most academic discourse your reputation, that is, the appearance and maintenance of integrity, is an assumption readers have to make. Otherwise, the ability to share research or to make crucial decisions involving the work of those one doesn't know personally disappears. Quite literally, our technological, over-populated society depends on everyone policing and protecting everyone's reputation for integrity. This policing is especially true in the academy.
Why? Because in a global world economy, we have to work at a distance. Those with whom you work don't have the luxury of knowing you well enough to use your work if there is *any* reason to distrust it. Professionals regularly make decisions which will change or cost other's lives. We depend on each other to weed out those who don't show academic integrity. There isn't any room for partial credit or even the appearance of a lack of integrity. This is the reason that those the academy accredits, that is, those the academy says are worth trusting with professional decisions, are taught to police each academic paper, to document early in the process, and when making the decision to document or not are taught to err on the side of being a tad paranoid about one's reputation.
Friday, April 18, 2008
A Pope a Day...
... keeps the heretics away?
Since you're thinking about Popes for Prof Morrison, anyway, I submit the following for your dubious amusement: the blog of an artist who drew a line drawing of each Pope, day by day, for about a year. More interesting than it sounds:
http://www.mattkirkland.com/popes.html
Since you're thinking about Popes for Prof Morrison, anyway, I submit the following for your dubious amusement: the blog of an artist who drew a line drawing of each Pope, day by day, for about a year. More interesting than it sounds:
http://www.mattkirkland.com/popes.html
The Final Week of Class
As we move into the final week of class, I want you going through multiple revisions of your portfolio and taking the time to present your *best* work. This means polishing your cover letter and writing inventory multiple time, taking the time to proofread both (again, multiple times), and making sure the pieces you pick for the evidence section do the work you want them to. Remember: the things you put into the evidence section are meant to help you prove the claims you make as to what you have learned in the cover letter and writing inventory. What you include in the evidence section doesn't have to be polished. This section can include notes, prewriting, annotations from your text, anything you've done on your blog, drafts of papers, etc. et etc.
Your cover letter and writing inventory should be as polished as you can make them.
I strongly suggest that you make at least one last past through the textbook, the class blog, and all your work to make sure you're making the best case you can for your grade and what you've learned in the course.
By the end of all this work, I suspect you will be impressed by all the information to which you've been exposed and how much you've written. Remember: the class isn't designed for you to learn everything to which you've been exposed. If you've learned how to analyze rhetorical situations, process writing, the connection between opinion, support, and evidence, and how to make yourself into a better communicator over time, I will be more than pleased.
You'll turn the whole shebang into me on Wednesday, 7 May.
You can turn this in one of two ways:
1. Add me as a collaborator for a long google doc which contains cover letter, inventory, and evidence. In the evidence section, you can include links to your blog, mindmaps, etc. Just make sure these links work.
2. Turn in everything as a physical portfolio.
I will be finished grading them by 9 May.
Regardless, once you are finished with your portfolio and turn it in, take a moment to fill out a course evaluation.
As always, write with questions.
Your cover letter and writing inventory should be as polished as you can make them.
I strongly suggest that you make at least one last past through the textbook, the class blog, and all your work to make sure you're making the best case you can for your grade and what you've learned in the course.
By the end of all this work, I suspect you will be impressed by all the information to which you've been exposed and how much you've written. Remember: the class isn't designed for you to learn everything to which you've been exposed. If you've learned how to analyze rhetorical situations, process writing, the connection between opinion, support, and evidence, and how to make yourself into a better communicator over time, I will be more than pleased.
You'll turn the whole shebang into me on Wednesday, 7 May.
You can turn this in one of two ways:
1. Add me as a collaborator for a long google doc which contains cover letter, inventory, and evidence. In the evidence section, you can include links to your blog, mindmaps, etc. Just make sure these links work.
2. Turn in everything as a physical portfolio.
I will be finished grading them by 9 May.
Regardless, once you are finished with your portfolio and turn it in, take a moment to fill out a course evaluation.
As always, write with questions.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Creating Better Presentations:
Lifehack is currently doing a series on creating better presentations. It seems timely, so:
Part One:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/presentation-masterclass-part-1-introduction.html
Part Two:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/5-key-questions-when-planning-your-presentation-presentation-masterclass-part-2.html
Part One:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/presentation-masterclass-part-1-introduction.html
Part Two:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/5-key-questions-when-planning-your-presentation-presentation-masterclass-part-2.html
Taking Good Notes...
The class began with advice on how to read and take notes. This article on taking notes is now a year out of date, but note--class and otherwise--are not a genre that changes quickly. Enjoy, and file under what you know about genres.
Here's the linky:
http://lifehacker.com/software/note-taking/geek-to-live%E2%80%94take-great-notes-167307.php
Here's the linky:
http://lifehacker.com/software/note-taking/geek-to-live%E2%80%94take-great-notes-167307.php
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Here's the link to the _Style_ article:
http://www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=16513
For those who are interested, a walk through the Style achieves--available for keyword search online--reveals an illuminating perspective on race, class, and the Metro Richmond area. I'm not sure I agree with all which is said, but the statistics and evidence used to back up the articles may prove useful to you, that is, if you check the sources.
For those who are interested, a walk through the Style achieves--available for keyword search online--reveals an illuminating perspective on race, class, and the Metro Richmond area. I'm not sure I agree with all which is said, but the statistics and evidence used to back up the articles may prove useful to you, that is, if you check the sources.
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