Review of Mackinzee Escamilla and Corey Duysen presentation
on preventing plagiarism in first year composition courses.
Overall the prezi and the audio component of the
presentation were very well done. The presentation focuses on prevention and detection
of plagiarism in first year composition courses. By the end of the presentation
I wondered who the intended audience of
the presentation was? It is a great overview, but in my opinion not
detailed enough for practitioners and I do not think students really care about
the specifics.
The first line of defense against plagiarism according to
Escamilla and Duysen is education. What
does the literature say regarding motivations? Is it really ignorance or is it
laziness or a shift in the culture of attribution (thinking of mashable)? The
presenter specifically details the education that students should receive on
using others’ work properly: summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, crediting
sources and citing sources. Guided practice in these skills is crucial for
proper implementation by students in their own work.
The presentation then transitioned to focus on the role of
ethics and integrity in preventing plagiarism. While the presentation discusses
completely valid ethical reasons to not plagiarize, I wonder if emphasis should also be placed on disciplinary consequences
of plagiarism because they are more tangible.
The presentation concludes with a discussion on plagiarism
detection software, specifically turn it in. The presenter describes how turn
it in is integrated into many learning management systems and how many students
often do not realize that their documents are going to this plagiarism
detection database. To me this raises
serious questions regarding privacy and copyrights? I also wonder if savvy
students utilize turn it in or the like to ‘check’ their work for detection
prior to submitting their assignments.
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