Comments on: Digital Natives, Scholarly Immigrants?

By: MBA Lady

MBA Lady — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:40:26 +0000

John, completely agree! Kids are not stupid, they are too lazy. And modern technologies make it easier to copy content. They do not even need to go to library to write an essay – a plenty of materials can be found in the Internet, moreover they can download a finished work. You know, I’ve faced some situations when a student download a coursework and does not even read it. And the author of the coursework to prevent plagiarism paste in the text phrases like “If you are reading this the student has not opened the coursework”

By: Maura Smale

Maura Smale — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:08:21 +0000

Thanks for the share, Stephen, and the link, too. I’ll head over to FriendFeed and check it out.

By: John

John — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:43:35 +0000

I call bulls*&t.

Plagiarism is copying other people’s stuff and claiming it as your own. It’s not that hard a concept. When I was growing up in average public schools in Alabama, we all knew what it was without any detailed, nuanced instruction. Same thing in college.

But over the years, we’ve let students convince us that they’re just not bright enough to figure out what plagiarism is. And consequently, the consequences for such behavior have diminished, and the incidence has (shockingly!) increased.

Kids aren’t stupid. To the contrary, they’re smart enough to persuade educators that they shouldn’t be held accountable when they’re caught red-handed copying off the Internet. They’ve played dumb, and we’ve let them play dumb.

You want plagiarism to diminish? Fail a student for the course on the first incident, expel the student for the second offense. You’ll see kids figure out plagiarism really quickly.

By: Stephen Francoeur

Stephen Francoeur — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:24:30 +0000

Ah, the wonders of social networks. When I read this post on Google Reader this morning, I clicked the “Share” button so that I would turn up in my FriendFeed stream. When it did, it generated a bunch of interesting comments, none of which are appearing here in your post. So here’s the URL for the conversation thread I started elsewhere (sorry!) http://ff.im/cd0aN

By: Ernesto Priego

Ernesto Priego — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:02:44 +0000

This is interesting. I also think that the concept of “intellectual property” and “plagiarism” needs to change according to the times. Younger people growing up with access to technology will have a different approach to what it is considered “original” because sharing, remixing, mashing up and just simply the CTRL + C culture are where they are coming from. Academia needs to interrogate notions of authority and originality beyond merely theoretical frameworks to apply them in scholarly practice. That is what we can learn from the so-called “digital natives.”