I'm not going to stop until a statement is made clear in the campus: PLAGIARISM IS AN ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT THAT SHOULD NOT BE TOLERATED IN ANY MANNER.
I am in the process of conceptualizing and planning for a new research on Plagiarism. I (together with Ma'am Elvie and Ma'am Josie) already have conducted one study a couple of years ago. Its title was FACULTY RESPONSE TO PLAGIARISM: TEACHER'S ROLE IN PROMOTING INTELLECTUAL HONESTY.
This time, I'd like to conduct another study that focuses on students' plagiarism practices.
I am in the process of conceptualizing and planning for a new research on Plagiarism. I (together with Ma'am Elvie and Ma'am Josie) already have conducted one study a couple of years ago. Its title was FACULTY RESPONSE TO PLAGIARISM: TEACHER'S ROLE IN PROMOTING INTELLECTUAL HONESTY.
This time, I'd like to conduct another study that focuses on students' plagiarism practices.
I am very much aware that students in this campus do plagiarize. What I'd like to know is the extent to which they plagiarize and the forms of plagiarism usually committed. This brings me into thinking of the possibility of looking at faculty plagiarism practices. I noticed that even teachers do plagiarize. I want to do content analysis of publication in the campus but I might offend other teachers so I have reservation on that possibility.
This leads me into thinking of the times when I doubted a professor upon knowing how he writes or up0n discovering his standards for the papers required to submit.
Let me mention Professor X (I can't say the name, sorry). He requests students to submit printed copies of "research materials" and even asks them to produce a hard-bound copy for the class. The copy looks like a thesis on the outside but when you open it, it's a collection of downloaded materials from the Internet. Worse, each article contains the students' names. I find this practice absurd and I believe that this is the best way to teach students not to think anymore but to just download information that they need in the academe. I see this as an unusual practice of plagiarism.
Next comes my former professor at the Grad School when I was finishing my Master's degree. She was my Thesis professor (how ironic -- she's teaching thesis writing). I was supposed to submit Chapter 2 on the coming Saturday then but since I haven't finished reviewing materials, I looked for her to ask if I may submit the next Saturday. I found her in the library and so I told her there what i wanted to say. I was surprised with her reply which I could still recall clearly: Madali lang naman ang Chapter 3. Ayan, (pointing to unpublished theses on display at the library) ang dami dyan, kumopya ka na lang. Obviously, she was encouraging me to plagiarize. I thought she was just kidding but she looked serious. But of course, I didn't follow her!
As if professors in the Grad school haven't learned, I encountered another one who required each of us (this is on my Ph. D. class, take note) to submit a paper about different companies. The companies assigned to me are the media giants in the country. When I was about to submit my paper, I dared to look at my classmates' paper when I noticed that their papers were so thick. They were even in soft-bound copies while mine was just in a clear book but wasn't as thick as their papers. I wondered how they were able to produce such papers which were almost as thick as hard-bound books. I decided to "inspect" some of the papers and found out that they simply downloaded the information from the Internet. I couldn't imagine Ph. D. students doing an elementary practice of copy-paste system. Oh my God! That was all I told my husband who was with me when I submitted my paper. Did my classmates expect to be graded on the downloaded information they passed to the professor?
I believe that plagiarism is a major offense, especially if it is done habitually -- either by students or by teachers themselves.
This leads me into thinking of the times when I doubted a professor upon knowing how he writes or up0n discovering his standards for the papers required to submit.
Let me mention Professor X (I can't say the name, sorry). He requests students to submit printed copies of "research materials" and even asks them to produce a hard-bound copy for the class. The copy looks like a thesis on the outside but when you open it, it's a collection of downloaded materials from the Internet. Worse, each article contains the students' names. I find this practice absurd and I believe that this is the best way to teach students not to think anymore but to just download information that they need in the academe. I see this as an unusual practice of plagiarism.
Next comes my former professor at the Grad School when I was finishing my Master's degree. She was my Thesis professor (how ironic -- she's teaching thesis writing). I was supposed to submit Chapter 2 on the coming Saturday then but since I haven't finished reviewing materials, I looked for her to ask if I may submit the next Saturday. I found her in the library and so I told her there what i wanted to say. I was surprised with her reply which I could still recall clearly: Madali lang naman ang Chapter 3. Ayan, (pointing to unpublished theses on display at the library) ang dami dyan, kumopya ka na lang. Obviously, she was encouraging me to plagiarize. I thought she was just kidding but she looked serious. But of course, I didn't follow her!
As if professors in the Grad school haven't learned, I encountered another one who required each of us (this is on my Ph. D. class, take note) to submit a paper about different companies. The companies assigned to me are the media giants in the country. When I was about to submit my paper, I dared to look at my classmates' paper when I noticed that their papers were so thick. They were even in soft-bound copies while mine was just in a clear book but wasn't as thick as their papers. I wondered how they were able to produce such papers which were almost as thick as hard-bound books. I decided to "inspect" some of the papers and found out that they simply downloaded the information from the Internet. I couldn't imagine Ph. D. students doing an elementary practice of copy-paste system. Oh my God! That was all I told my husband who was with me when I submitted my paper. Did my classmates expect to be graded on the downloaded information they passed to the professor?
I believe that plagiarism is a major offense, especially if it is done habitually -- either by students or by teachers themselves.
This is the reason I will conduct another research to confirm the extent to which students in this campus plagiarize. Something must be done about this academic crime before it's too late...
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