Plagiarism

Well, I have found my first real case of plagiarism this semester. (Don't worry; I haven't graded your papers yet, so it's not from your section.) I thought this might be a good opportunity to discuss plagiarism from a teacher's perspective.
Right away, I want to say that I distinguish between different kinds of errors. I'm not gleefully waiting for a student to make an innocent mistake so I can kick them off the boat. Many errors (especially in Freshman classes) are based on misunderstandings of the norms of citation used in academia. I ask my students to distinguish between primary and secondary sources, quotation and paraphrase, and the norms of citing and the boundaries of the acceptable are slightly different for each one. Quotations require specific page citations. Paraphrases require page citation, too, but there's the additional issue of how of the wording can remain similar, and how often the citation needs to be made per paragraph. Many students are used to writing papers by rearranging material from the textbook -- this is unacceptable, but many students learn it in high school. So I realize that for many students the norms are changing rapidly from the high school they just left, and I don't expect them to get it completely right the first time. I give papers that only refer to materials we have used in class precisely so I can remove temptation and make the process more transparent.
I divide plagiarism errors into three categories. The first are simple misunderstandings and minor errors. I usually note them in my comments and ask students to modify them in revision. I may lower the grade slightly, within normal mechanisms for evaluating their style and substance. If I continue to see them, I increase the severity of the response. Next there are cases in which the student actively copies large portions of the paper from a web site and doesn't cite it. I assume these cases are done with the _intention_ to cheat. I then speak to the student and if they are sufficiently contrite, I usually fail the student for that assignment, and sometimes also make the student rewrite the paper to an acceptable level. I also give a note to Student Affairs. If you are tempted to just Google a web-site and use whole paragraphs as your own, without citation, don't. I can usually tell just by reading a sentence whether it was written by a Freshman or not. Professional writing is usually more fluid, more complex in structure, and has a larger vocabulary range than writing produced by undergraduates. Now, occasionally, I meet a student who writes that well, but it's rare enough that I usually know within a few weeks which students they are. When a student who has previously shown a poor mastery of English suddenly writes like a PhD candidate, it's rather, uhm, suspicious. I can also use Google, too. If you've gotta cheat, don't cheat stupid.
Then there's the nuclear level of plagiarism. If a student plagiarizes more than once, lies about it when confronted, or does something else really beyond the bounds, I will fail them for the course or seek some other level of severe sanction. (For example, I once had a student completely rewrite the paper to remove the evidence of plagiarism between when I asked her to speak to me but before I assigned a grade. She then tried to claim the new paper was the one she'd handed in. Of course, I had a xerox of the original one, and wasn't amused.) So I'm at my nastiest when a student intentionally cheats, lies about it, AND insults my intelligence.
So, as a teacher, I'm not out to demolish students for making honest errors, or to inflict disproportionate punishment even in cases of cheating. For the record, I wouldn't have thrown the students off the boat. (But I might have failed them for the paper or the course.)


Tom