How to Do Things With Words

Los procesos de ensenanza y aprendizaje cada vez mas digitalizados han convertido Internet en la principal fuente de informacion en las universidades. La facilidad para el acceso a la informacion puede ir acompanada de practicas fraudulentas como el plagio. Por ello, la finalidad del estudio es conocer el origen de las causas y motivaciones que poseen los estudiantes universitarios espanoles; asi como establecer un modelo que permita categorizarlas y que aporte explicacion teorica a los datos empiricos. Con un diseno de investigacion correlacional causal y utilizando como instrumento de medida un cuestionario ad hoc, se indaga sobre que practicas considera que son deshonestas, si ha realizado alguna vez estas practicas y el motivo principal. Participan 461 estudiantes universitarios de Educacion (grado y master) pertenecientes a cinco universidades espanolas. A partir del analisis factorial exploratorio se identifica un factor relativo al concepto de plagio, dos sobre ?que hacen? y tres factores en ?por que lo hacen? Con ello, se realiza un analisis factorial confirmatorio del modelo empirico basado en el tipo de relacion que, segun el alumnado, se produce entre el concepto de plagio y sus elementos constitutivos, las acciones consideradas plagio que realizan y los diversos motivos para llevarlas a cabo. Se obtiene un modelo ajustado segun los indices estadisticos: Chi cuadrado normalizado (1,9), bondad del ajuste (0,97), bondad del ajuste corregido (0,97), ajuste comparativo (0,95), error de aproximacion cuadratico medio (0,045) y criterio informativo de Akaike (mucho mas bajo que el del modelo independiente). Se concluye identificando un patron en el que a pesar de conocer lo que es el «plagio» y sus consecuencias, se justifican tres motivos interrelacionados para plagiar: «internos» a la persona, «externos» a ella y la falta de motivacion e interes por la tarea planteada.

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Percepción sobre el plagio académico de estudiantes universitarios españoles

This brief article is intended to aid higher education teachers in understanding and responding to plagiarism, which mostly occurs among students, but also occasionally among established professionals.It begins with definitions and definitional issues relating to plagiarism. Then, it asks if an ethical vacuum helps plagiarism flourish. Seven reasons why this misconduct occurs are discussed (academic pressures, poor planning, poor preparation, excessive or mindless workload, opportunity, cultural background, and prominent bad examples), as well as where and how plagiarism occurs. Finally, the article concludes with a discussion of how plagiarism can be best detected, combated, and prevented, as well as appropriate sanctions.This article is based on remarks made at the Committee on Libraries and Technology session of the 2004 Association of American Law Schools Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

How Educators Can More Effectively Understand and Combat the Plagiarism Epidemic

Student plagiarism and cheating have been at the focus of scholarly investigations for over two decades now, the discussion being conducted on the backdrop of the question of whether traditional didactics is suitable for Google generation students who supposedly think and process information differently. Using data collected via start-of-term questionnaires, a series of follow-up semi-structured interviews and a specially calibrated session on academic integrity, the present study looks into the students’ ideas on cheating, school work, internet use, studying habits and understanding of academic integrity. The study aims to suggest (albeit tentatively) a holistic approach to teaching academic integrity in higher education taking into account the students’ perspective: an in-depth qualitative approach was used in the data analysis, evaluating students’ investment, engagement, motivation, learning habits, attitudes to cheating and plagiarism. The findings suggest a conflicted picture of the Bulgarian student: hardly taking the all-practical approach towards higher education, conflicted about the value of learning, this generation of students has little structure to their knowledge, they critically underuse ICT tools for learning and regard cheating as a commodity, unburdened by moral or ethical implications.

Teaching Academic Integrity: the Missing Link

This project assesses the ability of a game tutorial, “Goblin Threat” to increase university students’ ability to recognize plagiarized passages. The game tutorial covers information about how to cite properly, types and consequences of plagiarism, and the differences between paraphrasing and plagiarism. The game involves finding and clicking on “goblins” who ask questions about various aspects of plagiarism. Sound effects and entertaining visuals work to keep students’ attention. One group of 177 students enrolled in an online Psychology of Adolescence course answered four multiple choice plagiarism recognition questions in the months after completing the online game tutorial while another group of over 400 students in the same online psychology course did not have access to the game tutorial, but answered the same multiple choice plagiarism recognition questions over the same period of time. The group who played the game tutorial showed an 11% improvement in recognizing plagiarized passages over the comparison group, a statistically significant difference. Results suggest the ability to keep students focused may be an important ingredient for plagiarism interventions.

Plagiarism Intervention Using a Game-Based Tutorial in an Online Distance Education Course

The present contribution looks into the much discussed issue of student plagiarism, which is conjectured to stem from problems with information searching and exploitation, underdeveloped exposition skills and difficulty in using sources, especially concerning quotations and references. The aim of the study is to determine how effective pre-emptive measures can be if information exploitation and writing from sources are approached as skills that need to be taught. The results show that addressing source use as a skill tends to gradually if slowly reduce the number of plagiarized assignments submitted by students.

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Dealing with Students’ Plagiarism Pre-Emptively Through Teaching Proper Information Exploitation

This contribution probes into the attitudes towards plagiarism in academia as it details the results of a questionnaire study within the larger framework of a joint Bulgarian-German research project on plagiarism in academia. The questionnaire focused on investigating the scope of the notion of plagiarism as Bulgarian academics understand it and second, looking into the availability of a system of support to prevent transgressors and/or sanctions for transgressing academics across Bulgarian universities. The results of the questionnaire suggest that while there appears to be a consensus among Bulgarian academics about the different facets that make up the notion of plagiarism, the reported attitudes towards plagiarism practices vary greatly, reflecting a non-uniform perception of what constitutes an offense. It also shows a deep dissatisfaction with existing anti-plagiarism regulatory systems in Bulgarian scientific institutions.
Note: This study was financed by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, as part of a larger project entitled: “Text Plagiarism in the Social Sciences vis-a-vis Ethical Aspects and Common Practices” and realized within the framework of the Research Group Linkage Programme of the foundation in the period of 01.01.2017 – 30.06.2018. Ref. 3.4 – 1062413 – BGR – IP.

Attitudes towards plagiarism in academia

This paper examines aspects of strategic interaction and the construction of the social actor in a neo-Austinian framework of illocutionary acts. The basic premise of the neo-Austinian framework is conventionality, according to which illocutionary acts depend on social agreement. An important part of the framework is the felicity condition of entitlement, directly related to the hearer’s understanding of the conventions that should hold for an act performance. Two strategies of challenging and/or rejecting illocutionary acts are then identified tentatively dubbed looping and backfiring, related to the hearer’s perception of when the entitlement felicity condition is flouted. Both strategies can be overtly or covertly confrontational and demonstrate that in their social quality illocutionary acts serve to construct the social actor and build up interpersonal relations.

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Rejecting and challenging illocutionary acts

This contribution analyzes Cappelen’s No-Assertion view arguing that, although appealing, the No-Assertion view is based on a questionable premise, namely, that assertions are sayings. Austin’s notions of locution and saying are examined, in order to show that illocutionary acts concern aspects not covered by either of the previous two terms. Following a reconstructed definition of illocutionary act from Austin’s writings, I suggest that assertion is an illocutionary act, in that it takes effect after it is taken up by a hearer. I further suggest that in this respect the game analogy fails with regard to assertion, since no rules of the constitutive kind or norms can intrinsically define this act. This proposal is based on the idea that illocutionary act analysis should dispose of any preoccupations with propositions. It argues that expressing propositions was not originally and should not be at the core of speech act theoretic problematic.

https://www.esnbu.org/data/files/2015/2015-2-5-chankova-pp71-84.pdf

Mariya Chankova

Papers

Dealing with Students’ Plagiarism Pre-Emptively Through Teaching Proper Information Exploitation

Teaching Academic Integrity: the Missing Link

Attitudes towards plagiarism in academia

Rejecting and challenging illocutionary acts

Is there an illocutionary act of assertion