illustrating plagiarism

June 20, 2008 3:37 AM

Illustrating plagiarism

I am making a website about academic plagiarism and need to find some lighthearted ideas for the site illustrations that will sit well with the target users: young university students.

Fx i could juxtapose a real iphone with a cheap knockoff. Or the actual campbell soup with Warhols painting.

Now i just need some more ideas for interesting combinations.

posted by FidelDonson to education (23 comments total)

Selfridges store. Sell Fridges store.
posted by essexjan at 4:36 AM on June 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

Neither the iphone knockoff or the Warhol soup painting is an example of plagiarism in a manner that is meaningful in the academic context, so I'd shy away from those. The first one is illegal only if sold as an Apple iPhone when it is not in fact that product, and the second is (in most jurisdictions) a legitimate use of a trademark for the purposes of comment or review.

You need to be more clear with your students as to what the core of academic plagiarism in fact is -- the taking/use of someone else's ideas without proper attribution, usually by presenting them as your own.

You might passing around examples of articles with citations removed, and showing the students what needs to be cited, and what does not (ie, commonly known facts such as 'Apple is a California-based computer company').
posted by modernnomad at 4:54 AM on June 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

Find a talented arty type to make you a comic/illustrated story, showing:

A story of just how hard someone worked to produce an academic article/book: weeks of studying very hard in high school, not going shopping / sporting with friends, being tired, whatever, through college pH.D. program, finding topic of interest, working on thesis, travel, writing grant applications, funding provided by more actual humans (we meet these people and they're thoughtful) or the government - maybe hint at the taxpayers who are actually providing this funding. Then the months of research, maybe away from the writer's spouse, then the publication process - writing the article, people -- all similarly qualified academics -- reviewing the article.

Imagine the contrast of the above with the following few panels showing some obnoxious college student finding the article online somewhere and just copying/pasting. While a different college student sitting nearby is on a similar path to that described above (if this is done graphically, then similar visual elements could be used to associate the nearby student with the original writer referenced above).

This could be greatly simplified as a story, and probably should. Your artist collaborator may be able to help.
posted by amtho at 5:35 AM on June 20, 2008

May I direct you to Milli Vanilli.
posted by munchbunch at 5:44 AM on June 20, 2008

Milli Vanilli: fraud, not plagiarism. It's pretty clear from some of these answers that such a site is necessary.
posted by muddgirl at 5:58 AM on June 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V
Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V
Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V
Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V
Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V
Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V
Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V
Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V
posted by JJ86 at 6:03 AM on June 20, 2008

Perhaps side-by-side comparisons of some of the recent highly publicized fine art/commercial art ripoff claims? Sony vs. Kozyndan

or

Todd Goldman

are good examples.
posted by Gable Oak at 6:11 AM on June 20, 2008

Homer Simpson -- Peter Griffin.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 6:21 AM on June 20, 2008

Find a talented arty type to make you a comic/illustrated story

I'm not sure this story would do what you think it would. The people I know who plagiarize would be more likely to point at Mr. Diligent and go "Ha-ha, nerd!" They certainly wouldn't have any more respect for his intellectual property rights.
posted by nasreddin at 6:23 AM on June 20, 2008

What about a bottle of Chivas? previously
posted by Gable Oak at 6:42 AM on June 20, 2008

clearly your site does need to exist...lots of suggestions here that aren't actually plagarism.

i suggest illustrations showing a paper getting a big red "F" because the student plagarized.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 6:54 AM on June 20, 2008

A topical illustration of the consequences of plagiarism.
posted by essexjan at 7:07 AM on June 20, 2008

I agree with those who say that both your ideas (iPhone, Campbell's) and many of the suggestions here are irrelevant to plagiarism. Furthermore, nasreddin's point is well taken. I think Gable Oak's link to the Laura story is the best idea so far—the only thing that might stop a would-be plagiarist who doesn't give a shit about "waah, the poor diligent student who put in all that work" is a vivid example of a plagiarist being publicly shamed (and probably expelled, though I'm not sure how the story ended) because of a random factor they could never have anticipated. Remember, kids, Nate is watching you!
posted by languagehat at 7:21 AM on June 20, 2008

misanthropicsarah- good idea! Except make it a big red F alongside a giant bill for tuition.

It's hard to illustrate to people that the effect of academic plagiarism is worse on the offender than it is on the person being stolen from. The real issue of plagiarism is that the students deny themselves the actual value of education- good research habits and formulating arguments. The people who will do this are the ones who just won't care that they are sabotaging themselves.
posted by gjc at 7:34 AM on June 20, 2008

Go all economics on them. I found something on the Winthrop site before, but I can't find it now. Basically, it outlined the following points.

1 - You're paying for school, so you're cheating yourself of an education when you cheat.
2 - It's really not worth that much inside the class.
3 - It's worth even less in the overall GPA. With 124 hours, each grade point is worth 0.02 on the GPA.
posted by theichibun at 7:44 AM on June 20, 2008

gjc: Actually, many students who plagiarize aren't necessarily so much apathetic as overwhelmed (and occasionally also confused). It's hard to judge motives, but I'm pretty sure that at least two of the three cases I've encountered have been situations where the students ran out of time and/or became frustrated with trying to write clearly. So they turned to alternate sources as a quick fix. Doesn't make it any less wrong, of course, but I think we should take this mindset into account when we think about how to discourage plagiarism.

They're often already worried about failure, so simply reminding them that they might fail might not be terribly effective. The fact is that there are far worse punishments they may face than simple failure, so you may want to draw attention to that. Does your university have a special letter grade for "failure due to academic dishonesty"? You could modify misanthropicsarah's idea with that.

Another possibility is instead of (or in addition to) highlighting the consequences, you can highlight the probability that they'll get caught. Some of them might not realize that any tool they can use to find a source can probably be used by their professors as well. I envision a picture of a teacher using Google.

Another reason why plagiarism seems so attractive is the fact that some students seem to think that partial plagiarism is okay (or less bad, or less likely to get caught)*. So any depiction of plagiarism you use might be improved if it was clear that they were just copying and pasting parts of something may help dispel that idea.

Depending on the size and format, this might be difficult to communicate, but here's the image(s) I have in mind:
Student is copying a chunk of an article from Wikipedia to their paper and in a near mirror image, the teacher is copying a chunk of the paper into the search bar on Wikipedia.


*Or that they think they can argue that they didn't realize partial plagiarism was wrong.
posted by ErWenn at 8:03 AM on June 20, 2008

How about going to http://www.cartoonbank.com and doing a search for 'thief' or 'thieves'? there are some pretty appropriate things there... although you probably would need to pay to use any of them...
posted by MrMisterio at 8:52 AM on June 20, 2008

I agree with those who say that both your ideas (iPhone, Campbell's) and many of the suggestions here are irrelevant to plagiarism. Furthermore, nasreddin's point is well taken. I think Gable Oak's link to the Laura story is the best idea so far—the only thing that might stop a would-be plagiarist who doesn't give a shit about "waah, the poor diligent student who put in all that work" is a vivid example of a plagiarist being publicly shamed (and probably expelled, though I'm not sure how the story ended) because of a random factor they could never have anticipated. Remember, kids, Nate is watching you!

Nthing Mr. Hat! I have been telling the Laura story to my classes since it broke, and in my anecdotal experience it has been way more effective at getting students' attention than any upstanding discussion of intellectual labor, "you're just cheating yourself," etc., has ever been. (OMG-he used her real name! He called her mother!)

Plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty are difficult concepts to understand, let alone illustrate, so your best hope is to reinforce that a) students should ask questions whenever they are in doubt and b) if they cheat they will get their comeuppance.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 9:05 AM on June 20, 2008

Dinosaurs are often helpful.
posted by Flamingo at 9:20 AM on June 20, 2008

Cindy McCain has been accused of plagiarizing a cookie recipe. Bonus: this example features two things young university students are really into: politics and munchies.

It's actually a good example, because it's not just cut-and-paste plagiarism, thus emphasizing the importance of attribution.
posted by CaptApollo at 9:26 AM on June 20, 2008

I taught a library instruction class on plagiarism for the first few years I was at my place of work, and tried to find analogies that they understood. Most of the examples given in this thread thus far aren't plagiarism at all, and some of the examples I used weren't either...but I did it to try and get them to grok the concept. That said, here's what I did:

I started by playing them a song: Crazy, by Gnarls Barkley. I then played them the origin of the beat and rhythm for the song. I talked with them about whether or not they felt that Gnarls had ripped off the original, or if they stole it, or what. I then played them a series of other remixes or mashups (Dean Grey's American Edit, The Beastles, etc), and in each case had a discussion about whether they felt the use was fair, and got them to outline why some was and some wasn't.

The reasons they ALWAYS come up with: the artist didn't say where they got the original, they didn't change the original, they didn't pay for the rights to use it. This gives me as the instructor a chance to lead them through discussions of citation, quotation, and Fair Use of copyrighted material (not strictly plagiarism, but I found that the students completely conflate copyright and plagiarism).

My goal was to get them to understand that plagiarism is an ethical issue about the right and wrong use of others ideas, and not a legalistic issue like copyright. We then looked at a few famous plagiarism cases.

Overall, the class was engaging and interesting, and couching it in terms of ethics/right/wrong while engaging them with music was a huge hit. All of that said, easier to do all this in a class than a website. But I hope that it sparks some ideas for you.
posted by griffey at 10:41 AM on June 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

My Sweet Lord = He's So Fine. Lawsuit follows. Over 30 years in litigation and counting. Over a million dollars in fees and judgments, and counting.
posted by Topkid at 11:37 AM on June 25, 2008

Hey, I just found this illustration, which looks like it might be helpful to you. Made by a college student looking for jobs, no less.
posted by amtho at 7:02 AM on June 26, 2008