Category: academic honesty

A short tale of grit and resilience

As a teacher-librarian who still has one foot deeply immersed in academia I spend a considerable time wondering if the things we do are the “right” things. And that’s before I’ve opened any social media related to the profession where people are posting articles about the wrongs of everything from levelled reading to literature circles, reading competitions, to accelerated reading programs, to not ‘over’ encouraging reading, even down to whether we’ve really considered academic honesty properly.

So sure, we probably do somethings wrong. In fact daily I’m deeply aware that I’m failing some students some of the days, and a small number of students all of the time. And yet.  There are moments when I do think things come together and they allow our students to shine – and those are the tales of grit and resilience that the popular educational press love. And so too, at the danger of following the bandwagon, I’ll add my tales too.

Yesterday, our school had their trials to select the students who would form the teams for the “Readers’ Cup” competition.  We’ve been meeting weekly preparing for this competition, students have busily been reading the 6 books in their category, creating questions, quizzing each other and re-reading the books. We had about 40 students and could only choose 4 teams of 6.  At which point some educators would be crying “foul” and “no fair”. But hear me out, and the tales of 3 students.

The first is an ELL (English Language Learner) student – been learning English for about 2 years. Nervous about joining at all initially, bolstered by a friend who was also taking part. Enters the library to take part in the competition yesterday with a little notebook which is promptly removed by me. Look of dismay. I explain that we only allow a pencil and the iPad for the multiple choice round.  The competition ends. She’s a solid contender, right there in the middle of the pack. She’s in!  While tidying up, we find the notebook we’d put aside. Extensive notes on each and every book… *

The next, a student who decides to join the competition just before the Spring break. She’s read none of the books, but I tell her she’s welcome to try anyway, and the library is open all holiday.  From time-to-time in the vacation I get a little email to say she’s finished another book and I congratulate her. Then on Saturday the blow falls – she’d been reading the books in the wrong (higher) category and had only actually read two books at the right level… I write back to her and tell her not to panic, she still has 4 days, and I suggest a schedule whereby she reads the longest most challenging books first and leaves the picture book for last, and say if necessary I’ll come into the library over the weekend to open it for her, and she can come and read in the library every recess and lunch time (usually the times are staggered by grade). She says it’s OK, she’ll manage. And manage she does. Not only does she finish all 6 books by the deadline, but she’s the highest scorer in her category.

The third are two sisters. One a very strong reader, one a little less so, and younger. The older student is constantly encouraging the younger to keep reading. Spends time both at home and at school quizzing her on the books she’s completed. Keeps me updated on their progress.  Both sisters are selected in their categories, both top scorers. But I’m pretty sure the younger student would not have done as well without the home support and encouragement.

Invariably there are disappointments. We selected two “back-up” students per category, and after attrition from conflicts with other activities and last minute dropping out for various reasons, each category had 3 students who wouldn’t take part. Of the 6 students, 5 had not finished all the books, didn’t take it perhaps as seriously as they could have if they’d truly wanted to take part. Didn’t attend meetings or make questions or really try. But one I feel responsible for, he’s a good reader. A voracious reader. He’d wanted to take part in they younger category, but I convinced him to try for the older, but it was apparently too much for him. A misjudgement on my part. And I’m not sure what I should do now. Certainly in the future I’ll trust a students’ own judgement more and not try to convince them otherwise.

——————–
* She was not the only student who had an ELL background, for a large percentage of our students English is a second language, but she’s still in the ELL program, whereas the rest have ‘graduated’ over the years.

Academic honesty should never be ambiguous

Ok, I know I have a somewhat ambivalent stance on what constitutes plagiarism and the value of collaborative and cooperative learning but one thing I’m clear on is academic honesty.  If you used something that someone else made just say that you did that. And depending on your age and level a simple copy and paste of the link is sufficient.I recently went around our G5’s exhibition project and was thoroughly impressed at their work. I did sneakily ask a few for their sources and most could point to at least a page of attribution as to where they’d got their numbers and facts.  Well done (here is a great video of it by the way).


G5 Exhibition Video 2015 from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.

Fast forward to early this morning. I’m putting the washing in the machine and the kids are getting ready for school and finally my daughter lets me see the video she’s been working on for the last 4 days – one holidays and festivals in the middle ages. It’s a great video with her narrating the festivals of the year with lovely pictures and music from the middle ages in the background.  And then at the end “Thank you for watching” and black screen.

I told her I thought it was great, but that she didn’t have to thank anyone at the end, and instead a list of attribution for the images and music would be good. “Our teacher said we didn’t have to do it” was her reply. I told her that she knew that I expected it of her, and she then showed me that she had in fact made a list of the URLs but hadn’t put it into EasyBib to get into MLA format. I asked why not, and she came with some story about how citations / attribution hadn’t been in the original assignment nor in the rubric and the teacher didn’t want to add it on afterwards. I was a little annoyed at this. I said she could at least put it at the end of her video, but she didn’t think that would be “fair” on the others who didn’t. Fair? How about the fairness of the people to whom the images belonged? OK they’re all long dead now, and perhaps most of the images are in common domain, but still, it’s the principal.

I was annoyed at myself being annoyed at her, when actually I should be annoyed at the school. How can they go from being citation semi-stars in primary school to not having it expected at middle school. This is not the first instance, it is one of many, many, many in both my children’s grades across all subjects – academic honesty really does need to be institutionalised and inside every single assignment across the board! I’m at least glad my ranting has had an effect on my kids and they’re at now keeping lists to show me – but if it’s only for me for how long will my influence last?

Third time requires a post – plagiarism

This morning plagiarism crossed my screen for the third time in a week, which means the topic is demanding to be written about!

The first time was during an academic discussion last week. A group of us were being asked our opinion about the proliferation of study groups on FaceBook and other social media platforms and their role not only in mutual support during study, but the potential for plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty.

I have a somewhat contrarian view on the thin lines between collaboration and theft.  Perhaps I am naive, perhaps I’ve not felt the very real repercussions of having had my work plagiarised.  Perhaps I’m reading too much utopian digital future type articles and books.

Through my blog I share a lot of what I’m thinking and doing and researching. I also have posted most of my academic submissions of the last 2 years online where they can be freely read. Of course much of what I’m writing about are things I’m particularly interested and passionate about, and I’ve abridged or edited things so as not to post too many details of my school or colleagues that would not be relevant or appropriate for public consumption.  To me, the most useful parts of anyone else’s academic submission would be the layout / structure of the essay / paper / report and the bibliography.  I’ll happily share my bibliography with anyone and everyone.

And now it starts to get tricky.  On the one hand, the whole point of academic publishing and journal articles is to make your work publicly (albeit behind a paywall) available and for your work to be part of an ongoing quest to knowledge or the resolution of societal or scientific problems. On the other hand, in the grey area of being on the path to accreditation and while doing so jumping through academic hoops while writing essays and papers and having them marked and moderated by the system, you’re supposed to keep all that knowledge and learning private or secret, just between yourself and your lecturer?  Can you see the problem? The double standard? The irony?  So part of my argument, is that if a lecturer can’t be bothered to sufficiently change the topic of the assessments and the way in which the course is evaluated, then if another student were to use the work of a former student the lecturer is kind of to blame.  Although I would hope that the student would at least credit the work of the first student. Which because the whole system is rotten they are obviously incapable of doing, because then the whole thing becomes uncomfortably transparent. Ditto the lecturers who are obtuse or unhelpful.

The second time was this article in the Telegraph which appeared 2 days ago. A couple of interesting points are highlighted (I must say, #1700 for a dissertation is very cheap – if I think what each of my courses cost individually, that wouldn’t even pay for one course / semester, so whoever is writing that stuff is either undervaluing themselves, or the whole academic thing is such a farce as to be worthless).  I think the topic is a whole lot bigger than many (particularly academics) think. It is not as simple as “plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else’s work and lying about it afterward” (plagiarism.org). As the article points out – plagiarism happens more often in mass courses where there is little contact between the tutor and the student. It also happens when there are language difficulties experienced by students and the stakes are high.  And, we are obviously (sic) trying to root out “copying and collusion” – at least while our youth is studying. Once they get into the world of work it’s called collaboration and teamwork. I’m wondering about this Prof. Braisby who is so keen to educate his students on the evils of plagiarism.  Is any time being spent in dialogue between the students, tutors, professors, administrators and powers that be in institutions to look more closely at the subject. Or are we all very quick to make the subject black and white?

Finally this morning, LibraryGrits, weighed in on the topic with a very nice little graphic which was the most nuanced look at the subject – the symptoms of plagiarism.

Although, I’d be pedantic and say that plagiarism was symptomatic of the other causes which she named as symptoms.
Having a closer look at her list, I would say that different items need to be addressed in different ways. I’m wondering if newer versions could reflect this by the grouping / colouring?
In my personal value system “don’t care about ethics” would be a serious problem.
Anything to do with the policing and lack of consequences is an institutional / teacher problem.
The rest, including laziness (please read “the myth of laziness” before jumping to laziness conclusions) need to systematically be addressed and scaffolded and worked on in combination with the teacher, school and probably parents. And here is where my tendency to put my work out there in the open comes into play – by putting examples out, we address the issues of “ignorance of formatting / protocols” and “exposure to modelling of best practise”.
Issues of language barriers, search and retrieval skills, organisation and time management skills need to sorted out while the student is at school, isn’t that part of creating “life long learners” as opposed to “life long plagiarisers, thieves and frauds”?  I think the pressure to achieve high grades absolutely cannot be divorced from this whole discussion.  Anyone else been following the Palo Alto suicides and all the press around it?
We are living in very interesting times in terms of knowledge dissemination, acquisition and creation and the formal institutions of school, university and college are struggling to keep up as bastions of certification, accreditation and credibility. The dear Professor in the Telegraph article alluded to this, but I don’t think he really “got it”.
And language. Yes language. So many of our students at every level are studying in a language that is not their own. Their tongues and their minds are slashed and offered to the gods of English and sacrificed to the hopes of a better life in that illusionary magical tongue.  I can only imagine based on what I know from living in tongues other than English in various times of my life how much is lost and distorted in translation.

References:

Gurney-Read, J. (2015, April 13). £1,700 for a dissertation, but what’s the real cost of plagiarism? Retrieved April 15, 2015, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11532848/1700-for-a-dissertation-but-whats-the-real-cost-of-plagiarism.html
McKenzie, D. (2015, April 14). Symptoms of Plagiarism [Web Log]. Retrieved April 15, 2015, from http://librarygrits.blogspot.sg/2015/04/symptoms-of-plagiarism.html
What is Plagiarism? (n.d.). Retrieved April 15, 2015, from http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism-101/what-is-plagiarism/

 

 

Referencing

At times one has to get right back to basics and the last few weeks I’ve been huddled over my computer becoming more familiar with “Pages” than any non-design person would ever want to become.  All for the sake of trying to make simple basic posters outlining the most common example of the referencing styles we employ here at school.

We use MLA up to IB level, and then subject heads can decide what citation style is most appropriate for their discipline, choosing between MLA, APA and Chicago.   We decided to use the most commonly cited resources of our students, Journal Article, Website, Book, Video, Image and Newspaper Article.

The 80:20 rule definitely came into play here.  After I thought I was 80%+ finished, Katie started looking through it and then spent further hours and hours refining things. We asked for opinions and checking and refined things further.  Of course by simplifying one leaves out all the infinite varieties and complexities, but we also home that it illustrates the basic principles and we can then help out with the refinements as required.

Here is a link to the Google+ sites where they’ve been posted for:

APA
MLA
Chicago

All the posters are available under a CC license and we welcome comments and improvements.

 

Activity 1: Review an electronic resource for children or young adults or about delivering services to children or young adults

A detailed description of the activity undertaken

The bibliographic tool: EasyBib was reviewed.  This tool is used at UWCSEA-East for secondary students for citation, note taking, research paper organisation, the creation of annotated bibliographies and to teach academic honesty.  The topic of

* Digital materials/resources and emerging technologies

is covered in this post.

Firstly the ease of set up was evaluated followed by the creation of citations in EasyBib.

Ease of Setup:

In order to set up EasyBib, the school’s library guide was followed.  Following the slide show step by step, the set up was fairly easy.  It took about 30 minutes, including looking for passwords and access codes.  For a student reasonably familiar with add-ons and chrome (which most of our students should be) this part should not be a problem.

 

Creation of Citations:

In order to review the citation tool, a few of the most common primary resources used by our students was tested using EasyBib.  For each resource, output was created in the 2 most common citation methods used by the school, namely MLA and APA.  The output was then compared to the citation using Zotero (which I am most familiar with and which was previously used by the school as a citation tool) and both were checked to the MLA and APA guidelines.  The other factor that was looked at included how much additional manual input was required and how “intuitive” manual completion was.

 

 

Print book –

I only needed to input the ISBN and the tool did the rest automatically.

MLA Result EasyBib:
Lipson, Charles. Cite Right: A Quick Guide to Citation Styles–MLA, APA, Chicago, the Sciences, Professions, and More. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2011. Print.

MLA Result Zotero:
Lipson, Charles. Cite Right: A Quick Guide to Citation Styles–MLA, APA, Chicago, the Sciences, Professions, and More. 2nd ed. Chicago?; London: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Print. Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing.

APA Result EasyBib:
Lipson, C. (2011). Cite right: A quick guide to citation styles–MLA, APA, Chicago, the sciences, professions, and more. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

APA Result Zotero:
Lipson, C. (2011). Cite right: a quick guide to citation styles–MLA, APA, Chicago, the sciences, professions, and more (2nd ed.). Chicago?; London: University of Chicago Press.

All results were comparable, except EasyBib abbreviated University to “U” (which is acceptable) and added “Print” as the format which is correct, further, EasyBib did not state the edition, whereas Zotero did.

Journal Article –

Two different articles were selected and the DOI was input. EasyBib could find neither of the citations (Zotero could find the citation using the DOI only).  Trying “autocite” using the name of the journal also didn’t work, so manual input was required. Unlike Zotero, you cannot chose between author full name and separating between Name, Initial and Surname, so copying and pasting the information requires 3 or 4 steps instead of one.

MLA Result EasyBib:
Croll, Theodore P., DDS, and Kevin J. Donly, DDS. “Tooth Bleaching in Children and Teens.” Journal of Esthetic and Restorative Dentistry 26.3 (2014): 147-50. Web.

MLA Result Zotero: 
Croll, Theodore P., and Kevin J. Donly. “Tooth Bleaching in Children and Teens: Perspectives.” Journal of Esthetic and Restorative Dentistry 26.3 (2014): 147–150. CrossRef. Web. 6 Aug. 2014.

APA Result EasyBib:
Croll, T. P., DDS, & Donly, K. J., DDS. (2014). Tooth Bleaching in Children and Teens. Journal of Esthetic and Restorative Dentistry, 26(3), 147-150.

APA Result Zotero:
Croll, T. P., & Donly, K. J. (2014). Tooth Bleaching in Children and Teens: Perspectives. Journal of Esthetic and Restorative Dentistry, 26(3), 147–150. doi:10.1111/jerd.12108

Since EasyBib has a space for a suffix, and the journal article stated the authors were both DDS, this suffix was included, but this does not appear to be necessary. For MLA, once again, EasyBib correctly includes the format (Web) which Zotero doesn’t.

Of the APA results, only the Zotero result is in fact correct and up to date with the latest APA guidelines as it includes the DOI. The lack of EasyBib’s ability to extract data from the DOI can be seen as a drawback particularly for older students who use journal articles more frequently.  This may be a result of the fact that EasyBib is only linked with JStor and Proquest.  In order to test this hypothesis, another DOI was tested (from a Proquest related journal), and this resulted in a correct link – and correct citation in both MLA and APA.

APA result EasyBib:
Rey, P. J. (2012). Alienation, Exploitation, and Social Media. American Behavioral Scientist, 56(4), 399-420. doi: 10.1177/0002764211429367

APA result Zotero:
Rey, P. J. (2012). Alienation, Exploitation, and Social Media. American Behavioral Scientist, 56(4), 399–420. doi:10.1177/0002764211429367

MLA result EasyBib:
Rey, P. J. “Alienation, Exploitation, and Social Media.” American Behavioral Scientist 56.4 (2012): 399-420. Web. 6 Aug. 2014.

MLA result Zotero
Rey, P. J. “Alienation, Exploitation, and Social Media.” American Behavioral Scientist 56.4 (2012): 399–420. CrossRef. Web. 6 Aug. 2014.

The “CrossRef” item in the Zotero MLA result is not correct, it should state “Web”.

Internet resource –

A considerable amount of information was missing.  In fact the only item that was correct was the URL, and every other piece needed to be found. However, every step of the way EasyBib gave helpful hints as to what information was needed and where the information could be found. A particularly useful feature was the way that the “finished” citation evolved alongside the fill in boxes – the “LearnCite” feature.

MLA Result EasyBib:
Hume-Pratuch, Jeff. “How to Use the New DOI Format in APA Style.” APA Style Blog. American Psychological Association, 25 July 2014. Web. 06 Aug. 2014.

MLA Result Zotero:
Hume-Pratuch, Jeff. “APA Style Blog: How to Use the New DOI Format in APA Style.” APA Style Blog. Blog. N.p., 25 July 2014. Web. 6 Aug. 2014.

In this instance, the EasyBib citation is the correct one, mainly as a result of the fact that Zotero doesn’t have an entry space for the publisher / owner of the website.

APA Result EasyBib:
Hume-Pratuch, J. (2014, July 25). APA Style Blog: How to Use the New DOI Format in APA Style. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2014/07/how-to-use-the-new-doi-format-in-apa-style.html

APA Result Zotero:
Hume-Pratuch, J. (2014, July 25). How to Use the New DOI Format in APA Style. APA Style Blog. Blog. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2014/07/how-to-use-the-new-doi-format-in-apa-style.html

In this instance neither EasyBib nor Zotero are correct.  According to the APA the correct citation would be:

Hume-Pratuch, J. (2014, July 25). How to Use the New DOI Format in APA Style [Blog post]. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2014/07/how-to-use-the-new-doi-format-in-apa-style.html

2. Answers to the following questions:

 

What did you learn?

I learnt that despite the appearance of ease and automatic generation, one needs to have a healthy dose of scepticism and the willingness to be familiar with the citation rules and to check results or input against these rules. I also became better informed about DOIs and the limitations of two commonly used citation generators. I also contacted the APA to confirm my understanding of the requirements for citation of websites and Zotero about the apparent failure to comply with either MLA or APA for website referencing. To my surprise both organisations got back to me within a few hours, the APA to confirm and Zotero to say that the error would be fixed and they subsequently sent me the system update request to prove it was being dealt with!  This has also taught me that as a consumer I can approach service organisations and make reasonable requests for change.

How was the activity relevant to your professional practice as a librarian for children or young adults?

In my academic life I use Zotero, so I was not fully comfortable with using EasyBib and not fully aware of its capabilities and limitations. This activity has given me the opportunity to explore these. I can now better serve my student clients and find the information needed for them to manage the citation and referencing needed for their research.

Were any gaps in your knowledge revealed? How might you fill those gaps?

Personally I am very familiar with APA, while most of the school uses MLA, with the exception of IB (International Baccalaureate) students in certain subjects.  This has enabled me to become more familiar with the requirements of MLA and to notice the differences in requirements between the two. I have also found some good resources on both APA and MLA that I can consult when in doubt as to the correct citation form. Creating this blog post, with its complications of formatting has also revealed a huge gap in my ability to create a blog with as good a “look and feel” as I can create in a word document.  Understanding HTML may be my next PD learning experience.

Websites consulted and references: