Conventions: Plagiarism, How do you teach it?

This isn't just another post saying, "You know that plagiarism stuff? Don't do it." I'd be happy if you take this lesson to heart, but if you've ever been tempted or sometimes are tempted to plagiarize, then I'd like you to read the following post. In it, you'll get to lean over my shoulder as I interact with colleagues and struggle with the problem of teaching plagiarism in a way which would make sense to students who are balancing demands for grades, future success, too many demands on their time, and a natural, human temptation to take an easy path.

Any insights you can offer me would be welcome. In reading the post, I want you to notice how much thought I've put into the issue. Why? Because part of learning to use sources is learning the limitations of such use. This is a difficult issue to get students thinking about. More, in an era of digital publishing and the beginning of one of ubiquitous access to information, I suspect our attitudes to who owns ideas will change. They did during the last major shift in how knowledge was dissimulated and consumed, that is, the era of print publication. This shift will have major impact on how society is structured, and the movement between difference structures for society is often a violent time when essential freedoms can be lost.

Let me know what you think:

I remember being stunned when visiting the library at UVA and seeing a student add to the stack of soft drinks one they'd just taken from the Coke machine. It turned out the machine was malfunctioning and intermittently giving out an extra Coke, and the students wouldn't take it, hence, the stack. After hearing about UVA's honor code, talking to a professor, and visiting with a librarian, I began to notice book bags left unattended and bikes left unlocked as folks played Frisbee. I've always wondered if it was the rather draconian honor code, students who had rarely wanted, a quiet pride in being part of such a community, learned behavior, or some complicated combination. If learned behavior, I'd sure like to be part of teaching it. The question is, "how?"

As I've watched colleagues struggle with plagiarism, I've often wondered if I am somehow missing the signs and how I would handle the problem. I've heard a lot about electronic means of checking for plagiarism, and I've long had moral and pedagogical issues with the process. Of course, I have similar issues with police check points and the check points in government offices and at airports. It bothers me that we're at a point in the noble experiment when we value liberty so little and security so much we'll accept authority assuming guilt and checking our persons and our possessions for violations. It bothers me that I have to empty by bags or get dressed after being searched by an agent of my government. I don't want those with whom I share the social contract to value their personal security more than our shared personal freedoms. It somehow smacks of cowardice. On the other hand, in New Mexico, I found myself wondering how many lives were saved by the check points which would catch drunk drivers and if the loss of freedom was worth the price. This last is one of the questions I continue to struggle with in terms of checking everyone's work for plagarism via electronic means.

The pedagogy of setting up a relationship with students based on assumed guilt of a few concerns me. To teach well, I need to trust my students, and they need to trust me. Equally important, they need to know they can trust the fact I'll read their work with rhetorical charity. How careful students are to make sure they're doing *exactly* what I want says a lot about the kinds of relationships they've shared with some of their teachers. It bugs many students when I answer the how-long-do-you-want-this question with, "As long as it needs to be to meet the needs of your audience and achieve your purpose." They don't trust such a vague answer--an answer which requires them to think about audience and purpose beyond the professor=audience and the grade=purpose rhetorical rubric. They suspect the chance I'm offering to be what it is, a chance to make a mistake, and they've somehow gotten the notion that making mistakes in front of teachers becomes, not a chance to learn or teach, but a chance for the teacher to assert authority and penalize. The student's desire to meet the expectations of the professor, however, also indicates a belief that success is tied to satisfying authority, and it's hard to argue that, to some degree, the belief is true. My desire, however, is to produce students who expect author(ity) and their selves as authors to prove themselves by acting for the shared good. I want them to suspect those who don't or can't.

I've never used it, but I like the idea of students signing their work along with a promise they haven't, to their best knowledge, plagiarized. Such a signature is an assertion of their authority to make a claim with real consequences in the public sphere. In short, it's the act of a rhetorical agent--a citizen--in a democracy. It shows their words and those of others matter and can and should be made their own. I don't like the solution of submitting to an electronic plagiarism checker everyone's texts, but I haven't thought the issue through or researched it enough to have a stance beyond my own uneasiness.

What I do want students to understand is that words and ideas have value, especially in a capitalistic democracy. I want them to value their own words, and I want them to value and recognize the work others have put into their thought and words, just as I recognize and reward my students for their thought and words.

Language, Power, and the Language of Power

The relationship between language and power is complex. The basis of the relationship is rhetorical, that is, if you speak the language expected of you in whatever rhetorical situation you find yourself in, you'll be more likely to be listened to and, hence, have power with your audience. There are, however, specific languages of power. English is a good example, and the form spoken by middle America, what you'd consider a lack of accent, is the standard for American English. For centuries, French was the language of power, and prior to French, it was Latin. For the Brits, it's a dialect of English--the Queen's English--taught at Oxford and Cambridge. Listen to a BBC news commentator for an example.

Given your writing and the fluency you show, I'm betting most of you grew up in middle class or upper class homes whose first language was American English. You have, in all likelihood, spoken and been exposed to the language of power in contemporary America (and most of the world) all your lives. This makes it more difficult to see just how tied your language is to power. Think, however, of situations in which you've seen somebody made fun of for their dialect. Country speak is a good example. Folks with an accent associated with rural life are less likely to be taken seriously than those who developed their language or mimic that of urban areas.

Other language cues to power are how you use evidence to support your opinions. As I said in the previous post, we associate professionalism and college training with specific formats of language use. Learning to use a specific jargon is another marker of being an insider in a discourse communities. It's one of many reasons it's a good idea to listen a lot and not speak when you enter into a new discourse community. You want to mark the formats, language use, and jargon of that community. For example, each of you will develop, if you already haven't, the jargon associated with your profession. Here think of geekdom and the language specific to it. Since it's true that passion and expertise in technological fields is associated with certain ideas, concepts, and words, geek speak is quickly assuming an association with power.

In short, the language of power is the language of those in control; and, language use is one of the many markers of who's in and who's out.

Conventions: opinion+support=persuasive writing

The notion of conventions applies to a number of aspects of writing. Basic style and structure are one of them. In our culture, we tend to value something called a "clear style," that is, a style which uses active voice, short sentence (usually 24 words or less), action verbs, and sentences which begin with their subject and verb and continue on from there. Such sentences are called "right branching" sentences. You can read some good tips on such writing here: http://www.northernstar.info/nina/highschool/write.html. The basic structure of a claim backed up with warrants is a convention of academic writing. Learn how to apply this structure, and you're half way toward being a college trained writer. This is why I want you trying out this structure in your writing about the outcomes.

The upshot?

When you discuss the outcomes, provide examples from your own writing. For instance, a student makes the claim he does a decent job of focusing on purpose, and he then develops this claim by adding a sentence where he explains more specifically what he means. This is a good job, but a claim is always made stronger by providing specific examples. He could point to a place in his writing where he gets off topic. He could point to a place where he got off topic and caught the problem in one of the revisions of a paper. He could cite the example or include it as a quote. Use such examples, and your writing goes from just a good, specific claim to a claim backed up with evidence and additional good reasons for your reader to believe you. Provide two are three such warrants--the magic number in our culture is three, and you are in the sweet spot.

Aristotle called this connection between opinion and evidence one of the essential structures of writing which tries to persuade its audience to believe, and it still marks the major difference between those who are academically trained and those who are not. Listen to the folks around you in everyday conversation, and you'll soon hear dozens of opinions expressed. Then listen for how many of these opinions are backed up by good reasons, evidence, or warrants. If you do the same exercise in a group of professionals or, for that matter geeks---folks who are passionate and knowledgeable in specific areas--you'll hear them providing additional clarification *and* backing up their opinions. You can look at both of your own writing when describing the process of creation in your field for examples of this kind of writing. You know your topic. You are passionate about it. You back up and clarify your claims. You learn more from listening to such conversation and reading such writing. It tends, although not always, to be more interesting.

The upshot? Whenever you find yourself speaking professionally or in the academy, strive to: 1) clarify your claims and opinions; and, 2) back up your opinions. Make it a Kiazen goal to make opinion+support a habit in your speaking and writing.

Your audience may not know why your opinion is worth more than others, but they'll respond to the difference, offer you more respect, listen to you, and pay you more. Why? Because you're speaking in a way they associate with expertise and training in your field.

In any event, you need to do it in 101 and as you write responses to the bulleted items in the "WPA Outcomes Statement," because it's part of my job to teach you to think,

opinion+support=good writing.

Research, Mind Mapping, and the Research Process

Stephen wrote a nice essay on the process he uses to do research and how he might use Kaizen to find a place to make a small change in the process and, hence, improve it.

In responding to his essay, I realized I wrote a short piece on research in general and how I organize my research process using mind maps.

Here it is:

I like the fact you've incorporated Kaizen into thinking about your research process. Research processes and tools are different for different discourse communities, but research always has the following steps in common: 1) finding tools to help you identify useful sources; 2) collecting information; 3) noting and keeping track of where your information came from; and, 4) organizing the information you find in some productive manner. Look at my post to the class blog on mind mapping for one of my favorite ways to store the information I collect, make notes on it, and organize it.

In short: I create nodes on a mind map devoted to the topic I'm researching for each source I find. I record enough information to make sure I can find the source again in a sub-node; and, I then pull out relevant information from the source into individual sub-nodes I create around the source. As I begin to make connections, learn terms which I need to remember, and figure out how ideas fit together, I either create a new mind map or I begin moving the mindmap away from one organized around sources to one organized around connections, terms, or methods. For each connection, term, or method, I will create a node, and as I wander back through sources, I begin pulling out information about the term (etc.) from each source and organizing the info as sub-nodes around that term's (etc.) node. Each time I do so, I note in a sub-sub-node the source from which the information came.

How do you know which sources are good and which aren't? Well, you do research. Go to someone in the field in which you are interested and ask. Professors are good for these kinds of recommendations as to major players in a field. Often they will have a bibliography on your topic, that is, a list of useful sources they can give you. Research librarians are also good sources for, well, good sources. As you discover the major players in a field, that is, those who are referred to again and again, then you begin to get a handle on who to trust.

Getting a handle on who to trust online is more difficult. Here, I usually start with looking for the professional organization associated with my topic. That is, I place my trust in professionals in a specific area. You'd be surprised how many such associations there are. Again, a research librarian are good for a list, or you can just google. Once I've got the organization pinned down, I look for bibliographies or look at major players in the field.

All of this leads me to a documented source. I love footnotes, end notes, and bibliographies. Why? They save me work. Once I get a documented source, I follow each source used in it until I begin building up a network in my head (or in another mind map) of who is trusted (used) and who's ideas aren't trusted.

On broad subjects, I like to begin my research with a broad source, like the Encyclopedia Britannica or even Wikipedia and let them lead me to more specific sources. Another great strategy is to learn which professional databases are used in your field. Often your school library will have bought access. Many local libraries have free access, via their web sites to commonly used databases of sources for different fields. Then the research is as easy as using keyword search. (You learn the keywords by doing the research or from tables of contents, titles of articles, etc.)

Please note: while I use research in both small and large doses, I only use the process I describe above when taking on a new field or in developing a major project.

MInd Mapping and the Pre-Writing Process

As I began writing to one student about game design and a role mind mapping might play in the process, I realized I hadn't said anything about mind mapping when I discussed pre-writing. Mind mapping is an all in one tool for pre-writing. It can take you from brainstorming ideas, through research, into organization, and even early drafting. You can then use the word processor and cut and paste from the mind map into a text document, hyper-text dcument, etc. to bring your ideas together. In any event, here's my response to the student:

There's one particular concept which helps many students move between the unorganized step of coming up with ideas to a more organized outline. I don't know if you are familiar with mind mapping. Essentially, a mind map is a set of bubbles connected with lines. When brainstorming, one starts with a topic in the center bubble and adds other bubbles as ideas occur. I used to study for tests using mindmaps drawn on blackboards at college, creating mind maps for each concept or term I needed to understand.

I also used the technique in coding. I would have the central thing the program was to do as the center bubble, and I'd begin my brainstorming for ideas by adding sections of code I knew needed to be in the program. As an algorithm would begin to emerge, I'd move the various sections around until I had them in an order which worked. The map, hence, served as a place to brainstorm, as a way to note sections of code I needed, as a place to store stray thoughts, as a place to take notes, as a means of trying out different ways to order these sections of code, and a way of organizing the program as I went. A similar process might work for the stage of game design where you are developing ideas and working toward an order.

There are a host of good mind mapping programs out there. There's a free, open source version called FreeMind. There's a payed version call Mind Manager, and there are online, collaborative versions at sites like bubbl.us and mindmeister. There are also a host of good blogs and forums which will explain how to use mind maps as a brainstorming or organization tools.

What I liked about mind mapping and the reason I recommend it to students is it's a good way to move between a good idea, brainstorming how to develop the idea, research, and organization all using a single place and using a single method. Organization is accomplished by ordering the nodes in your map clockwise: first to last, most important to least, etc. I also like that mindmap programs allow you to accumulate a lot of information in one place. If I might use a website or an article to develop an idea, then I include a link in a node under that idea. If I end up pulling out invidual quotes, then I just put them in their own node. I can also create the text connected to an idea and save it as a sub-node of the node I created for the original idea. This last allows me the fexibility to play with orgranization up until I put the formal text together using cut and paste and a word processor.

You also might want to look at Writer's Blocks. I know a number of folks in Hollywood use blocking or story-boarding in developing ideas for film. A simular method might work with game design.

Week 4: December 3-9, Knowledge of Conventions

As we enter the final two weeks of class and begin focusing on the section of the WPA outcomes labeled, "Knowledge of Conventions," I wanted to return to a notion I introduced in discussing the "Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing" section.

Let's talk some more about the notion of discourse communities. As you may remember, a discourse community is a group which shares a discourse or conversation in common. In a post on the critical thinking section, I mentioned discourse communities share topics or a focus for their conversation, and they share interpretative rubrics, that is, ways of reading and making sense of their topics. I used the academic discipline of history as an example, but any profession and discipline could have worked as well.

Part of the what discourse communities share in common are a set of expectations about the genres (or, kinds of communication) in which the conversation will take place. As part of their shared expectations about genre, they share ideas about what kinds of evidence can be used to back up claims. They share notions about the format and content of the various genres they will use to talk with one another. They share common ideas about how one another will be addressed, how power will be acknowledged, and about voice, tone, and which words are appropriate. Discourse communities usually share a common jargon as well.

Our class is a member of the UAT discourse community, the discourse community governing the American university, and the discourse community governing civil, public discourse. Remember at the beginning of class when I asked you to call me "Steve" or "Dr. Steve"? Remember how a few of you felt uncomfortable with such a familiar form of address? Think for a moment about why they felt this discomfort? One reason is that you're used to the set of conventions which govern student/professor interaction at UAT and in the American university system. Traditionally, professors insist their titles be used. Some actively work the authority given them by the system, and some gain a huge ego boost by having their status acknowledged. The upshot is that many of you know a lot about professors as an audience, and the practice I was asking you to adopt was foreign to your expectations of what is "right" or conventional in student/professor interaction.

As we begin the discussion of your knowledge of what is conventional in writing and speaking to different audiences, I want you to think about the number of discourse communities of which you are a member. What aspects of how your community interacts and communicates are unique? What aspects are shared with other communities? It's this notion of conventions we'll discuss this week.

Finally, as you begin to draft the different sections of your portfolio, I want you thinking about how you acquire information about how a genre works and how the genre works within a specific discourse community.

Time Managment for the class and career.

One student wrote with some an excellent questions and concerns about time management.

My most immediatly helpful response to this students was to let her know I don't expect you to read and comment on every paper produced by every student. Instead, just get a coterie of a few students whom you read regularly and who are willing to add you as collaborators on their papers. You'll get valuable additional experience working as an editor for their work. You'll learn some skills as a team member and collaborator, and they can return the favor by helping you with your work. The only person who should read every essay is me.

As to learning time management skills, one of my favorite blogs, Zen Habits, has the simplest system I've seen for time management. Other blogs you might want to check out and put in your RSS feed are Lifehacker, Lifehack, and Web Worker Daily. Each of these blogs has some great information on writing. Each of these blogs have threads in the archives about time management, and they tend to base their ideas on David Allen's _Getting Things Done_. GTD can get to complicated, but it's flexible enough to allow you to develop your own system using its basic principles. As I said, I think _Zen Habits_ has presented the simplest, one size fits all GTD implementation out there.

However, given all the limitations under which you work, you may not have time right now to read and think about implementing a complete time management system just to help you with school and finding the time for this class. Luckily, there's Kaizen, and I'm trying to get you looking at small, high impact changes you can make right now in the processes which impact on your writing and communication. Here are a few hints for getting more done: 1) if a task can be done in two minutes or less, do it; 2) don't worry with a long to do list; 3) list the three main tasks you need to accomplish any one day, and do them; 4) do your work in bursts of activity (I've found a timer on the computer can help here. I set mine for 15-20 minutes of directed activity.), and, 5) find time to work and defend this time.

Time management is always a headache, both for students, web workers, and--you should know---spouse, parents and significant others. I wish I could tell you it gets easier, but it's a constant struggle between priorities. A system helps, but any working process takes time to devleop. The main way I've seen successful writers pull of the combination of getting things done, having an avocation--like being a writer, and having a life is to: 1) develop a system to keep track of tasks; 2) find an couple of hours a day which are devoted to your avocation; 3) defend this time like a mother bear; 4) try to get the help of a spouse, coworker, or friend in defending this time and to act as support. Another thing which might help is to think about the physical space in which you work. Is there a place to which you can retreat to work at home? If not, have you thought about working at the library or even Starbucks? One of the biggest, high impact changes you can make in terms of time management is finding a space of time and a physical space where you don't loose valuable work time in handling distractions, shifting focus, and having to pick up the thread of work again. There's a host of work out there showing that unitasking is much more productive than multitasking. In any event, the blog, jkontherun has some great information on how to pull off the whole mobile office thing.

I hope this helps, and--as always--write with questions.

Steve