Back to school, back to plagiarism?

As another semester gets under way, many City Tech students will find themselves under a tremendous amount of pressure – with family, work, and school obligations, finding time to write a successful paper might seem impossible to some. And that’s what the folks handing out these on campus are hoping to take advantage of:

flyer

As a professor who spends time designing and grading assignments with the goal of helping your students learn the course content, this kind of service probably makes you feel angry, frustrated, or depressed – if not all three at the same time. Even plagiarism detection programs can’t help you with paper writing services like this. You can try to get to know a student’s writing “voice,” but it’s still hard to deal with those who take advantage of these services.

But there are things you can do to make it much less likely that your students will turn to services like this. Remember that for many students, the pressure to succeed is very intense. English may not be their first language. They may not have been well prepared by their previous education to write college-level papers. They may not really want to cheat in this way, but they might not feel capable of writing a big term paper or project that has a lot riding on it. You can help address these issues by breaking down big, daunting assignments into smaller pieces – what we at WAC call “scaffolding” – that build toward the final paper or project. In this way, you make it harder for them to take advantage of paper-writing services, but more importantly, you make it feel less tempting to them.

Let’s say you’ve assigned a final paper or writing-based project that accounts for a large portion of your students’ grade. You can scaffold that assignment by designing shorter assignments throughout the semester that tackle and help demystify pieces of that final project. This could include assignments on brainstorming and writing a strong thesis statement, building a literature review, or compiling and evaluating data or evidence. Students are much less likely to plagiarize on these smaller assignments – particularly if you do some of them in class – and by the time the final project comes around, they’ll discover it’s more than half written already and doesn’t need the help of a service like the one offered above. They’ve also built the knowledge and confidence that will hopefully help them tackle bigger projects with confidence in future classes.

If you’d like more ideas on how to do this, come to some WAC workshops this semester! Next Tuesday (9/13) we’ll be presenting an overview on Designing Effective Assignments that will touch on these issues; then on October 18 we’ll be doing an entire workshop on preventing plagiarism. We’ll round out the semester with a workshop on Effective Grading and Minimal Marking (11/15) and the Creative Classroom (12/6). And if you can’t wait for a workshop, you can check out the PowerPoints and handouts from previous workshops last year that we’ve posted online: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/writingacrossthecurriculum/workshops/

(Our complete Fall workshop schedule with times and locations will be posted on that page as well.)

Best of luck this semester, and we hope to see you at a workshop!

Workshop Recap: Avoiding Plagiarism and Using Library Resources

On November 11, WAC Writing Fellows Claire Hoogendoorn and Jake Cohen, together with Bronwen Densmore of the Ursula C. Schwerin Library, led a faculty workshop on avoiding plagiarism and using library resources.  This was a lively workshop in which WAC Fellows and City Tech instructors shared their understanding of and experiences with plagiarism.

The presentation was organized around three main topics: understanding plagiarism, strategies for preventing plagiarism, and responding to plagiarism.  Some key points from the discussion are highlighted below.

Understanding Plagiarism

  • In order for students to avoid plagiarism, it is critical for them to know exactly what it means. The NYCCT statement on academic integrity is a necessary first step in this regard.
  • Not all plagiarism is equal: there are different kinds and levels of plagiarism.
  • Students commit plagiarism for a host of different reasons. Sometimes plagiarism involves an instance of pure cheating, however other times citation errors and/or bad paraphrasing are to blame.

Strategies for Preventing Plagiarism

  • Educating students about plagiarism – i.e. having an open and honest conversation about the topic – is the first step toward preventing plagiarism.
    • To this end, the WAC Writing Fellows will be organizing a student workshop on the topic next spring.
  • Part of the education process includes outlining the pedagogical purpose of research, providing examples of plagiarism, and modelling correct citation format.
    • There are also online quizzes (e.g. via the Baruch College Library) that can be used to reinforce the lessons.
  • Creating high quality assignments is a fundamental step in preventing plagiarism: Scaffolding assignments remains one of the most effective methods.
    • It is also helpful to use details in assignments and to empower students.
  • The City Tech Library has a number of resources to assist students in doing research and completing assignments.
  • Paraphrasing is difficult! This is true for both native and non-native English speakers.  Developing paraphrasing skills requires proper training and practice.

Responding to Plagiarism

  • Refer to the Academic Integrity Policy Manual for information about how to report cases of plagiarism.
  • We have to report every case of plagiarism.
  • There exist electronic resources for suspected plagiarism, e.g. SafeAssign

The slides and handout from the workshop are linked below…

PowerPoint Slides Handout

 

What do we mean when we talk about scaffolding?

Scaffolding is a keyword that we are particularly fond of, because it is an essential part of our WAC pedagogy and seems to sometimes function as a cure-all. Students waiting until the last minute to write papers? Try scaffolding. Plagiarism problems? Scaffolding. Want to see polished final papers that have gone through multiple revisions? Scaffolding. You get the idea.

We’ve gone over this concept in detail in our workshops, and you can find lots of literature out there on the web that supports the effectiveness of this assignment design method. But what do we really mean when we talk about scaffolding? Is it just that we should break up a large paper into various kinds of smaller assignments that lead up to the “big one?”

One pitfall we can run into when designing a scaffolded assignment is that we will create a schedule for scaffolding a larger paper, but we might forget to elaborate on each of those steps. Unfortunately, simply breaking a paper up into smaller, cumulative tasks won’t necessarily improve our students’ writing.

Instead of just assigning that one big paper, we might create an assignment like:

  • (Week 3) Brainstorm paper topics in-class
  • (Week 4) Bring three possible topics to class, peer sharing in class
  • (Week 5) Choose a topic and create annotated bibliography
  • (Week 6) Rough Draft
  • (Week 7) In-class peer review
  • (Week 8) Final paper due

While this might be effective in making the paper-writing process seem less daunting and more manageable for students, they are still left with questions. What is “peer sharing?” What’s the point of an annotated bibliography (and more importantly, what does that even look like?). How do I choose my topic?

In particular, we’re asking the students to make a pretty big leap from having chosen a topic and some sources to suddenly writing a rough draft of a full paper without intervening steps. And we haven’t explained what these steps are along the way.

Students want to know why the tasks we’re setting them are meaningful. After all, doesn’t an annotated bibliography seem like busy work? Yet when we explain the usefulness of the annotations, the importance of understanding why we choose particular sources and how those will ultimately shape our paper’s point of view, it might start to be clear. When we explain that they will be forced to consider tough questions that may otherwise go overlooked, such as authority of the source, potential biases, place of publication, etc., the students will understand how this seemingly menial task is an important cog in the mechanics of research and paper writing.

Most importantly, we want to make sure the hallmarks of good assignment design—clarity, expectations, required steps, required formatting, and how students will be assessed—permeate all levels of our assignments. When we hand out that excellent cover page to a paper prompt, but then follow it with a one-line description of the scaffolded step, we undermine the very goal we’re trying to accomplish.

Effective Assignment Design – Workshop Recap

This past Tuesday September 16th, the WAC program presented a faculty workshop for effective assignment design led by myself and Roy Rogers. We had a wonderful turnout and some lively discussion about innovative assignment design approaches. Among the most helpful according to research in WAC pedagogy (see Bean, 2011 for a thorough description) are informal writing assignments, scaffolding, and typed assignment handouts. Please see our slides from this workshop HERE and our handout HERE.

Informal writing assignments are small, low-stakes (minimal points or ungraded) writing assignments that are often less structured than traditional formal assignments. Informal writing assignments are useful because they

  • provide a less anxiety-provoking route for discussing course content than formal assignments that are graded
  • allow students to grapple with difficult course-related concepts or topics
  • encourage creative idea generation and critical thinking
  • provide the ability for the instructor to check-in early with students to ensure they are on track
  • offer students an avenue to express confusion or questions related to the course content
  • ensure all students (even those that may be shy) participate and regularly engage with course material

Scaffolding is perhaps the MOST useful strategy for creating effective assignments. This refers to implementing multiple small, informal (or semi-formal) writing assignments that build up to a more formal high-stakes (graded and larger in nature) project in a course. They are beneficial because they

  • provide “levels” to your large assignments in that they allow for students to comprehend the information and practice the skills needed to do well before the big project/paper/lab report
  • allow students to build towards difficult larger assignments
  • offer instructors the ability to steadily assess student progress
  • support course learning objectives and make the goals and process transparent to students

Typed assignment handouts are most beneficial when they are provided to students both in class and on Blackboard or Openlab, are discussed briefly in class so students can raise questions if needed, and when they provide the expectations of the instructor regarding the assignment (even for informal assignments) in a clear manner. Typed assignment handouts are practical for both students and instructors because they

  • help students understand what they “need to do”
  • assist tutors in the Learning Center in providing appropriate assistance to students
  • provide a reference for instructors in later semesters, as it is easier to edit unclear wording, etc. for later courses when the assignment handout is readily available

Bean, J. C. (2011). Engaging ideas: The professor’s guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom. 2nd ed. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Tailoring Expectations

One useful perspective-realignment I’ve found useful raising to faculty, particularly those who don’t teach strictly “English,” is the that many assignments have implicit writing assumptions which must be made explicit.  It is difficult sometimes to see the necessity of writing underlying even ostensibly non-“expressive,” or technical, assignments.  This sounds like an easy, or superficial suggestion, but consider, for instance, courses which integrate design and writing in an integrative and mutually-informing manner — in order to produce any sort of finished, visually appealing document, the writing present within must be coherent and “finished;” yet, this expectation is often only alluded to tacitly.  Further, even if one is actively grading “writing,” it is often difficult to break down this “writing” requirement into constitutive units the students can follow, or knowingly deal with on an individual, then total, basis. As an added benefit, when students are made more conscious about articulation, even in a small way regarding a tangible quality of writing, it makes them more aware of the total flow and logic of their work.  (These tangible qualities are then able to compound, and inform one another.)

One possible suggestion:  Perhaps (even as a sort of pedagogical thought experiment), try outlining one or two explicit qualities of writing to be graded, or paid attention to, in a non explicitly English or even humanities assignment.  As we often discuss at WAC, try to scaffold, or otherwise anticipate the exact skill you would like them to exercise by introducing it earlier than the exact moment you wish them to recall or produce it.  Then, see if, for example, should you ask them to pay attention to something like topic sentences, or even choosing neutral, or discipline-specific jargon for the assignment, whether the overall clarity of thought, and quality of product produced, improves.

This means of “tailoring” expectations, or honing in on required, but implicit, qualities of writing in assignments, is also transferable to other areas, such as peer review.  Rather than asking students to holistically grade entire documents for “quality” or “followability,” try to hone in on two or three qualities (perhaps even breaking a “thesis” question down into a subcategory or two), and set firmly-defined timelines for how long students spend on each portion.  This means of narrowing the scope of the students’ attention will likely improve the sharpness and nuance of the skills paid attention to, and overall improve the logic, thinking, and argument of the writing, and writing-reliant aptitudes, required.

Using WAC Practices to Help Students Locate Appropriate Research Sources

Writing a research paper is a complex task, and we often forget all the basic skills that are needed to write a successful paper. This is why breaking down, or scaffolding an assignment into its smaller components is essential for student success. A scaffolded assignment permits us put emphasis on its components, and to teach our students those basic skills.

One of those basic skills is the location of appropriate research sources. In my experience, students find it rather difficult to determine what an appropriate source is, how to find it, and how to cite it.  How often have you asked students to conduct a literature review, and your students cited a Wikipedia page, a New York Times article, or some random blog article? The use of WAC practices can help students to tackle this challenge. In my own teaching, I break down my research essay in smaller single tasks one of which is an annotated bibliography. I ask students to locate three academic articles, to create a bibliography in ASA style (I am a sociologist), and to write a short summary of each article. I give students time (about 3 – 4 weeks) to produce their annotated bibliography, and I then allow them to submit it as a draft for feedback. They have to submit their bibliography one or two weeks after they received my feedback.

What seems like a long time for a relatively short and easy assignment has proven to be a rather challenging assignment for my students. Many of them have never done a “real” literature research, and almost none of them has ever been asked to produce a bibliography that is error free. But focusing on only one component of the research essay allows me to give extensive feedback on those basic skills, and to really teach the fundamentals of my research discipline. Finally, having appropriate research sources is almost a guarantee for an interesting, and strong research essay.

Using WAC Techniques to Introduce Discipline-Specific Writing

Through recent discussions with other WAC fellows and CUNY faculty, it has becoming increasing clear that as instructors, we often forget to take a step back and make sure our students have an understanding of what is expected of them for writing in the discipline of which our class is a part (whatever discipline that may be). Early to mid-way into a semester (earlier the better), as simple as it may seem, it is immensely useful to gauge student writing in order to ensure they do in fact understand what is meant by a thesis, for example in whatever field we are in (and what course they are taking). This is just one writing-related term that truly can mean varying things in different fields or at minimum may look different depending upon the discipline.

Take the students’ perspective for a minute. Imagine going from an Introduction to Psychology class, to an English class, followed by a course in Mathematics all in the same day. Each of these disciplines requires different formats and structures in regards to writing. You can see how easy it would be to as a student, assume that writing in the manner that earned you an ‘A’ on an English assignment may surprisingly earn you a ‘B’ or less on a Psychology research proposal (or vice versa) if you were never giving explicit instructions for what qualifies as a ‘good’ paper for a particular type of class. Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) techniques offer some great tools towards improving our students’ writing, even for assisting them on the way of learning the specific writing style we expect in our own courses.

In order to see where our students are in the writing process for our discipline, as instructors we can initially do one of several specific things:

1)      Provide a discipline-specific piece of writing in class, give students time to read it, and then discuss as a class how this writing may be different than that of other types of courses students have taken.

2)      Assign several discipline-specific professional readings (one at the beginning and several others throughout) and provide a template that asks directed questions about the texts, hereby pointing out the important structural aspects of the writing piece.

3)      Give time during class for small groups of students to pick out seemingly important parts of a provided reading, have them define separate sections, and finally openly explaining to students (during class time if at all possible) how your field defines and structures a thesis, evidence, supporting arguments, etc.

4)      Give a take-away handout that clearly and succinctly lists the requirements you have for the content and structure of writing assignments in your course (for which you take a few minutes to explain in person if the class is not online).

Two more helpful tips from evidence-based WAC practices:

  • Of course students mostly learn from doing and redoing or writing and rewriting! Therefore, multiple drafts of the same assignment are always essential to the writing process regardless of discipline.
  • Scaffolding (creating smaller assignments that build up to a larger more complete final paper, lab report, project, or proposal) is incredibly helpful for students to understand complex ideas or information that is new to them (this has been extremely beneficial for my students’ research proposals as many of them never write in this manner before entering my class). This allows them to master important specific aspects of a bigger assignment before the final result which is often worth many more points.

Quick Fixes That Can Help Improve Student Writing

Ideally, we want to introduce students slowly to the process of creating formal research papers. A research paper – or any formal paper for that matter – is a complex task that assumes a wealth of knowledge on the side of the student. What is an appropriate source? How to use evidence? Who is the intended audience the voice of the paper should be directed at? How to organize one’s thoughts? What is considered an appropriate thesis? All these, and many more, are questions students have to have tackled before they will be able to write a successful paper. It is because of the complexity that is inherent in each formal assignment that we will see better results when we break down assignments into smaller, doable tasks. Scaffolded assignments that break down larger formal assignments into small tasks help students to focus, and understand the smaller pieces a research paper is made of.

But what happens when we cannot scaffold an assignment to help students to write more successfully? Sometimes the constraints of the course curriculum do not allow us to break down assignments, sometimes we inherit a course, and do not have the time to make substantial changes to the course’s assignments, or we assign a paper that we think is doable to students only to find out later that we asked too much of our students. There are a few things we can do to help students write more successfully, to be more engaged in the process of writing, and to get more consistent results throughout:

Take 20 minutes of your class time to go over the assignment with your students. Many of the questions students deal with when writing a paper can be solved by a Q & A session in which students have the possibility to learn about their professor’s expectations. I find an in-class discussion much more fruitful than an email or office hour conversation with single students, as students will learn from each other while talking about the assignment. Some of the questions students have may be questions others would not have thought about, or were reluctant to ask. By going over the assignment together students will teach each other a valuable lesson on how to approach the writing of a research paper.

Be open to revisions. You may know this already but professors, too, can be terribly unclear and implicit. It is difficult to put yourself into the mind of an undergraduate student who is asked to perform the required task for the first time. We can learn from our students how to write clearer assignments by asking them to explain what parts of the assignment they find confusing, or unintelligible. I found students to be more engaged, and motivated about an assignment when I took into consideration their suggestions and revised the assignment I had given them. Apart from making the assignment clearer, and therefore more doable for my students they would learn another important lesson:

Ask your students to revise their own assignments before submitting them. Revision is one of the most essential parts of the writing process. It organizes the writer’s own thoughts, it turns a wild first draft into a piece that is comprehensible to others, it detects grammar and spelling errors, typos, and missing words. The practice of revision is at the very heart of the academic tradition. And yet, we fail to engrain the process of revision into our student teaching all too often. More than once did I expect my students to come up with a well-organized, error free, and thoughtful first draft. Boy, am I glad they never saw one of my first drafts. Ideally, we would want to assist our students’ efforts to develop a strong final draft by scaffolding the assignment and/ or have them submit multiple drafts that they then can revise (by peer reviewing each other for instance). But even if students have only one opportunity to submit their assignment they should take time to revise it; and since students are beginner writers they need instructions on how to do it. A good technique that is easy to perform is to read aloud the first draft. Ideally, students should find a listener who can give feedback. But even without somebody else present reading aloud will help to detect errors. This is a particularly good exercise for students whose first language is not English, and who might find it easier to hear mistakes rather than reading them. The instructions on how to revise their essays should be part of the assignment sheet, and talked about in class. If class time permits, instructors may also want students to bring in their assignments, read them to each other in class, take notes, and revise them later at home based on the assignment’s instruction, and possibly grading rubrics. Which brings me to my next point:

If you use grading rubrics, give them to your students along with the assignment. It is much easier for students to perform a good job when they know what is expected of them. Personally, I use “checklists” that tell students what is expected of them in each part of the assignment (introduction, methods, and results section) instead of traditional grading rubrics. Again, students are at a beginner stage when it comes to producing written work that is research based, and they benefit tremendously from clear guidelines that lay out what is expected of them.

A final option to consider, particularly when your discipline requires students to write similar assignments, such as lab reports, multiple times, is to focus only on one aspect of the assignment rather than the entire assignment. In some cases scaffolded assignments may not seem feasible, and students are required to produce complete assignments all at once. In that case, you may want to consider focusing only on one aspect of the assignment per cycle. Let’s say your students have to submit 12 lab reports in your course each semester. You can have them write 12 reports, but in your grading feedback focus on one aspect for each lab report. By focusing on only parts of the assignments (such as the introduction, the formatting, results section, and so on) students will think more deeply about the requirements, and complexities of each section, and you, on the other hand, can pay more attention to the details of each section in your feedback. At the end of the course, students will be able to write an entire paper more easily, and with more consistent results.

These are only a few of many “quick fixes” that can be used when assigning papers to students, and that will help students to become better writers, and scholars. The fixes offered are largely based on the principles of Writing Across the Curriculum, as well as personal teaching experience at various CUNY campuses.

Workshop Recap: Effective Assignment Design, October 22, 2013

Last Tuesday, WAC Fellows Zachary Aidala and Justina Oliveira led an excellent workshop on effective assignment design and assignment scaffolding for City Tech faculty. We were so pleased to have faculty members from all across the college in attendance. Since reading and writing are so intimately linked when creating assignments, our WAC team was joined by Professor Juanita But from the English Department and the college’s reading initiative, Reading Effectively Across the Disciplines (READ). As writing professor Toby Fulwiler reminds us:

[Reading and writing] are interdependent, mutually supportive skills, both of which are “basic” to an individual’s capacity to generate critical, developed, independent thought.” [1]

Justina began by outlining two of the workshop’s major pedagogical theories: writing as active reading, and purposeful writing assignments. The first represents the idea that by assigning low-stakes writing assignments such as note-taking, summaries, or informal response papers, students will internalize and learn from readings more comprehensively. The second theory is something of a WAC mantra, the idea that student writing should not merely convey knowledge but also reinforce larger educational course objectives, be it critical thinking or doing discipline-specific work.

Prof. But covered a variety of techniques that utilize writing to encourage better reading comprehension. She showed us the two-column note-taking method, where students take notes on content in one column, and then annotate their notes in an adjacent column. This echoes another great WAC strategy: having students explain course material to a “new learner,” such as a friend or relative, forcing the student to put complex ideas into their own words.

Concept Map
Click on image for larger version

She also introduced us to the concept map, a visual aid for readers to organize major themes, subjects, hypotheses, and other material in a reading. A short exercise for attendees using an E.B. White paragraph later revealed the usefulness of this organizational tool.

Justina then covered some of the differences between low- and high-stakes writing. One of the many benefits to low-stakes writing is that it can be used as a purely pedagogical tool, or “writing to learn,” but it can also be part of a scaffold, a number of smaller writing exercises that lead to a longer, high-stakes paper. She concluded with a very handy checklist (available on handout at bottom of this article) of items instructors should remember to ask themselves when designing an assignment, things that all of us as instructors have probably forgotten at one point or another (e.g. “Have I expressed who the intended audience is for this paper?”). Finally, she presented a series of useful assignment types for low-stakes writing, including a variety of prompt types, summary assignments, or the “explain to a new learner” strategy.

Next, Zak Aidala covered high-stakes assignments, and how to better prepare students for writing these longer, more serious papers. He covered a variety of ideas for scaffolding larger assignments, or building up to the final paper with a series of shorter targeted papers. The workshop concluded with each group considering a traditional high-stakes assignment that had a number of flaws, and each table of faculty and fellows approached it with a variety of “fixes.” One table focused entirely on creating writing as reading assignments, another on low-stakes scaffolded assignments, and another on high-stakes scaffolded assignments.

If you missed our Effective Assignment Design Workshop, the PowerPoint is available here. Please feel free to download it and if you have questions, use the comments section below. We also have a concise Handout with directions for concept mapping, ideas for low-stakes writing assignments, and an assignment design checklist, all taken from the presentation.

Our next workshop will be on November 12 at 1pm, and covers Peer Review, another great tool that you can use in the classroom with low- or high-stakes assignments. We hope to see you there, and check back here for more information shortly.

 

[1] Toby Fulwiler, “Why We Teach Writing in the First Place,” fforum 4, no. 2 (1983): 123.