Is The Term Paper Dead?

Reader gyges writes in to tell us that the Washington Post has picked up a piece he wrote about cut-and-paste plagiarism: "Plagiarism today is heavily invested with morality surrounding intellectual honesty. That is laudable. But truly distinguishing plagiarism is a matter of intent. Did I mean to copy, was it accidental (a trick of memory), was it polygenesis[?] ... Young people today are simply too far ahead of anything schools might do to curb their recycling efforts. Beyond simply selling used term papers online, Web sites such as StudentofFortune.com allow students to post specific questions and pay for answers." The author argues that in the era we're entering, schools need to rely far less on term papers in assessing students.

Re:Start with cut and pate speeling

[heinousjay]

You laughed, but the joke's on you.

Re:What's with cheating anyway?

[hazem]

And for those of you who don't see the point of such a study, consider that Einstein, Lenin, James Joyce and Tristan Tzara (who founded the Dada movement) all lived within spitting distance of one another at one point in time.

Leonard Shlain wrote an interesting book called Art & Physics. In it, he relates some of the great breakthroughs in science to similar breakthroughs in art. That somehow, the new way of seeing the world in a growing art movement helped inspire scientific thinking.

From the websites: http://www.artandphysics.com/ [artandphysics.com]

Leonard Shlain proposes that the visionary artist is the first member of a culture to see the world in a new way. Then, nearly simultaneously, a revolutionary physicist discovers a new way to think about the world. Escorting the reader through the classical, medieval, Renaissance and modern eras, Shlain shows how the artists' images when superimposed on the physicists' concepts create a compelling fit.

His other books, Alphabet vs. The Goddess and Sex, Time, and Power were very fascinating too.

Re:Agreed, but with reservations.

[jez9999]

Mock footnotes? It's called IEEE Citation [toronto.edu].

Re:One possible idea...

[jimicus]

But maybe you could do something like spend 15 minutes with everyone (this would take a while, I know) and ask them questions about what they wrote, or have them give a presentation on the topic. That way even if they cheated on the paper itself, at least you know it wasn't a case of just downloading it and handing it in, and that they actually know the material.

What a good idea. We've been using it in the UK for years, it's called a viva though it's generally reserved for your final, major project in University.

It's not intimidating at all if you've done the work - just a 15 minute or so face to face chat about your work with a lecturer. I imagine cheating would probably be fairly obvious within the first 2 minutes to any lecturer who's even vaguely awake.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:My own experience.

[Odin The Ravager]

The Air Force Honor Code:

I will not lie, steal, cheat, nor tolerate any among us who does