Plagiarism, Accountability, and Adult Hypocrisy – radical eyes for equity

Plagiarism, Accountability, and Adult Hypocrisy – radical eyes for equity

Plagiarism, Accountability, and Adult Hypocrisy

You said “I think I’m like Tennessee Williams”
I wait for the click. I wait, but it doesn’t kick in

“CITY MIDDLE,” THE NATIONAL

A refrain by my father throughout my childhood and into my adolescence has shaped how I try to live my life; it remains possibly the strongest impulse I have as an adult.

My father’s parenting philosophy was possibly as misguided as it was reflective of the essential problem with how adults interact with children and teens: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

As a child growing up in the rural crossroads of Enoree, South Carolina, I witnessed my father announcing his dictum, sitting in our living room with a glass of Crown Royal in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

By the time I was a teen, the scenes were often far more physical, occasionally ending with me on the floor as my father attempted to wrestle me into compliance.

A game of him demanding, “Don’t say another word,” and me replying, “Word,” as he tightening his hold on me against the faux-brick linoleum of a different CONTINUE READING: Plagiarism, Accountability, and Adult Hypocrisy – radical eyes for equity

The Talk – radical eyes for equity

The Talk – radical eyes for equity

The Talk

Yesterday I had The Talk with two of my classes—my first-year writing seminar and my upper-level writing/research course.

Doing so proved to me once again that you can’t have The Talk too often with young people. Students were under-informed, misinformed, and worst of all, filled with fear.

The Talk, of course, for these classes was about plagiarism.

Two students in separate classes shared what I think is far too common with the emphasis on what to avoid, plagiarism, (a deficit perspective) instead of what to do and why, scholarly/academic citation—one having been “terrified” by a seminar on plagiarism when they were first-year students and the other struggling to express their concern about teachers being too “harsh” (a recognition that their experience with citation was mostly about avoiding punishment).

Despite the differences in class levels, these students were equally hesitant to answer basic questions about the purposes of citation and what constitutes plagiarism; they offered tentative and incomplete answers when I persisted in CONTINUE READING: The Talk – radical eyes for equity

CURMUDGUCATION: Psychic AI and Plagiarism Detection

CURMUDGUCATION: Psychic AI and Plagiarism Detection

Psychic AI and Plagiarism Detection

Artificial Intelligence is used to sell a lot of baloney. It would be bad enough it were used only to teach badly and provide poor assessments of student work, but AI is also being hawked as a means of rooting out plagiarism. For an example of this phenomenon at its worst, let's check in on a little webcast from Mark Boothe at Canvas Learning Management System. He's talking to Shouvik Paul at Copyleaks, a plagiarism checking company and partner of Canvas. I'm going to watch this so you don't have to--and you shouldn't. But you should remember the names just in case somebody at your place of work suggests actually using these products.

We start with a quick intro emphasizing Copyleaks' awesomeness. And then Boothe hands it over to Paul, the Chief Revenue Officer at Copyleaks, because when you want to talk about a product, you definitely want to talk to the revenue people at the company. Incidentally, sales and marketing has been Paul's entire career--no computer or education background anywhere in sight. But this is going to be a sales pitch for thirty-some minutes. Great.

First, Paul offers general background on Copyleaks. An AI company, building "very cool" stuff. That includes a product that does grading of essays on standardized tests. It takes humans hours, but their Ai can grade those papers "within seconds" within 1% accuracy of a human grader. Spoiler alert: no, it can't. They have offices around the world. 

So they were working on ed tech, and "as we all know" everyone from universities through k-12 is using some kind of plagiarism detection (oh my lord-- does that mean there are first grade teachers out there running student paragraphs through turnitin?). Paul says they found that some of the technology out there was outdated, meaning that when you're out there in education dealing with students, "it's such a cat and mouse game--they're always looking for new ways to beat the system." So we're going to adopt a cynical premise about those awful students as a starting point. Great. 

"Let's face it. What's the first thing a student's going to do? They're going to youtube, and they're going to type in something like 'how to cheat plagiarism check' Right?" And he is showing us on CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Psychic AI and Plagiarism Detection