How to respond to a university's charge of plagiarism: some suggestions
A student sent me a email asking my advice on how to respond to the University's letter charging the student for plagiarism in assignment report. I took a look at the turnitin report which showed the sources of plagiarised content and the related similarity indexes. So, I said:
a. Do not deny the charge as the evidence is concrete; just admit that you have committed the offence.
d. As the seriousness of the offence is still not high, judging from the figure of the similarity index, I propose that the student makes a plea to the university to offer another chance to do the assignment again. [It is possible that the re-do report mark will be capped at the passing mark]
c. State clearly that you will not not committed the offence again and feel sorry for what has happended.
Since the education centre usually request students to do plagiarism checking before assignment submission, I do no know what happens to the control procedures. Also, the student has sent a email to her direct supervisor for advice but her supervisor has no reply (I am not surprised about that because that teacher usually plays with his smartphone during staff meeting.]
If it is necessary that student wants to quote contents from external sources, they can use quotations. It is important to provide clear referencing anyway.
Some students responded to the plagiarism charge by saying that they were too busy or they forgot that they had plagiarism; I do not accept these excuses personally. Some students said that when they plagiarised, they were not conscious of what they were doing. On this topic of consciousness, since I am not a psychologist, I cannot make my personal jugdement confidentially. I have watched a movie which suggested that, if a wife unconsciously kills her husband, she is not guilty and will not be put into jail for that.
a. Do not deny the charge as the evidence is concrete; just admit that you have committed the offence.
d. As the seriousness of the offence is still not high, judging from the figure of the similarity index, I propose that the student makes a plea to the university to offer another chance to do the assignment again. [It is possible that the re-do report mark will be capped at the passing mark]
c. State clearly that you will not not committed the offence again and feel sorry for what has happended.
Since the education centre usually request students to do plagiarism checking before assignment submission, I do no know what happens to the control procedures. Also, the student has sent a email to her direct supervisor for advice but her supervisor has no reply (I am not surprised about that because that teacher usually plays with his smartphone during staff meeting.]
If it is necessary that student wants to quote contents from external sources, they can use quotations. It is important to provide clear referencing anyway.
Some students responded to the plagiarism charge by saying that they were too busy or they forgot that they had plagiarism; I do not accept these excuses personally. Some students said that when they plagiarised, they were not conscious of what they were doing. On this topic of consciousness, since I am not a psychologist, I cannot make my personal jugdement confidentially. I have watched a movie which suggested that, if a wife unconsciously kills her husband, she is not guilty and will not be put into jail for that.
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