A Reflection on Plagiarism, Patchwriting, and the Engineering Master's Thesis

Fuente: ERIC Institute of Education Sciences
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Autore principale: Eckel, Edward J.
Natura: Recurso educativo Open Access
Lingua:en
Pubblicazione: 2010
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author Eckel, Edward J.
author_facet Eckel, Edward J.
Eckel, Edward J.
collection Education Resources Information Center
contents A Reflection on Plagiarism, Patchwriting, and the Engineering Master's Thesis Eckel, Edward J. Plagiarism Writing Processes Writing Skills Writing Instruction Graduate Students Engineering Education Science Education Library Role Academic Libraries Early in his career as an engineering librarian, the author saw plagiarism in completely black and white terms. However, digging into the scholarly literature, he finds ample evidence that there are other factors at work in student writing besides a lack of ethics or the intent to cheat. In this article, he briefly highlights some of these factors. He believes that there is a great potential for partnership between librarians and the graduate science and technology colleges in terms of educating students and faculty about what patchwriting is, how it differs from plagiarism, how to write for synthesis from sources, and how to properly attribute sources in scholarly writing. Mistakes in source text use by graduate students, when relatively minor in degree, should be considered part of the learning process and not as research misconduct or academic dishonesty. Rather than focusing on punishment or ethics, librarians and faculty members need to teach students a more realistic view of the writing process, one that allows and encourages the reuse of generic strings of text and yet scrupulously attributes the ideas and distinctive written expressions of other authors. His hope is that these thoughts serve as seed crystals for a larger conversation on source text use and reuse in the sciences and engineering.
format Recurso educativo Open Access
id eric_EJ911825
institution ERIC Institute of Education Sciences
language en
publishDate 2010
record_format eric
spellingShingle A Reflection on Plagiarism, Patchwriting, and the Engineering Master's Thesis
Eckel, Edward J.
Plagiarism
Writing Processes
Writing Skills
Writing Instruction
Graduate Students
Engineering Education
Science Education
Library Role
Academic Libraries
A Reflection on Plagiarism, Patchwriting, and the Engineering Master's Thesis Eckel, Edward J. Plagiarism Writing Processes Writing Skills Writing Instruction Graduate Students Engineering Education Science Education Library Role Academic Libraries Early in his career as an engineering librarian, the author saw plagiarism in completely black and white terms. However, digging into the scholarly literature, he finds ample evidence that there are other factors at work in student writing besides a lack of ethics or the intent to cheat. In this article, he briefly highlights some of these factors. He believes that there is a great potential for partnership between librarians and the graduate science and technology colleges in terms of educating students and faculty about what patchwriting is, how it differs from plagiarism, how to write for synthesis from sources, and how to properly attribute sources in scholarly writing. Mistakes in source text use by graduate students, when relatively minor in degree, should be considered part of the learning process and not as research misconduct or academic dishonesty. Rather than focusing on punishment or ethics, librarians and faculty members need to teach students a more realistic view of the writing process, one that allows and encourages the reuse of generic strings of text and yet scrupulously attributes the ideas and distinctive written expressions of other authors. His hope is that these thoughts serve as seed crystals for a larger conversation on source text use and reuse in the sciences and engineering.
title A Reflection on Plagiarism, Patchwriting, and the Engineering Master's Thesis
topic Plagiarism
Writing Processes
Writing Skills
Writing Instruction
Graduate Students
Engineering Education
Science Education
Library Role
Academic Libraries
url https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ911825