In British Columbia, the Ministry of Education directed school district to employ a hybrid model of education during the month of June 2020, widely seen as a trial for how education could continue during the COVID-19 pandemic. Educators found themselves balancing face-to-face versus online teaching work, often unable to consider all implications of the hybrid model. One facet the Hybrid model introduced is the question of academic integrity and plagiarism when students are learning online.

Players in education all know of the need for students to understand the results and consequences of their actions both socially and academically. In regard to academic integrity, the curricular goal is to teach students that original work is more beneficial to both themselves and the system as a whole. I argue that the teacher also plays a role in academic integrity, in that they must practice a pedagogy that is synergistic with the needs of their students, an ethical responsibility (#4) in B.C.

The resources which were curated in the primary post were chosen as tools which educators could make use of themselves, or demonstrate and perhaps teach to their students. The resources were examined against the University of California: Berkeley Library’s resource evaluation guide.

Berkeley’s (quick) guide is as follows:

  1. Authority – Who is the author? What is their point of view?
  2. Purpose – Why was the source created? Who is the intended audience?
  3. Publication & format – Where was it published? In what medium?
  4. Relevance – How is it relevant to your research? What is its scope?
  5. Date of publication – When was it written? Has it been updated?
  6. Documentation – Did they cite their sources? Who did they cite?

The resources were divided into three sections: tools or websites which are Proactive, Middle of the road, or Reactive, due to the fact that the resources span different “stages” of addressing plagiarism or cheating. Therefore, the guide is not a perfect fit. It is important to point out that the resources don’t necessarily need to ‘score’ well as they serve different roles and are quite different from each other. I would rather the reader understand that the resource they choose should ‘fit’ their need.

The first proactive tool I focused on was a post on the blog Cult of Pedagogy by Jennifer Gonzales which focused on the teach students to avoid plagiarism. Using Berkeley’s guide, I found that Gonzales’s post “answered” each question in the Berkeley guide in a way that would be seen as satisfactory, or better:

  1. Authority: Jennifer Gonzales is the author, and he point of view is that students will need to practice avoiding plagiarism in a no-stakes activity.
  2. Purpose: The resource was created to provide teachers with a unit in avoiding plagiarism which they could teach to their students. Gonzales believes that few teachers are given (or take) time to learn to prevent plagiarism, instead they only know how to ‘react’ to it.
  3. Publication & Format: The resource was published on a Cult Of Pedagogy, a blog site which Gonzales created herself.
  4. Relevance: Whether by on purpose or accident, Gonzales’s post is clairvoyant response to Wrigley‘s later research of focusing on the student as a writer rather than the product they create, [Placeholder for reference in assignment 3].
  5. Date: The source is rather recent, from February 2017. While the post has not been updated, Gonzales does interact with readers as they comment in the discussion filed below the post.
  6. Documentation: Five sources, cited in the post and provided as references were included. The references were all journal articles which focused on teaching, weighing, and preventing plagiarism.

As I continued to examine my resources against this guide, it became more difficult to decide if the “answers” were either unsatisfactory or inapplicable. For example, another proactive resource I highlighted was Creative Commons. When it came to Authority, Creative Commons does not have a an institutional or personal stake in it’s function. Scrolling through the Team page on the website,  one can find that board and staff members are from both the private and public sector, within education or otherwise. As a non-profit organization, the only authority the website has is it’s own reputation based on how well it is managed by the board and staff. Therefore, one can see that the point of view of Creative Commons is that open and credited content is good… but pointing to an author or champion of this view is difficult. Nevertheless, all other answers on the guide are easily populated, but may vary due to how a visitor uses the website.

Citation Machine is where things start to get messy, requiring the reader to decide how/why they are accessing the resource. While Citation Machine is a proactive tool, it keeps the of the company of the middle of the road and reactive tools: Grammarly, Plagium, and Quetext.

While the specifics of each tool or website will be different, they each provide “answers” to the guide which are relatively the same in each line of the guide:

  1. Authority: Each resource is privately owned, whether stand-alone or a child of a parent company. Each service is happy to provide free service, but with limited capacity.
  2. Purpose – Each resource is intended for students or scholars, with the intent of aiding them write or cite with automated help.
  3. Publication & format – Each resource has can be found on their own domains on the web, but they can also be found embedded/linked in other websites. Grammarly can also be installed as an extension.
  4. Relevance – These resources all attempt to aid a writer in their composition of original work by avoiding plagiarism. Note, they operate in the commercial domain as products.
  5. Date of publication – Each resource is “current” as all their copyrights are 2020.
  6. Documentation – None. But this question may not be applicable, or perhaps it raises the question of what sort of trade-offs exist in using these resources. I would surmise that each resource is automatically refined through a process of machine learning; the hundreds-thousands and beyond inputs into these tools allow them to operate better. Particularly Grammarly, which is able to analyze a user’s personal style and refine it, denoting that the inputs are user-specific. Would these private companies ever share the processes of how their product functions? Probably not, and this could possibly pose a problem for privacy regulations, depending on the user’s native institution.

It is plain to see that some of the resources seem more benevolent than others, but as mentioned before, they differ in their tasks in the way a user approaches plagiarism. As expressed in the original post, each resource performed in its individual purpose well…the Berkeley guide is better used as tool to hold each resource “to account”. Further, It is important to remember that as with most services on the web, users must know the depth of information they are willing to provide to website before moving forward.

I was left with a few burning questions after completing my resource list, and that was of “how far” do we allow algorithmic automation to develop before the essence of original content or curricular competency is eroded by the machine?

For example, Microsoft and Google have both developed live text analysis which checks spelling, grammar, punctuation, which is accepted as a ubiquitous function in word processing. Grammarly is able to do more:

  • Grammar, spelling, and punctuation
  • Consistency in spelling and punctuation
  • Fluency
  • Conciseness
  • Readability
  • Compelling vocabulary
  • Lively sentence variety
  • Tone
  • Confident language
  • Politeness
  • Formality level
  • Inclusive language
  • Plagiarism

(Grammarly, 2020)

At what point do our players in the education domain review this list and argue that it is in conflict with ‘what a student will be able to do’ in our Language Arts curriculum? Is this more of a concern to teachers, curriculum designers, parents, or students?

References:

BC Teachers Council, (2019). Professional Standards for BC Educators. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/kindergarten-to-grade-12/teach/teacher-regulation/standards-for-educators/edu_standards.pdf

Grammarly. (n.d.). Write your best with Grammarly. Retrieved July 15, 2020, from https://www.grammarly.com/

Gonzales, J. Teaching Students to Avoid Plagiarism. (2017, February 26). Cult of Pedagogy. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/preventing-plagiarism/