Plagiarism Issue -Reply

[GLENDA CONWAY <CONWAYG@UM.MONTEVALLO.EDU>]

Chari,

My solution is to avoid the traditional research paper assignment.  In
exchange, all my papers call for research, but always with very specific
purposes and goals--to allow students to choose a subject simply to
research has brought me too many unfocused "reports" and suspected
plagiarisms.  I haven't assigned such a paper for many years.

I feel I can get students to do the same kind of learning and to
demonstrate the same kinds of skills with other assignments.  For
instance, one of my "research papers" for ENG 102 this term is to
analyze the way three art historians have analyzed a particular painting. 
My hunch is that this paper does not already exist in any Greek file or
term paper service, nor can it be found in some published source and
copied.  

My approach certainly takes new planning each semester, although if
I'm the only one using my assignments on campus each semester (an
almost guaranteed fact) I can re-use good ones a couple of times. 
Usually I tire of them myself after that & begin looking for new ways to
ask students to summarize, synthesize, and analyze pre-existing
information.

An added plus is that I find that I often *like* reading the results of my
students' research.

I hope this helps--
Glenda Conway
Department of English
University of Montevallo
Montevallo AL 35115
205 665-6425