Re: Plagiarism/boilerplate

[hawthorn@badlands.nodak.edu (Joan Hawthorne)]

I have appreciated the interesting and insightful responses to the thread on
plagiarism.  It does seem pretty obvious that the view we take of
"ownership" in academia is quite different from the view in many positions.
But even in academics, as someone rightly pointed out, there are situations
(grant-writing is one) where certain chunks of text are frequently treated
as "boilerplate" text which can be plugged right in as needed.  

What does this mean for us as teachers?  I figure it probably means that our
assignments shouldn't tacitly invite boilerplate responses if that's not
what we want.  That's an oversimplification, but there are lots of good
ideas about how to do this.  And when our assignments are rote, we will
naturally be disappointed but probably shouldn't be surprised to find that
we get boilerplate responses.

>From a WC perspective:  I'm still thinking about that student with LD.  My
guess is that she'll find a position where the things she can't do well
don't matter as much as the things she can do well.  Isn't that what we all
do anyway?  Somone is really good at research and conceptualizing articles,
and that person ends up in a university where research and publication are
critical.  Someone else is really good at teaching and he/she ends up in a
different kind of institution.  Everyone doesn't _need_ to be a great
self-editor.  But being better at more things obviously gives people a
greater range of options.  Realistically, self-editing may always be fairly
difficult and painful for that student, no matter how many times she goes to
the WC and no matter how hard she works on it.  Her instinct to put her
energies into what she _can_ be good at may not be wrong. 

Joan Hawthorne
Univ. of North Dakota