Plagiarism in the digital age

I came across this article from the New York Times today about plagiarism in the digital age. I found it interesting because while teaching last year I caught two different cases of plagiarism. What really stood out to me in the article was this:

But these cases — typical ones, according to writing tutors and officials responsible for discipline at the three schools who described the plagiarism — suggest that many students simply do not grasp that using words they did not write is a serious misdeed.

It is a disconnect that is growing in the Internet age as concepts of intellectual property, copyright and originality are under assault in the unbridled exchange of online information, say educators who study plagiarism.

Digital technology makes copying and pasting easy, of course. But that is the least of it. The Internet may also be redefining how students — who came of age with music file-sharing, Wikipedia and Web-linking — understand the concept of authorship and the singularity of any text or image."

One problem is that students simply don't understand what plagiarism is. One may expect college students to be able to figure that out, but many would be surprised what type of students get into good schools these days. On my syllabi this past year, I had an entire page discussing plagiarism, what constituted plagiarism, and what the penalty for plagiarism was. I went over this thoroughly the first day of class both semesters, and still two students took the risk. (I even used turnitin.com and they still had the gall to copy and paste from the internet.)

I think the bigger issue that was addressed in the NYT article is what to do about sources that do not have a specific author, like a wikipedia or other random website. Because no author is given is it correct to assume that something on the internet is then common knowledge? Such a deduction is asinine because it assumes that everyone is familiar with all parts of the internet, which is totally unfeasible. That's precisely why one needs to site wikipedia if they choose to use it (which is also highly recommended against in my classes). In the very least, if you site the wikipedia page you won't get dinged for plagiarism. You might get points taken off for using poor sources, but if those quotation marks are present and the footnote good enough to decipher, most of my students will dodge a major bullet.

Oh, and the penalty for plagiarism in my class? A ZERO for the class, not the assignment, the entire course. That'll put a serious dent in your GPA. Harsh? Perhaps, but such a rigid policy forces students to be more careful with their work. My two plagiarizers were in my Fall class and I think having that experience dealing with it (which is never pleasant), and the ammo of actually having failed students the previous semester, made my Spring semester students much more attentive and careful NOT to plagiarize.