‘Helping’ Can Become Academic Plagiarism
Earlier this week, in passing, I mentioned to my marketing management lecturer the amount of work that I have on my desk with assignments, tests, readings and tutorial work. He said, “Welcome to the MBA”.
But it isn’t the work that really bothers me about the MBA program. The workload is fine, if challenging. It’s very hard to get used to people who have come straight from industry and management positions into the program when they constantly hand over their information to every non-english speaking person who hasn’t done the research themselves. That sounds bad, I know, and I don’t mean it to sound bitchy but the way universities work is not around one person doing all the thinking for 80% of the assignment work in the class. And, at some point, one would hope markers started asking why all the answers were the same?
The flip side of that argument might make more sense… If you provide your work to another student and both wind up with the same sources and statements you can find yourself in a plagiarism situation. If you hand answers to five people and they all put in the same answer (particularly if they are wrong about something) then you leave yourself open to them saying that you gave them the answer. Don’t for a second believe a student won’t swap you for themselves on a plagiarism hotseat.
Second, the point of assignment work is to learn and research yourself. If someone can’t research or read they won’t learn by being given the answer. In the end you just make the exam almost impossible because they don’t develop a deeper understanding. So, it’s not really a favour to provide someone who started late with the answers or research references that took other people hours or days to sift through.
Third, it’s not equitable to other people who are doing the work and struggling and staying up into the late hours. But that’s just a small one, I guess. Finally, it messes with the bell curve…
But in the end all one can hope is that academically this gets realised as a faux pas. I’m not saying don’t help people, but understand the difference between helping them with tutorial work or understanding, and providing them with the instruction for their individual assessment items. I know I sure wouldn’t risk being kicked out of the course for being ‘overly helpful’ to others.
That being said I recall doing an Internship a few years ago and I recoiled at the expectation the academic papers were openly being written and edited by the managers in charge of the interns… when I questioned that practice, it was said in business that’s how it goes. Mmm… and the point of that academic integrity signature we put on the bottom?
