Kind of. Some people plagiarise because they just can't be arsed. In terms of the essays i see, some are so fucking idle as to cut and paste without even putting the pasted material into the same typeface as the rest of the work.
I've even seen stuff nicked of wikipedia with the links still left in.
Others plagiarise because they went through school and college patching together stuff from different sites - actually thinking that
is an essay.
Still others really do forget where they got material from.
Others put long quotes in and then stick a reference at the end of the paragraph - but no "....." Just don't know how to reference.
Right.
All of which is why the assertion:
no-one 'accidentally' plagiarises, you cheat, end of.
is 100 percent wrong.
It's not 100 percent wrong because
every student does it accidentally; it's 100 percent wrong because of its totalizing nature and its unwilligness to account for the various types of plagiarism, and the various motivation or reasons for plagiarism.
All kinds of reasons and motivations - the vast majority are never caught though, because of the amount of marking staff have and their unwillingness to initiate the full bureaucracy of a hearing. The difference now though is electronic submission, which matches the whole work to all kinds of databases. They tend to produce a % match - indicating how much of the essay can be found elsewhere.
One way to make plagiarism easier to catch--at least at the college level--is to be creative about setting writing assignments. If you set the same type of assignment that a millions teachers before you have set, and simply ask students to rehash hackneyed old questions, you immediately make it easier for them to find places on the web where they can cut and paste.
If, on the other hand, you set very specific questions that relate directly to the material you have covered in class, and that ask students to think about that material in particular ways, it is often easier to spot a student who plagiarizes because it is more difficult for them to find a simple cut-and-paste answer to the question.
That's one reason i was able to catch the guy i mentioned in my earlier post. I set my class a choice of four essay questions for their final paper. Each question was based specifically on the readings we've done this semester, and each student was required to incorporate at least 3 of the primary sources readings into his or her argument.
One reason that the person was so easy to catch is that his plagiarized sections covered material and people that we never covered in class. This is often a dead giveaway, especially in a paper that does not ask the students to do extra outside research. He also completely failed to answer any of the actual questions in his paper, but simply plagiarized sections giving an overview of the issue of slavery.
Also, i find that plenty of plagiarizers are not very good writers. It's usually a dead giveaway when their paper jumps back and forth between beautiful, complex prose and stilted, ungrammatical tosh. This is especially noticeable when they plagiarize from published books. Unfortunately, when they steal from Wikipedia or some other crappy online source, it's often harder to tell the difference in quality of writing.
As for the bureaucratic stuff, luckily at the places where i've been teaching, a hearing is not an automatic consequence of a plagiarism accusation. If i catch a student plagiarizing, and it's bad enough for an outright failure of the course, then i just fail him, and tell him why. I also tell the university, which keeps his name on file. If he is caught a second time, the college will then institute disciplinary procedures beyond simply failing the course, up to and including expulsion.
There are appeals processes for students who want to challenge my ruling, but if they don't appeal, my word on the issue is final. I don't have to justify my decision UNLESS the student chooses to take it further. And, because i make sure all my evidence is rock solid before failing someone for plagiarism, i've never had any of those decisions overturned.
I know that some colleges and universities take a much more lenient approach, and that Department Heads, Deans, and other administrators sometimes put pressure on teachers to let the student off with a slap on the wrist. I think that sucks, and i'm glad i haven't had this happen to me yet.
