Plagiarism !!!!

jennebean

I have been failed in an assignment for plagiarism because I did not use quotation marks. I have footnoted everything but no quotations for paraphrasing ,
Going to meet lecturer on Monday because she would not meet with me beforehand (this happened on Wednesday)

I am now expected to get an A in the exam , this won't happen best I could get would be a c/b grade .

It's a core module , I am in second year , does anyone know can I repeat the module next year ?

I'm not one of those students who sends around a mail at the end of the term looking for everyone's notes because i was "sick". I work hard and this is a genuine mistake.
I'm A mature student and have busted my balls to make it this far ! I had 4 jobs last term just to pay my fees , I would not cheat for a better grade.

Anyone any idea , tips , anything ?

I'm hoping my lecturer will allow me to re write my assignment for a d- grade (according to the info on plagiarism it's the best I can get)

I'm so sad about it , I would hate to have it on my record I've plans to go on to a masters too and this has really upset me and kicked my confidence , I've received other grades this wk which where both good but this plagiarism has totally nulled them for me , I should be studying but I'm so distracted by this that I can't focus !

[Jackass]

Wow, that seems pretty harsh. Are you sure you referenced everything with footnotes? Referencing but simply failing to put quotation marks could quite reasonably be argued as a format mistake rather than attempting to pass off other peoples work as your own.

I know universities rightly take plagiarism very seriously, but I would hope that in circumstances of genuine error, they could take that into consideration (by partial punishment, not total - as unfortunately, for the credability of the university, they can't completely let it go.)

If you haven't met with your lecturer yet, I would say to explain it and stress it was a sincere mistake, and ask for some slack over it. Before you meet her though, I would suggest viewing your safe assign document on blackboard. You can see what you submitted and exactly the lines / phrases that are highligted as potential plagiarism. It also gives a percentage of document to be reviewed.

If it is coming up as you having loads of uncredited paragraphs etc., then I think you're in a bit more trouble, as you are expected to know the rules surrounding plagiarism ( I think every assignment prompts you to read the regulations before submitting).

If the lecturer sticks to her guns, I would advise to appeal it to the department head / head of the module.

Worst case scenario, if you get full punishment, you can repeat the subject at Christmas. Your GPA will be capped at 2.0 for the module however (equivalent to a D-) regardless of how well you do when repeating it.

I'm also a mature student and know we're doing it the hard way, but hang in there, from my experience, lecturers etc. tend to be very understanding about any issues you contact them about.

jennebean

Thanks !!

they do not give you the option to look at the assignment via safe assign like other modules do .

The stuff copied is it structural stuff it was saying what is in a building. it was taken from grove dictionary and footnoted !
but I can't actually change it because , what's in the building is in the building .
It would be like saying the sky is Blue then Sumone being accused of copying me because they said the sky is blue too.

I understand that if it is flagged in the plagiarism software they cannot ignore it.
But I don't think she even read my hard copy , to see the "copied" stuff in context . It is clear I am not trying to pass off a dictionary reference as my own work !

I actually think plagiarism is stupid it would take way more work trying to change sumthing to make it look like your own rather then it would to do the work honestly !

I cannot find the info on ucd site to help me and there is no point getting on to student desk on a Friday for anything

It's a very pants situation and it's a pity this lecturer does not know me, I do know the head of the department but I would rather not have to go to him for help with this I'm class rep so I've to go to the meetings n all that and i will be absolutly Morto at the next one. the school head asked me to be rep , I didn't volunteer apparently i was reccomended by the tutors .

now I feel the Cheater stigma n I didnt mean to do anything wrong !

I have spoke to tutors n they said I had done the right thing about getting on to the lecturer straight away.
I don't want to let down the tutors that said I was a good student , and I don't want the staff to loose faith in me I've one year to go and will be looking for references for my masters !

I really hope this lecturer does not use me as an example on what can happen for incorrect referencing !

I am printing everything that I copied to show where I got it and how my footnotes match up .

I will not get an A in the exam so If I am going to fail the module I'd rather spend my time studying on the other modules and do well in them

Pandoras Twist

As I understood it, if you paraphrased you only had to reference at the end of the sentence/paragraph. Like:

Women are often considered, by virtue of their reproductive roles, to have an innate desire to take responsibility for care work and as a result of social constructs, are believed to be more nurturing and capable in this area (Ekşi 2009).

And you would only use quotations if you used a direct quote. Or a large part of a key sentence. Like

In addition, early marriages are often to older and more experienced men leading to an imbalance of power within the marriage “as an effect of gender-based inequality intersecting with age-based inequality” (Otoo-Oyortey & Pobi 2003).

So did you quote or paraphrase?

Musefan

http://www.ucd.ie/library/supporting_you/support_teaching/plagiarism_support/

This is a great source for info on how to structure essays properly to avoid plagiarism.
From my experience, we would have been sanctioned for an action such as yours in second year, as in first year, it is often understandable.

I hope you have an understanding tutor. They will likely pick up if it is an honest mistake.

khan1

This seems like an appropriate forum to ask my question. I recently submitted my essay in View SafeAssignment link on the Blackboard. I have seen the SA report and it says Matching 0%. Does it mean that I am safe and no plagiarism has been detected in my essay?

convert

It's unlikely that there is any plagiarism in your essay, although I do know of one student who had a report of about 9% plagiarism, yet it turned out that there were huge chunks of their essay taken from google books and not referenced.

If you've referenced all sources correctly, then you should be fine, regardless of how much you've quoted or paraphrased work.

[Jackass]

khan1 wrote: »

This seems like an appropriate forum to ask my question. I recently submitted my essay in View SafeAssignment link on the Blackboard. I have seen the SA report and it says Matching 0%. Does it mean that I am safe and no plagiarism has been detected in my essay?

If safe assign said your essay had 0% plagiarism, then that usually means you'll be expelled from UCD and An Garda will be called. Minimum sentence is 35 years, but with good behaviour, you might get out in 40.

Sam the Sham

Do people not know when they are stealing others' work?

Or are you just trying to game SafeAssign?

If the latter, do bear in mind that most lecturers have plagiarism detectors (their brains) that are much more sensitive than SafeAssign.

jennebean

Thanks for all the help !

I think plagiarism is stupid , it would take way more work to try make everything look like your own work , than to actually just do it yourself !

Some was quoted and some paraphrased but ALL of it foot noted !
My meetings at 11 with lecturer so I'm going in early to find all my sources again and print them/photo copy.

It Is quite clear she didn't even read the essay just seen the highlighted parts and went "ah grand one less to read" in 3 yrs in ucd I've never received an essay back as quick !

I'm also gonna go to student desk/program's office to find out what my options are. It's unlikely I am going to get an A in the exam so I'm going to drop the module (if I can , I know it's too late to do it normally) ,

I'd rather do well in my other exams coz I'm not stressing about this one !

Other option which is the sh**y way to go is I'm "sick" for the exam n have to do the ix essay or whatever way they work it for summer exams .
It's what the sneaky Stevens students would do.
I haven't gotten far by doing the right thing , but I'm a firm believer in karma n if my luck is so bad doing good all the time I can only imaging how bad it would be if I pulled a sicky , I'd be hit by a car leaving the doctors or sumthin. !

Fml !

jennebean

Met my lecturer ,

She showed me my report on safe assign , and the good ole anti plagiarism software deleted all my footnotes !

Maybe it was bored or sumthin but all my formatting was gone it was just a big block of text with no referencing at all .
She said she hadn't read my hard copy because of this and appologised . If she had she would have seen my footnotes !

What a ****emare .

She is regrading me and taking plagiarism off my record , thank god !

WhatNowForUs?

jennebean wrote: »

Met my lecturer ,

She showed me my report on safe assign , and the good ole anti plagiarism software deleted all my footnotes !

Maybe it was bored or sumthin but all my formatting was gone it was just a big block of text with no referencing at all .
She said she hadn't read my hard copy because of this and appologised . If she had she would have seen my footnotes !

What a ****emare .

She is regrading me and taking plagiarism off my record , thank god !

Well done. Good on you

a5y

jennebean wrote: »

Met my lecturer ,

She showed me my report on safe assign , and the good ole anti plagiarism software deleted all my footnotes !

Maybe it was bored or sumthin but all my formatting was gone it was just a big block of text with no referencing at all .
She said she hadn't read my hard copy because of this and appologised . If she had she would have seen my footnotes !

What a ****emare .

She is regrading me and taking plagiarism off my record , thank god !

Wait, the lecturer didn't look at the report before importing it to safe assign? Or afterwards before contacting you?

Your lecturer seems both content to let the software do the thinking for her and oblivious to any idea what her professional or academic responsibilities.

If there's a chance to provide anonymous feedback or evaluation on lecturers you need to get that on the record.

Red Alert

Just to note - one reason I always require students to submit a PDF is because these type of problems go away. Did you by any chance submit word to Blackboard/SafeAssign?

Cody Pomeray

Glad it's all worked out for you jennebean. If you had just presumed that your referencing was inadequate your grades could be really compromised. So well done on following up.

But not everyone has the confidence to approach their lecturers, and so I'd also be a little uneasy about your lecturer's reliance on anti plagiarism software as a5y mentioned.

jennebean

a5y wrote: »

Wait, the lecturer didn't look at the report before importing it to safe assign? Or afterwards before contacting you?

Your lecturer seems both content to let the software do the thinking for her and oblivious to any idea what her professional or academic responsibilities.

If there's a chance to provide anonymous feedback or evaluation on lecturers you need to get that on the record.

Yup she didnt bother to read my assignment becuse there was 11 lines highlighted as plagairsed1!

I did think is was odd that a class of about 150 got back their 2500 word essays in less than a wk !

Im class rep and i was hoping to bring this up with the school head at our next meeting but i dont think there will be another meeting now.

i dont really want to bring it up on the surveys , as i think im the only one in the class that this happened too and it will be obvious its me .

awfull situation all togethr !!

jennebean

Red Alert wrote: »

Just to note - one reason I always require students to submit a PDF is because these type of problems go away. Did you by any chance submit word to Blackboard/SafeAssign?

yeah i always use word docs ! but I never thought of saving it as a pdf !
thanks for that !!

jennebean

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

Glad it's all worked out for you jennebean. If you had just presumed that your referencing was inadequate your grades could be really compromised. So well done on following up.

But not everyone has the confidence to approach their lecturers, and so I'd also be a little uneasy about your lecturer's reliance on anti plagiarism software as a5y mentioned.

I know , im a mature student and i can only imagine that none of the 18/19 yr olds would have approached the lecturer about it

3 stages of this dilemma - tears, being really upset about it.
being really f$%*ed off about it.
then self doubt ,thinking "s**t did i do it?"

It was crap !

And lecturer took off to the states for a while so i am still waiting for my grade

I must say ,she did appologise to me, that she had not read my essay , and from now on she will not put so much weight on the software to find problems.

Cody Pomeray

jennebean wrote: »

i dont really want to bring it up on the surveys , as i think im the only one in the class that this happened too and it will be obvious its me .

That's what the surveys are there for. It doesn't have to be a combative contribution, you have a very reasonable question to raise about grading standards which should not stand against you in the future.

I know that's easier said than done.

jennebean

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

That's what the surveys are there for. It doesn't have to be a combative contribution, you have a very reasonable question to raise about grading standards which should not stand against you in the future.

I know that's easier said than done.

I know what you mean!
The lecturer used to be the head of the dept , she seems to be a big deal, im just abit worried about annoying her by bringing it up again , esp if il have her next yr ! I would have had no bother bringing it up at the meeting.

I will defo say somthing about what happened, safe assign aint all that great ! mistakes can be made and it should be checked by staff and not just taken as fact "because the computer said so."

Cody Pomeray

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThTwl1HrFi4