Whose words are those really?

[attach]2938[/attach]You’re online one morning and read a snippet that would make a funny opener for a presentation you’re giving later at work. You cut and paste the content into your notes, change a few words, and deliver the joke that afternoon to a roomful of smiling faces.

Have you just plagiarized?

It’s a question that educators and administrators have to answer on a daily basis when it comes to their students’ work.

Depending on who you talk to, plagiarism — using someone else’s words or ideas without attributing them or incorrectly citing sources — is a growing problem, or one that’s simply getting easier to do.

But make no mistake: it’s a priority topic for schools.

Plagiarism ranks number three or four on his list of top issues students face says Kristopher Churchill, senior school head at Trinity College School, coming only after drugs and tobacco.

“It’s easier to cheat today than it’s ever been,” he says. “But the priority comes not because of its frequency but because of its importance.”

Churchill adds that it’s critical students understand the issue before they get to university as the lenience won’t be there if they are is caught plagiarizing.

The issue is complicated enough to merit a myriad range of opinions from the educators the Town Crier spoke with. Clearly, it’s difficult for schools to know where to begin when tackling the subject.

Though many private and independent schools start teaching research techniques, the proper way to cite sources, and various documentation formats as early as grade 4 or 5, they’re somewhat on their own when it comes to developing a set of procedures around cheating and plagiarism. As aside from out-and-out copying jobs, it’s difficult to know if a student actually intended to cheat or just made a mistake when citing a source or making notes.

Added to that there’s no clear policy or penalty guidelines for cheating or plagiarism that is applied consistently across the province, says Paul Edwards, senior principal of Mississauga Private School Etobicoke.

“The ministry (of education) is more than a little vague,” he says.

Though he lauds the ministry for deferring to the expertise of those on the ground, the lack of policy is troublesome for educators.

“It leaves teachers and boards a little rudderless.”

So aside from drilling into students’ heads how to cite and document a source, where do schools start?

[quote](In the) age of information ideas are valuable yet they are free.[/quote]

Whether it’s carelessly transcribed notes that lead to plagiarism, ignorance of what it constitutes, or a desperate act brought on by lack of planning and preparation, many agree the web is only exacerbating the problem.

“The lure is that information is so totally out there,” says Manfred J. von Vulte, deputy headmaster at Northmount School. “It’s easy to supplant others’ information with yours and cut and paste.”

It’s also kids’ attitude towards the information found on the web that’s problematic.

“(In the) age of information ideas are valuable yet they are free,” says Edwards. “It feels like common property.”

Some schools are following the lead of universities and purchasing software programs like Turnitin.com, a web-based resource that draws from billions of web pages, academic journals and other sources to check submitted work for plagiarism.

“Technology makes it easy to plagiarize but it can also make it easier to catch,” says Glenn Zederayko, head of schools at Toronto Montessori Schools, whose school is starting a pilot program this year with grade 11 students that will see them submitting their essays to TurnItIn.

It’s better to get the kids using the technology themselves, as, he says, it’s more educational than simply having teachers use the tool to catch cheaters.

But in a way, the question surrounding plagiarism isn’t technology at all: it’s more about what schools value and teach students to value.

[attach]2939[/attach]The pressure for kids to get top marks is huge, says Irene Davy, director at Sunnybrook School.

“It’s a byproduct of the huge competitive nature of our culture,” and she says that pressure is only getting worse.

“We need to have a culture that values integrity over performance,” she says, or at the very least makes the two equal in value.

“The question is, do we have it?”.

Davy won’t answer the question, but von Vulte says the emphasis in the educational system is too much on product. That attitude, he suggests, can lead to plagiarism.

“The emphasis should be on process,” he says.

In part for that reason, more and more schools are opting to have their pupils do projects that have traditionally been done outside the classroom during class time.

One, it mitigates against students simply not doing the work themselves (“I’ve seen too many science projects done by parents,” says von Vulte) and two, it allows teachers to assign work in phases and then assess the students’ efforts.

You get a more pure sample of students’ work, this way, says von Vulte, which really allows teachers to assess learning.

Not all educators agree with this method. Students at The Linden School do a lot of collaborative in-class work like peer reviewing to give them confidence in their ideas, says principal Dawn Chan.

And while Chan says she sees the value of doing larger projects like essays in class, it’s not a practice she implements.

“The reality is in the real world they’re not always going to be monitored.”

Such methods can also send a subtle message that students can’t be trusted, she says.

“You have to have a safe atmosphere where students can share and make mistakes.”

[attach]2940[/attach]Doing essays in-class eats up classroom time and eliminates the process part of writing, says Edwards, to the point where essay writing becomes more like writing a test.

“If essay writing and test writing become too similar then we’re not doing our job as educators,” he says. “For myself I’d rather risk the plagiarism and keep the integrity of the writing.”

The challenge for teachers, as Davy sees it, is how to respond to the massive shift in how kids gather and share information.

“As educators we need to try to harness the technology that is their world and find ways of accessing their learning instead of using tests and essays,” she says.

In-class work is more of a knee-jerk response, she suggests, that doesn’t really get at the heart of the problem.

“Really the issue isn’t cheating and plagiarism,” she says. “It’s character education.”

Kids need to be instilled with principles, she says, and it’s so much more difficult to help kids develop integrity when their values come to them via reality TV.

“What they’re getting on the screen these days is ugly.”