Discussion board plagiarism

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FNP program is a mix of online courses and BYO-clinical placements.

Received very clear communication from deans that the school takes a t-ball approach to plagiarism in discussion boards: ~"plagiarism in discussion boards serves as a marker for the more meaningful assignments;" ~"discussions don't need accurate citations."

This is in response to my finding several cohort students doing an abundance of plagiarism: copy/paste or paraphrase over 50% of posted content. The student handbook clearly states a firm disciplinary approach to plagiarism, and the grading rubric clearly states accurate citations are required.

I find this tolerance impacts the credibility of the institution and waters down the degree. Then again, a degree is what you make of it. It's unsettling since one offender's submissions reads as though they handed the login information to an Indian freelancer: poor reading comprehension from reply content, and stringing circular nonsense together with plagiarism (e.g. "the sky is blue because blue is the color of the sky, according to our group studied wavelength refraction and concluded the dominant frequency at GMT-8 noon").

Thoughts?

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Specializes in Hospitalist Medicine.

Our program doesn't allow you to see any posts in the discussion forum until you have created your own post. This prevents plaigiarism of the students who posted first. We also have to run our posts through the Turnitin (anti-plaigiarism) website and resolve any fixable similarity issues before posting. This prevents students from sharing posts from previous classes or amongst themselves. It's sad that things like this have to be done. We should all have enough academic integrity that these types of measures aren't needed at all. Sadly, the world doesn't work that way...

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15 hours ago, ajohnsonorg said:

FNP program is a mix of online courses and BYO-clinical placements.

Received very clear communication from deans that the school takes a t-ball approach to plagiarism in discussion boards: ~"plagiarism in discussion boards serves as a marker for the more meaningful assignments;" ~"discussions don't need accurate citations."

This is in response to my finding several cohort students doing an abundance of plagiarism: copy/paste or paraphrase over 50% of posted content. The student handbook clearly states a firm disciplinary approach to plagiarism, and the grading rubric clearly states accurate citations are required.

I find this tolerance impacts the credibility of the institution and waters down the degree. Then again, a degree is what you make of it. It's unsettling since one offender's submissions reads as though they handed the login information to an Indian freelancer: poor reading comprehension from reply content, and stringing circular nonsense together with plagiarism (e.g. "the sky is blue because blue is the color of the sky, according to our group studied wavelength refraction and concluded the dominant frequency at GMT-8 noon").

Thoughts?

I know you're serious but this took me out because I know people who talk like this on a regular basis trying to be faux deep. Then the rest of us are like "What the hell are you talking about?" ?

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