Worst Day of School EVER..Please help

[Daisie4100]

In my Nursing Fundamentals class we had to do a group presentation and write a paper about how the group worked together to achieve our teaching goals. We turned the paper in on Monday. Today we all got an email that we needed to meet with our instructor. We raced in there, where she handed us the program plagiarism policy. She proceeded to tell us that there was a blatant case of plagiarism in our paper. She understands that only one of us wrote that part of the paper but since we all agreed that the paper was good enough to hand in, that we were all getting a zero for the paper. She said we were lucky that we weren't kicked out. She said that she had discussed it with all of the staff and the dean and they decided that a zero was the least punishment for the group.

Now the girl who did it was really upset because she had cited the book and was providing the rationale that was required. It turns out however that the person who did our references neglected to include this cite. She instead made up her own cite for this reference and screwed it up by only citing the last page of the book. She had not been a very good team player the whole presentation, and now this. The funny thing is, we all emailed her our references in APA format. All she had to do is put them all on one page. That's it. And she couldn't even do that right.

Does anyone know if there is anyway to fight this without making things worse?

[Double-Helix, BSN, RN]

Plagiarism is not simply forgetting to cite a source. Plagiarism is taking entire verbatim sections of another person's work and claiming that it's original.

If you are writing a paper with the intent to cite sources, then you should write a sentence summarizing the fact found in the source, and then cite it. There should be a citation directly following the fact, not only in the reference section. If you take a direct quote from a source, then it needs to be in quotation marks with the citation and page number immediately following.

Since this is Fundamentals, you must be in your first year of school. I'm sure that your instructor is used to new students being unfamiliar with APA format and forgetting to cite sources. She would not speak to the dean because you forgot to cite a source or cited it incorrectly. There was obviously a much bigger plagiarism issue here. It's most likely that one of your classmates took paragraphs of text directly from another source (such as the text book) and attempted to pass it off as something that he or she had written.

It's unfortunate that you all got penalized, but that's one of the risks of group work. I think your instructor has a valid justification for plagiarism beyond how your classmate tried to explain it to you. She's trying to save face. I don't think you can fight this as a group, as giving you a zero was probably the correct course of action. Your instructor is correct that she could have been much harsher. What I would suggest is that you go to your instructor as an individual, explain what part of the paper you wrote and ask if there is any way that you could do an extra paper or something to help bring up that grade.

[tigo]

Be thankful you didn't get expelled, and try to avoid the person who did the works cited in groups. I agree with Ashley though about talking to your instructor about an extra essay.

[ProudStudent]

I would be devastated too. Your story reminds me to check the work when it's finished completely. This way I can be assured that my grade isn't affected by someone else's mistake. I'm sorry you had to go through that, and agree that you should respectfully ask for an additional paper. Good luck :-)

[brillohead, ADN, RN]

This is one of the many reasons I *hate* group projects. I understand that we need to learn to work as a team, work with different personalities, yada yada yada, but the fact of the matter is that someone else's laziness should NOT reflect poorly on me, and I should not have to do someone else's work in order to get a decent grade.

I would look through your school's plagiarism policy and see if it makes any reference to group work, or holding someone responsible for plagiarism performed by another party. While you may have agreed as a group that the paper was good enough to turn in, you did not all have access to every written work and databases through which to check your peers for integrity (the plagiarism got caught either because the instructor recognized the verbatim portion, or because the instructor ran your paper through a scanning program that cross-checks for stolen verbiage).

One aspect of nursing is personal responsibility and integrity, and you should be able to expect both from your classmates. If your school doesn't provide you with a way to check on other peoples' integrity (like access to the databases they use to check papers), then your school shouldn't hold you responsible for the actions of another.

What I would do is write a letter to your instructor and the head of the department, providing an explanation in writing of what your role in the whole thing was, and provide copies of the emails/files that you submitted for your portion of the group project. Request to be given class credit for your portion of the work, or to be given another option for obtaining credit on your own.

Be calm / rational / reasonable in your writing, do not give in to emotional tirades (even though they are applicable to the situation!). I would also request instruction in how the school expects situations like this to be handled in the future -- what do THEY think every student involved in a group project should be doing to protect themselves? You are going to be required to do group projects in every single class you take from now until diploma day, so you NEED to find out how to prevent this from happening again.

[Pia Mater]

I don't understand how they expect you to know that something someone else wrote was plagerized? In group work, everyone does their own work and you compile it all into one assignment to hand in. Unless you all are together deciding on every single word in the paper, there is no way you could tell someone else in the group plagerized. (unless you happen to recognize the work, or have access to a system to run the paper through)

[moonriseRN]

Have to agree with brillohead - I've always despised group projects in school, seemed like only a percentage of students were dependable. Anyways definitely be happy you are not expelled and then ask the professor what you can do to make up for it, extra essay, etc. Also it would be wise that as a group you write what your responsibilities were. But the main thing is to stay calm and be very rationale. Plagerism is definitely no joke and in APA format even if you "rearrange the words" you still need to cite it.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

if what i read is accurate, it wasn't plagiarized, it just wasn't properly attributed. if you used apa format for the citations in the body of the writing, and they just didn't appear in the bib, that's not much of a basis for an accusation of plagiarism.

but somebody up above is right-- this assignment was, in part, designed to teach you about the dynamics (benefits and perils) of group work. one thing you all learned is that everyone who contributes to a project is responsible for its contents, and so everyone has to check the final submission. it hasn't been mentioned here, but it's also useful to keep a log of any conversations, group sessions, and decisions. sort of like....charting.

i'm very sorry you had to learn a hard lesson this way; perhaps your dean would be more merciful if you printed out the emails you all sent giving the proper bib to the person who committed to compiling it. if whoever wrote it has track changes on her word processing, that would be instructive, too. if not, asking to do a make-up project --without the miscreant-- might soften the dean's heart. doing it anyway, without asking, might be even better.

good luck!

[Daisie4100]

Thank you everyone! I have talked to my instructor and there is no formal accusation of plagiarism being made by she is upholding the zero. She also will not let us do anything to make up the points. I am extremely upset but have decided to move on. One of our last things to turn in is another group paper and this experience has made me not want to have any part in it. Not sure how I'm going to handle this group.

[llg, PhD, RN]

How reputable is your school? It sounds to me like the punishment is too harsh for the crime, particularly for the students who had nothing to do with the error -- and no way to know that an error had been made. It sounds like the kind of stunt that a poor quality school would do. I believe a good quality school would not behave that way.

You might want to think twice before you invest more in this school. Do some more research on its reputation. Talk to upper classmen and see if this kind of unreasonableness is typical of them. etc.

[grpman]

Hmmmm...and I thought most nurses possessed problem solving abilities and critical thinking. Your instructor has neither. I don't have the experience to tell you what to do from here, but I'd sure be talking to people who do.

[tsm007]

I despise group projects. I read this question a few days ago and my first thoughts were well how would they expect you to know if something was plagiarized. Then I got to thinking about my school and how they do things. They expect a citation for anything that is not common knowledge. If the average idiot off the street wouldn't know that it was a fact, then they want a citation. So with that, if you took that philosophy when proofreading the assignment you should be able to see when something didn't have a citation. Now you might not be able to tell that something was properly cited, but at least you could halt the plagiarizism aspect. I think that's insane that you got a zero on this. That's pretty crappy and I would be very upset about that as well.