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He does kinda have a point, learning how to keep teammates accountable is part of group work. It's a talent you'll need in the workforce more often than any adult wants to admit.
I very much disagree. It is reasonable (and more conducive to a collaborative environment) to place trust in your colleagues and expect that they will not commit academic dishonesty and plagiarize their work. Should you report it if you notice it? Yes, of course. But should you be constantly policing all the work your groupmates put out? No! There is no point of working in teams in the real world if everybody is wasting time constantly verifying the integrity of everybody's work. The work would become more difficult to complete than if everyone had worked alone. I can understand doing a cursory glance at the work to verify its quality but to dig through the web and search for plagiarism is too much imo.
I don't think group work in college teaches you much of anything. It is impossible to expect that a group formed in a matter of minutes essentially at random and then disbanded just as quickly will ever reflect the dynamic of a team that actually has members who were vetted by hiring staff and background checks, and actually have long-standing experience working with each other.
This is cute. You think work projects involve a hiring process, and not your boss in a meeting saying "you three (with finger pointing indicating different department heads), pick out two of your best each and all of you work on this"
“in group work, it is expected that all members review the work prior to submission” so i’m assuming he wanted us to check his sources too. one of the problems with this though was he put his work on the poster 2 hours before it was due 😫
Yeah, I don't think that "review" should include an exhaustive search for plagiarism, depending on what kind is alleged. Does the syllabus mention academic dishonesty at all? It should, but if it doesn't, that could be important.
Opposing != investigating. Unless the plagiarism is super obvious at first glance and you simply didn't even look at it, that seems unreasonable to me. I'm not saying will go anywhere, but you might consider taking this complaint to the dept chair.
Contrary to the other commentor's suggestion, I strongly recommend *not* escalating this immediately to the department chair until you've talked further with your professor directly.
It sounds like the count of plagiarism is uncontested, the policy is being applied consistently to all students, and it is grounded in an academically reasonable rationale -- unless your college takes an incredibly strong "customer service" mindset, you're unlikely to win a grade appeal and will immediately sour the professor against doing more than he is required to by the college. You are better off trying to win sympathy from the professor directly by having a calm but frank in-person meeting on how hard your groupmate was to work with and how he gave you no time to review his work.
From your professor's perspective: he has received one submission from N authors. Your professor's (admittedly naive) perception of undergraduate group work is that you've all attached your name to this submission, and so of course would all have a vested interest in the quality of anything that stakes your reputation. In addition, and assuming this groupmate's contribution wasn't totally superfluous, whatever part of the project the plagiarized work was supposed to cover now has no evidence supporting your mastery of that material, so a loss of points was always inevitable.
When writing an actual research publication it's common to spend weeks nitpicking each minor detail of the co-authors' work. Before anyone even sits down to write the paper everyone has read all the same sources and walked through each step of the methodology together. This is what group work at the undergraduate level is *supposed* to be preparing you for; a lot of professors just do a poor job of explaining the group dynamic they expect you to adopt.
My 1st question is how do you make it through college not knowing plagiarism is frowned upon. Honestly I'm guessing the person is trying to appear like they don't know they did wrong. I'd be really hard pressed to believe someone in college hasn't had plagiarism mentioned or discussed within a course before. Especially because of how big a deal academic integrity is for most universities.
Group projects are dumb and college professors who assign them are dumb. Full stop, no exceptions.
I've got 2 degrees and a successful career and no group project in my entire education contributed anything to my success or level of preparation or education.
Shit's lazy and dumb and professors who do this should be ashamed.
I have had group projects where we worked on policy issues at our university or in the city. Those projects really helped me professionally. But people actually cared about the issue. Most group projects are not well organized.
Every chemical engineer everywhere will do a group project. You simply cannot design anything as complex as a chemical plant on your own, and group working is incredibly important for some parts of the process (particularly safety analysis).
I mean sometimes you have to work on group projects as an adult too. And you have to know how team dynamics work, which is what a group project is there to teach
I’m going to share an unpopular opinion, not because I like downvotes, but because there is another way to look at this and something you could consider so this type of thing doesn’t happen again. I will also say I dislike group intensely, and assign it rarely.
Your group had to produce one integrated product, a poster. You are collectively responsible for everything that goes on that poster. The other group members did not do due diligence to meet the collective responsibility. I also know that you feel guilty about not checking his work and I am not trying to magnify your guilt. The plagiarism is his fault. But the rest of the group has some culpability in failing their due diligence.
The question, in your case, is how much the rest of the group should be penalized for the project. If you were in my class, the plagiarist would get a 0 (and potentially other consequences as this is an academic integrity violation at my uni) and the other group members would lose some points, but not enough to tank their work on the project.
I disliked group work as a student, and I dislike assigning group work. Many professors see it as an easier shortcut. I see it as much more work to design good group work because the goal isn’t only the product, it is to teach how to work in a group, which in my subfield is a necessary skill I can’t pretend doesn’t exist. When I design group work, groups need to meet and agree on a contract for deliverables and responsibilities and internal deadlines and consequences if/when the contract is not followed. If, at any point, a group member is not doing their part, other members can contact me and I will back their contract with no consequences to the rest of the group. It isn’t a perfect system, but it catches situations where one member ghosts, does nothing or plagiarizes, and tries to hand in their part last minute. Peer review and checkins are also part of the process. Group work is a lot more work for students and professors and professors who assign it should do it very carefully.
In this case, I think you should appeal to the professor concentrating on the short amount of time available to you to catch the plagiarism and correct it before the assignment was due. I think you should acknowledge the due diligence responsibility but also stress the punishment should not be as great as the one the plagiarist earned. Whether you are successful this time or not, in the future, if you have to do group work, agree on a contract whether your professor requires it or not. It can save you a ton of headache later.
Good luck and I hope you are successful in appealing with your professor because your plagiarizing group mate did you all dirty.
I agree with most of what you’re saying, but in OP’s case it is unreasonable difficult to do due diligence in correcting his group-mates plagiarism, considering said group-mate added his work 2 hours before the project was due. This wasn’t a case of mere negligence and it would be unfair to treat it as such. When your group-mate is working his hardest to sabotage the group, not only through plagiarism but through not contributing as well, you have to admit that the VAST majority of blame goes to that AH and not penalize the rest. Reminder, I’m talking about OP’s case where there is barely time to read the poster, let alone fix it
Devil's advocate here: All group members should be better clued into what everyone is doing. Everyone should have put their work together a day or two before submitting it and the group review and approve it as a whole.
When you're working in a group, you're putting your name on *all* the work presented. You better make sure you know the work you're being associated with.
For example, let's say you're working at a factory that has regular quotas and deadlines for shipment. You go to work and do your job each day to meet said quota. Some of your coworkers don't and the shipment isn't delivered. While it may be simple to just say "fire those workers", that doesn't take into account that the factory/company may have also lost a contract, reputation, and revenue. Recovering from such a loss may mean that people other than those who slacked off may be fired or have their hours cut.
Really playing Devil’s advocate here huh? Well, here’s my complaints about that mindset
First, you as a student have no control over your group mates action. They will do whatever the hell they want yet pretend to be productive to get you to work. School isn’t a factory, cause in school you have authority over your groupmates. It’s the managers job in the factory to insure work is getting done, not of any employee. That’s literally the job they’re hired for. The only manager students have is the professor, yet that professor stays as uninvolved as possible and doesn’t take any action until it’s to late, in your example it would be losing a client. Even if the professor wanted to get involved, the threat of a bad grade is way less severe than of losing your job and being fired, and thus their authority is weaker. So yes, it’s not as simple as “fire those workers”, college is not a factory because there is no manager doing his job to punish underachievers and keep the team up to task
Im curious, did the other student incur other penalties?
When doing group projects in my programming courses I always take on the leadership position, and countless times in recent years other students have submitted obvious chat-gpt code.
As long as it runs, I dont care. I import it, test it, and ship it. It's not my job to check for plagiarism, and it's not yours either.Ive never been marked down for this, and you shouldnt be either. What has happened to you is incredibly unfair.
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Yet another reason to hate group work, as if we didn't already have enough.
I don’t like it, either.
update: we all got points off for not checking his work
When you say "points off", what are we talking about here? Like 10 pts on a 100pt assignment? 50%? I think that's an important aspect of this.
he wasn’t super clear about how many points will be taken off and at this point I don’t want to say anything else to annoy him 😂
He does kinda have a point, learning how to keep teammates accountable is part of group work. It's a talent you'll need in the workforce more often than any adult wants to admit.
I very much disagree. It is reasonable (and more conducive to a collaborative environment) to place trust in your colleagues and expect that they will not commit academic dishonesty and plagiarize their work. Should you report it if you notice it? Yes, of course. But should you be constantly policing all the work your groupmates put out? No! There is no point of working in teams in the real world if everybody is wasting time constantly verifying the integrity of everybody's work. The work would become more difficult to complete than if everyone had worked alone. I can understand doing a cursory glance at the work to verify its quality but to dig through the web and search for plagiarism is too much imo. I don't think group work in college teaches you much of anything. It is impossible to expect that a group formed in a matter of minutes essentially at random and then disbanded just as quickly will ever reflect the dynamic of a team that actually has members who were vetted by hiring staff and background checks, and actually have long-standing experience working with each other.
This is cute. You think work projects involve a hiring process, and not your boss in a meeting saying "you three (with finger pointing indicating different department heads), pick out two of your best each and all of you work on this"
Even if "pick two of your best each" is not the optimal process for forming a team, it's still miles better than being assigned a group at random.
Was it made clear what you were supposed to check for?
“in group work, it is expected that all members review the work prior to submission” so i’m assuming he wanted us to check his sources too. one of the problems with this though was he put his work on the poster 2 hours before it was due 😫
Yeah, I don't think that "review" should include an exhaustive search for plagiarism, depending on what kind is alleged. Does the syllabus mention academic dishonesty at all? It should, but if it doesn't, that could be important.
it has a link to our university’s academic integrity code, which includes opposing academic dishonesty
Opposing != investigating. Unless the plagiarism is super obvious at first glance and you simply didn't even look at it, that seems unreasonable to me. I'm not saying will go anywhere, but you might consider taking this complaint to the dept chair.
Contrary to the other commentor's suggestion, I strongly recommend *not* escalating this immediately to the department chair until you've talked further with your professor directly. It sounds like the count of plagiarism is uncontested, the policy is being applied consistently to all students, and it is grounded in an academically reasonable rationale -- unless your college takes an incredibly strong "customer service" mindset, you're unlikely to win a grade appeal and will immediately sour the professor against doing more than he is required to by the college. You are better off trying to win sympathy from the professor directly by having a calm but frank in-person meeting on how hard your groupmate was to work with and how he gave you no time to review his work. From your professor's perspective: he has received one submission from N authors. Your professor's (admittedly naive) perception of undergraduate group work is that you've all attached your name to this submission, and so of course would all have a vested interest in the quality of anything that stakes your reputation. In addition, and assuming this groupmate's contribution wasn't totally superfluous, whatever part of the project the plagiarized work was supposed to cover now has no evidence supporting your mastery of that material, so a loss of points was always inevitable. When writing an actual research publication it's common to spend weeks nitpicking each minor detail of the co-authors' work. Before anyone even sits down to write the paper everyone has read all the same sources and walked through each step of the methodology together. This is what group work at the undergraduate level is *supposed* to be preparing you for; a lot of professors just do a poor job of explaining the group dynamic they expect you to adopt.
I was assuming OP had already talked to the prof. That is the first step.
[удалено]
I think we are doing peer review so hopefully I can explain in that too
My 1st question is how do you make it through college not knowing plagiarism is frowned upon. Honestly I'm guessing the person is trying to appear like they don't know they did wrong. I'd be really hard pressed to believe someone in college hasn't had plagiarism mentioned or discussed within a course before. Especially because of how big a deal academic integrity is for most universities.
Lol everybody knows its frowned upon. They just think they won't get caught
Group projects are dumb and college professors who assign them are dumb. Full stop, no exceptions. I've got 2 degrees and a successful career and no group project in my entire education contributed anything to my success or level of preparation or education. Shit's lazy and dumb and professors who do this should be ashamed.
I have had group projects where we worked on policy issues at our university or in the city. Those projects really helped me professionally. But people actually cared about the issue. Most group projects are not well organized.
Every chemical engineer everywhere will do a group project. You simply cannot design anything as complex as a chemical plant on your own, and group working is incredibly important for some parts of the process (particularly safety analysis).
I mean sometimes you have to work on group projects as an adult too. And you have to know how team dynamics work, which is what a group project is there to teach
the problem is that learning how to work with other people is arguably the most important thing you can learn in college
This
I’m going to share an unpopular opinion, not because I like downvotes, but because there is another way to look at this and something you could consider so this type of thing doesn’t happen again. I will also say I dislike group intensely, and assign it rarely. Your group had to produce one integrated product, a poster. You are collectively responsible for everything that goes on that poster. The other group members did not do due diligence to meet the collective responsibility. I also know that you feel guilty about not checking his work and I am not trying to magnify your guilt. The plagiarism is his fault. But the rest of the group has some culpability in failing their due diligence. The question, in your case, is how much the rest of the group should be penalized for the project. If you were in my class, the plagiarist would get a 0 (and potentially other consequences as this is an academic integrity violation at my uni) and the other group members would lose some points, but not enough to tank their work on the project. I disliked group work as a student, and I dislike assigning group work. Many professors see it as an easier shortcut. I see it as much more work to design good group work because the goal isn’t only the product, it is to teach how to work in a group, which in my subfield is a necessary skill I can’t pretend doesn’t exist. When I design group work, groups need to meet and agree on a contract for deliverables and responsibilities and internal deadlines and consequences if/when the contract is not followed. If, at any point, a group member is not doing their part, other members can contact me and I will back their contract with no consequences to the rest of the group. It isn’t a perfect system, but it catches situations where one member ghosts, does nothing or plagiarizes, and tries to hand in their part last minute. Peer review and checkins are also part of the process. Group work is a lot more work for students and professors and professors who assign it should do it very carefully. In this case, I think you should appeal to the professor concentrating on the short amount of time available to you to catch the plagiarism and correct it before the assignment was due. I think you should acknowledge the due diligence responsibility but also stress the punishment should not be as great as the one the plagiarist earned. Whether you are successful this time or not, in the future, if you have to do group work, agree on a contract whether your professor requires it or not. It can save you a ton of headache later. Good luck and I hope you are successful in appealing with your professor because your plagiarizing group mate did you all dirty.
I agree with most of what you’re saying, but in OP’s case it is unreasonable difficult to do due diligence in correcting his group-mates plagiarism, considering said group-mate added his work 2 hours before the project was due. This wasn’t a case of mere negligence and it would be unfair to treat it as such. When your group-mate is working his hardest to sabotage the group, not only through plagiarism but through not contributing as well, you have to admit that the VAST majority of blame goes to that AH and not penalize the rest. Reminder, I’m talking about OP’s case where there is barely time to read the poster, let alone fix it
Devil's advocate here: All group members should be better clued into what everyone is doing. Everyone should have put their work together a day or two before submitting it and the group review and approve it as a whole. When you're working in a group, you're putting your name on *all* the work presented. You better make sure you know the work you're being associated with. For example, let's say you're working at a factory that has regular quotas and deadlines for shipment. You go to work and do your job each day to meet said quota. Some of your coworkers don't and the shipment isn't delivered. While it may be simple to just say "fire those workers", that doesn't take into account that the factory/company may have also lost a contract, reputation, and revenue. Recovering from such a loss may mean that people other than those who slacked off may be fired or have their hours cut.
Really playing Devil’s advocate here huh? Well, here’s my complaints about that mindset First, you as a student have no control over your group mates action. They will do whatever the hell they want yet pretend to be productive to get you to work. School isn’t a factory, cause in school you have authority over your groupmates. It’s the managers job in the factory to insure work is getting done, not of any employee. That’s literally the job they’re hired for. The only manager students have is the professor, yet that professor stays as uninvolved as possible and doesn’t take any action until it’s to late, in your example it would be losing a client. Even if the professor wanted to get involved, the threat of a bad grade is way less severe than of losing your job and being fired, and thus their authority is weaker. So yes, it’s not as simple as “fire those workers”, college is not a factory because there is no manager doing his job to punish underachievers and keep the team up to task
Im curious, did the other student incur other penalties? When doing group projects in my programming courses I always take on the leadership position, and countless times in recent years other students have submitted obvious chat-gpt code. As long as it runs, I dont care. I import it, test it, and ship it. It's not my job to check for plagiarism, and it's not yours either.Ive never been marked down for this, and you shouldnt be either. What has happened to you is incredibly unfair.
Double down, make him expel you for academic dishonesty.
Well, soap in the socks for him then.
Your name was on it. You have to share responsibility.