#tldr this sort of behaviour is a result of higher ed putting more emphasis on keeping a method of assessment than really checking knowledge

[unabridgedopinions]

Academic integrity is like the most vicious combination of pressure on the students (sometimes resulting in inadvertent questionable behaviour, sometimes resulting in purposeful chancing it), pressure on lecturers (who have to create authentic as possible assessments that are still sustainable as class sizes get more and more out of control) and paid for “plagiarism detectors” that throw up false positives and primarily “ping” for those writing in a second (or third! Or fourth!) language and people who don’t know the system.

All for an assessment that only sort of checks what someone knows! (It mostly checks how well you can communicate what you think you should know AND how many of the expectations of higher education you are aware of.)

And there are “ungrading” systems just sitting there. Offering a potential different way!

With the hbomberguy plagiarism video on fire right now I want to share my favorite example of egregious plagiarism.

I’m a marine biologist. Currently getting my PhD. I’ve done a lot of scholarly writing. Many classes I took as an undergraduate had big writing components. I took limnology at one point as an elective. This course had one such big writing assignment.

The professor told us a story. He said he once got a student paper that absolutely blew him away. It was way beyond what he’d expected from the class. This was before we had online tools to check for plagiarism. The paper impressed him so much that he brought it home to show it to his wife. She began reading it and then set it down, looked at him, and said, “Dan, you wrote this.”

This student was dumb enough to not only copy a published paper verbatim, but to copy a paper published by the professor of the class.

AND HE NEARLY GOT AWAY WITH IT.