Why do we make our students write essays?

Recently a friend sent me a link to a website called UnemployedProfessors.com. I have written about services like this in an earlier blog post. This site is a regular paper mill, with a twist.

They mock the entire educational system. Here’s a screen shot from their “About Us” page:

In case you can’t read that, the juicy bits say that education is…

“a scam, a charade. Professors can only stay in business if they force students to write essays, within their disciplines, that will do nothing to contribute to their own education or edification… the system spit the professor out the same way it will spit out any student who cannot write his or her own paper on the symbolic significance of baboon mating within the confines of Gramsci’s theory of the sub-altern, or any other mundane matter you might be asked to write about. That’s the endgame – that’s why we’re here.”

That got me thinking, why do we have students write essays? Is it really because that’s how the system “spit us out” and now we are doing the same to our students? Well, for some instructors, there may be an element of truth there. Some academics and teachers think that things should be done the way they have always been done because that it the tradition.

But really, that’s not good enough.

To me, we don’t ask students to write papers because that’s part of the “scam” of the system, or because our students have to go through what we went through in order to be initiated into the hallowed halls of the university.

We ask students to write papers so they can learn how to write. The topic and content areas are secondary. Knowing how to write cogently and construct a written report that has elements like an introduction, a body and a conclusion is a useful skill to know. It is also useful to know how to construct sentences, form an argument and persuade a reader.

Why? Because when you leave school and get a real job, you may have to write something. A report. A letter. A policy. Whatever. You may need to convince someone that you actually know what you are talking about. You may need to show someone (your boss, for example?) you can string together ideas with some semblance of logic and coherency.

I did a post a while back on the International Adult Literacy Skills Survey that showed that 2% of Canadian-born university graduates scored at the lowest levels of prose literacy. In other words, 2% of folks who are born in this country and who make it through University can barely identify or decode words and numbers. Most seven-year olds can do that. (Check out this post on what the literacy levels of IALSS are.)

If we are focussing on having students write on a particular subject, we are missing the mark. (Pardon the pun). Not only is it more about learning to write well than it is about expounding on any given subject, it is also about learning to take pride in your own work and creation. It is about going through the entire process of creating a piece of research writing from beginning to end.

It’s also not about a grade. If the focus is just on getting a good grade and not on learning, heck, why wouldn’t students use these services?

What would happen if we said to our students, “OK, folks, your grade is based on learning, not just on production, or on completing an inane assignment. Show me what you’ve learned, how you’ve learned and it and why you think it has any relevance at all to the real world.”

How would that change what we do as teachers?

How would it change our students’ view of their assignments?

We don’t make our students write papers so they can learn about “the symbolic significance of baboon mating within the confines of Gramsci’s theory of the sub-altern”. We have students write papers so they can learn the art and craft of writing and more importantly, to “learn about learning” and to learn about themselves as students and human beings. Hopefully they grow and expand their own minds in the process.

If students’ minds aren’t expanding, we are not doing our job.

Related posts:

• Outsourcing is the new plagiarism: What teachers need to know
• Effective Learning Video – by students, for students
• Success Strategy for Students: How to Make Sense of Scholarly Research Articles
• Success Strategy for Students: How to Cite Class Notes
• 5 clues your students are plagiarizing
• Are your students plagiarizing? Here’s how you find out

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If you are interested in booking me (Sarah Eaton) for a presentation, keynote or workshop (either live or via webinar) contact me at sarahelaineeaton (at) gmail.com. Please visit my speaking page, too.

Outsourcing is the new plagiarism: What teachers need to know

In a recent post, I gave some resources for teachers to find out if their students are plagiarizing. I’ll be blunt though. Plagiarizing is soooo 20th century! (Yawn.)

Some students make a game of staying one step ahead of “the system”. In the 21st century, the really clever cheaters aren’t plagiarizing, they’re outsourcing their assignments. It’s kind of like getting your Mom, Dad or best friend to do your homework for you, only more sophisticated. Any student with a credit card  can do it.

And if you think you’re safe because your students are too young to have credit cards of your own, think again. The pre-paid credit card Aunt Mabel gave to little Johnny last Christmas will work just fine, thanks very much.

So, how do they do it?

There are Internet services out there who sole purpose is to match those who provide freelance or outsourced services with those who need them. (I won’t list them here, as that might be considered unethical for someone who is employed as a part-time university faculty member.) Legitimate small business owners will use such services to find virtual assistants, transcribers, typists, graphic designers, web designer and other providers of easily outsourced work. Such sites post all kinds of disclaimers about what type of work is or isn’t allowed to be offered or solicited. That doesn’t stop people from plainly saying what services they want or will provide.

For someone who lives in a developed country, outsourcing your work to India, the Philippines or other countries where workers get paid much less has become the norm in some businesses. Leaving the ethics and politics of globalization aside, the key message here is that it’s not just companies who are outsourcing work any more. Students are, too.

I recently saw an ad that looked something like this:

“Assignment: Write a 10-page history paper for a 300-level university course on the military strategies employed during the American Civil War. The paper must be ten double-spaced pages, written in Times New Roman, 12-point font with one-inch margins. At least 15 references are needed and citations are required in APA format. Must be written in perfect English, spell-checked and grammar-checked. Due: three weeks from the posting date of this ad.”

Suppliers bid on the project. At the time I saw the ad, bids had come in from a variety of countries and hovered around $30 USD. India seemed to be a popular country for outsourced academic papers, it seems. But suppliers from a variety of other countries were evident, too. Some bidders stated that they had PhDs themselves and would guarantee a well-written paper. It is safe to say that those who bid on such projects are  likely highly educated, fluent in academic English and think that $30 USD is worth the effort.

This is all done, of course, using anonymous e-mail addresses that can’t be traced back to the student. The work is all done on line. It’s not plagiarized. Rather, it is custom-written by an outsourced ghost writer thousands of miles away.

The paper is e-mailed to the student by the supplier, making all the plagiarism detectors that I mentioned in the previous post completely irrelevant. Those papers can never be found on the Internet. They haven’t been purchased by a service who has a bank of papers on numerous topics, ready to be shipped out to buyers. Instead, outsourced papers are specifically written according to the exact criteria given by the student (who re-iterates what his or her instructor has told him).

Let’s do the math:

A student works at a local pizza take-out and makes $15 per hour. If we take taxes and other payroll deductions into account, that students would have to work for about three hours – or maximum, four hours – to earn about $30 to pay the outsourced paper writer.

How long would it take him to write his own paper? At least 10 hours, but more likely 12 or 15, if he writes an excellent paper that merits an A grade.

Simple economics shows that the student benefits financially from outsourcing his paper. The supplier to whom the paper is outsourced benefits, as he is making a decent wage in comparison to whatever he or she might earn in a comparable time period in their local currency. Who loses? Well, the student loses out on the opportunity to learn research techniques and skills involved in writing a paper, of course. But mostly, it’s the current academic system and those who work in it who lose. The ideals that they hold regarding ethics, integrity and academic honour are thrown out the window.

Once the student has established a relationship with his outsourced ghost writer, he can contract the same academic-on-demand to write all his papers for the same course, thus ensuring that there is consistency in the tone, writing style and research skills of all his assignments.

My guess is that academic papers will become a thing of the past. Only those who sincerely enjoy research and the process of learning will be encouraged — or perhaps even allowed — to undertake academic research. Rather than demanding that students produce papers for marks, we may reserve the right to teach advanced research skills to those who are willing to commit to and engage in the entire process.

The question isn’t “How do we stop our students from plagiarizing or outsourcing?” but rather, “How do we teach students the value, joy and benefit of learning for themselves?”

Related posts:

• Are your students plagiarizing? Here’s how you find out
• Effective Learning Video – by students, for students
• Success Strategy for Students: How to Make Sense of Scholarly Research Articles
• Success Strategy for Students: How to Cite Class Notes
• 5 clues your students are plagiarizing
• Universities unite against the academic black market

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

Are your students plagiarizing? Here’s how you find out

Plagiarism is a hot topic among educators today. The Internet has revolutionized how students research, find and relate to information. Plagiarism used to consist of copying word for word from books. Nowadays a few simple key strokes will cut and paste information from any website into a student’s papers.

There are a number of ways teachers can figure out if their students are plagiarizing. There are a number of websites and programs that will help you do just that. You type in a portion of your student’s paper and run it through a plagiarism checker to see if those words appear elsewhere on the Internet. If they do, your student may have plagiarized. Check out these free online resources:

• Plagiarism.com
• University of Maryland’s Plagiarsim Checker
• Articlechecker.com
• Advanced Plagiarism Checker
• Duplichecker
• PlagiarismCheck.org

Related posts:

• Outsourcing is the new plagiarism: What teachers need to know
• Effective Learning Video – by students, for students
• Success Strategy for Students: How to Make Sense of Scholarly Research Articles
• Success Strategy for Students: How to Cite Class Notes
• 5 clues your students are plagiarizing

_______________

Share this post: Are your students plagiarizing? Here’s how you find out http://wp.me/pNAh3-l3

Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.