What is your prior experience with citing your sources? Have you had to
use APA or MLA formats? Is this easy for you, or do you struggle? What
sources do you use to cite your sources and/or create bibliographies?
My experience with using citations was pretty
limited before going for the Bachelors of Applied science. Now I have at least
one class each quarter that requires APA citations with most assignments. It is
a bit of a struggle for me and I always use an online citation machine to do
it. I could never remember on my own how to structure an APA citation and I
sometimes have trouble finding some of the information I need. Though even the
citation machines are not perfect and there is information that they often fail
to find, such as author or publisher.
I can understand why it is important to include
citations and use a standardized format for presenting the references. It gives
credit to those who worked hard to provide the information that I use for my
research. However, I find that I don't really need to remember how to do it,
because of the availability of online applications that will do it for me. The
way I see it, is that I have more important things to worry about, such as
writing the paper itself. Just as long as I keep track of my sources and make
it easy for myself to recall the information I have, I can easily go back and
gather everything I need for citing them.
Is plagiarism a problem on college campuses? Are you confident you know how to avoid plagiarism?
I thought I would touch on this because it is related and I want to make word count. I don't like word count limits very much. I think plagurism is a problem at schools. There are several motivating factors, such as trying to find filler to meet a word count. I understand I am being candid, however, my opinion is that many people plagiarize out of laziness. I am sure some do it to cheat and they don't know the information they are copying. But, finding that information and knowing that it is what they seek require some degree of understanding. What I mean is that they at least have to know something about their topic to know what they are looking for.The people who do that are just trying to make themselves look smarter than they really need to be. Still, I think most people copy and paste because they don't want to write so much.
Citing is one of those necessary evils that is paramount to scholarly success. That being said, citing, especially in line citations, is a painful process. Specifically I find that unless I am using something as a direct quote to define something, I strive to take a source and synthesize it versus summarize it. I prefer original writing when it comes to writing versus just taking someone else's work and writing it again.
ReplyDeletePlagiarism probably happens more than we know and not only in school I'm sure. I agree about the filler and the laziness factor, another factor to consider is "in a crunch". If the student is pressed for time, has too much of a load, or their balance between work, school, and life could be out of sync. It is definitely not right to plagiarize in any means and time management would be a key driver in curbing it more effectively.
ReplyDeleteIn many cases, I believe that students succumb to plagiarism especially when they want to make a positive impression to their professors, yet fail to understand that it is in fact dishonest. Even with word count being a factor, there are many ways to create your own honest work without copying another authors material. All in all, it really comes down to understanding the material given and being able to regurgitate it in your own words and creating original ideas.
ReplyDelete