Plagiarism

Interesting article today on plagiarism in the Chronicle for Higher Education.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/plagiarism-an-administrator%e2%80%99s-perspective/31775?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en    While plagiarism has been inherent in many students' collegiate lives, there are many ways of discouraging it in your class. One of the main guidelines is to create more authentic assignments, quizzes, and tests that cannot be easily copied or compromised. By using deeper order thinking skills such as synthesis, students must know the materials (as opposed to filling in multiple-choice questions) in order to succeed in the course.

I really liked one of the suggestions- "Do not assume that students have learned to cite sources as you wish in previous writing courses or in high school."  It has been my experience that most students really have no idea what is or what is not plagiarism.  Give them some assistance by explaining it in class with examples, do some role-playing games and give them a handout for future use.  Though you will probably see students reverting to plagiarism under stressful times (i.e. the paper is due in 2 hours), most will albeid by the rules if they are educated to do so.

Brain Research- How We Learn

Interesting article on Brain research found in the Tomorrow’s Professor eMail Newsletter. http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php   It recalls research by Zull (2004) that true learning comes from practicing (repeatedly firing the brain neurons), emotion (i.e. feeling good about learning) and engaging the whole brain (getting, making, creating, synthesizing and acting on information). 

It has just been in the past few decades, brain research in Western society has exploded.   In fact, according to the article, the 1990s were “officially” declared the “Decade of the Brain” by the U.S. Congress.  Other cultures such as Ayurveda science/medicine has been studying the brain for centuries. 

Zull, J. (2004). The art of changing the brain. Educational Leadership