Cut and Pasting our High School Diplomas

In college I always had someone’s paper notes from the previous semester.  We would share them.  I often would read essays from friends who had already taken the class.  I would even meet friends for a coffee and find out what the professor’s expectations were before even sitting in his/her class.  Oh the SHAME!  

In today’s virtual world of education where students can collaborate and share at light speed we have demonized much of what we all did in class 20 years ago.  In the pre-Google years our teachers tried to force us to collaborate and now good intentioned educators are closing the doors on these very skills due to our lack of control.  The students are ahead of us and it's time to catch up. They have everything and everyone right at their fingertips … more than we will probably ever know :)  How do we handle this?

In an instant a group of students (and anyone else that wants to help) can form a #hashtag and tweet out all the geographic features that define places in California, or join a Google Hangout and work together on a quadratic function presentation, or create a facebook page sharing everything needed for success in Psych 101 … GREAT!  

The challenge is that as a 21st Century teacher, we need to be ahead of this collaboration.  Our policies and class structures need to not only control digital collaboration but to embrace it.  Here are strategies to help empower our virtual teachers so that students are not simply cutting and pasting their diplomas:

*Teacher explains ahead of time what parts of an assignment students are expected to work on together and which parts must be a student's own individual work (Corsetti).

*Create a mechanism for other students to anonymously self-report the plagiarism of others - like a hotline or a Google form.  Make it very public to all students that this ability is out there.

*Good virtual teachers keep a digital copy of everything ever submitted by previous students to compare to present student work and make it well known that this process is in place (private websites expand this like turnitun.com)

*Teachers change the mechanics used for assessments (ie poetry or personification) allowing for more creativity and limiting the ability to copy and paste.  Consider these two prompt examples: “In your own words explain five differences between photosynthesis and cellular respiration” vs. “Become your favorite plant or animal and please defend five reasons why photosynthesis is better than cellular respiration or vice versa”

*Even though systems usually timestamp when students turn in work the expectation is for the student to contact the teacher telling him/her that it is complete.  This gives them ownership in the process and allows the teacher a better feel for when multiple students are turning things in (Ruiz).

*It is imperative to set expectations in your virtual class, both in your syllabus and on your individual assignments.  If you have a face-to-face meeting at the beginning of your class ensure to discuss this.  Give examples of what virtual plagiarism is, why it is wrong, and when they may get tempted to do it.

*Teachers have students complete writing assignments (instead of multiple choice, fill in blank, etc.), thus encouraging individual pieces to demonstrate their understanding of course material (Reinowski).

*Teacher changes the media used for the assessment (ie ShowMe, ExplainEverything, or video) allowing for more creativity and limiting the ability to plagiarize.

Please feel free to share your ideas with me at this link so I can add them to this list.

https://docs.google.com/a/croslex.org/forms/d/1tlFJTBlBMv9B9Nof5KuRJreo2HllvE5g5VQATOwkCsQ/viewform