I'm Losing Faith

So I had my last session of the Organizational Behavior class today. I'm starting to lose faith in the validity of the degree I'm earning. The only reason I'm learning anything is because I'm making myself apply myself. I'm forcing myself to read the chapters and related articles. I'm forcing myself to support the statements I'm making in my papers. My instructors certainly don't seem to be doing it.

This particular instructor wasn't even in town for the first class, which is held on-campus. So we had a substitute. Then, during the online portion of the class, the instructor who is supposed to facilitate the conversations and engage the students posted things like "I completely agree" or "I had a similar situation." He never really gave us any food to chew, so to speak. So our conversations got beat with a floppy carrot until the horse died.

So, to give him the benefit of the doubt, I waited to fill out the end-of-class survey until after our on-campus end of class meeting. I thought he did a decent job of keeping us engaged, even if his class was a little R-rated... it did make us chuckle now and then. But talking to the other students afterward, they are of the opinion that he didn't read any of our papers, but rather just checked that we did them. They say he also dozed off during our presentations. I didn't notice that, but I admit I wasn't watching him during the presentations.

There is one good thing I do have to say for him, though. One of my teammates didn't show up for class today. Well, actually, two of them didn't, but we knew where the other one was. Anywho, so we were talking about whether or not this teammate would actually show up, and I told him I was of the opinion that she wouldn't because I stepped on her toes yesterday. He said, "Figuratively, you mean?" And I said, "Well, yes." And then I went on to explain:

Our paper for this week was on power and organizational politics. We had to compare and contrast the two ideas and find real life examples. We also had to use our book and two references from the UoP library. So, our missing compatriate posted early in the week an example citing how technology companies funded the presidential campaigns of 2000. It was very dollar-heavy, and it didn't really illustrate the points we were making in the paper. When I asked how it related to the paper because I thought it was more about government funding than it was organizational politics and power, she responded that the government is an organization.

So I conceded, and went in search of the article she listed as a reference. After a few minutes of digging, I found it. And I found that what she submitted was the first two paragraphs of the article, word for word. So I posted that I found the article and read all the way through it. I thought it actually was a very good example, but that it needed to be rewritten for two reasons: 1) copying the article verbatim is plagiarism, and we either needed to paraphrase and cite properly, or blockquote and cite the two paragraphs so it was apparent that they were a direct quote from the article, and 2) we needed to focus more on how the campaign funding was an example of politicking and the acquisition of power. To get the ball rolling, I posted a very hasty paragraph that summed up the article and focused more on our paper's topic and less on the amount of money that was donated.

Two hours later, this same classmate posted her additions to the paper (she was also given the task of writing the intro and conclusion to the paper) with her original copy in it instead of a modified version. So I posted that I still didn't agree with the blatant plagiarism, but if that was what the team wanted to do, then I would support it in order to be a unified team.

Then I proceeded to explain the situtation in emails to my parents to see what they suggested. That conversation led me to understand why I was undecided on my next move: Dad said to let it go, and if the instructor caught it and we all got zero points for the paper, I'd have a leg to stand on next time. Mom, on the other hand, said I should put my foot down and demand that the section be rewritten because plagiarism is not only bad but illegal. You can be fined thousands -- hundreds of thousands -- of dollars for plagiarizing copyrighted material. In an education setting, not only could you fail the paper or fail the class, you can get kicked out of school. I am paying too much money for these bullarky classes to get kicked out because I let some poor sap copy a few dozen words from an article.

So after my little tirade about how I stepped on our teammate's toes, our instructor replied, "Pam! That's not stepping on toes! That's plagiarism! I guess she's failing the class then if she had no interest in helping you rewrite that section." So that made me feel better. He said some instructors would penalize the entire team, but he feels that it's not our place to determine if one of the team members is plagiarizing. That's the instructor's job. Since that conversation happened early in the class, I really felt a huge weight off my shoulders and thought the rest of the class went well. Maybe it was the rose-colored glasses I wore when I walked into the building today. Who knows?

In summary, PLAGIARISM SUCKS!!! Do us all a favor, and don't do it.