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Okay...this is actually a weird situation right now.
A few weeks ago, my friend and I were working on a biology homework assignment worth 60 points. We were working together
Okay...this is actually a weird situation right now.
A few weeks ago, my friend and I were working on a biology homework assignment worth 60 points. We were working together on it at the library. Today our teacher told us that we plagiarized because I think around four questions were really similar (Not word for word, but very similar).
We told him that we worked on it together but he still said it's plagiarism. I mean what the fuck is wrong with that, working together? It's not like one of us gave the other all of the homework or I copied all of the assignment word for word. It was just the last three to four questions and now I'm getting:
-0/60 for the assignment, and probably a 30/60 if I re-do it
-This incident may be placed on our discipline record, which can be sent out to college. I doubt it, because that's only if the college asks for the discipline record.
I admit I have my faults, but as I said, my friend or I did NOT copy the whole thing word for word. Just some questions, which weren't even a lot. It's not even that those were word for word. It's that they were really really similar, and we were accused of plagiarism.
Please, doesn't that fucking happen when two people work together? What the fuck.
 
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its biology, isnt there only one answer to each question anyway?
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On April 30 2008 05:36 DukE wrote:
its biology, isnt there only one answer to each question anyway?
Well yeah. We can answer it in different ways, but we answered them very similarly (almost word for word). And we fucking worked on it together.
Makes perfect sense to me but not to my teacher.
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Canada7170 Posts
Plagiarism does not equal word for word.
It is stealing someone's ideas or thoughts without acknowledgment.
There is a myth that replacing 2/3 words makes it not plagiarism, but unfortunately, that is not true.
I would take the redo if those options are the only course of action. But your teacher's a bit of a douche. In high school (where I assume you're at. If this happens in Uni, it's expelled auto), my teacher would gently remind anyone who plagiarized on its effects and simply told them to acknowledge who they worked with.
But strictly by the book, you should be getting 0/60 (I'm not saying that that is fair).
My question is, how do you not know what plagiarism is? If a teacher is going to be that strict, they generally let everyone in the class know what their policy is about working together.
Good luck.
EDIT: Your first paragraph is plagiarized copied. :D
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Sucks, it really does. But plagarism is so subjective that it's really your teacher's judgement and the only real way you can try to get around it is to try and get it looked at by other teachers/department head. 
The world is paranoid about getting their fair share and everything is looked at really really closely for plagarism. Only way to get around it is to just not work with other people for individual assignments.
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Calgary26004 Posts
Weird. In my university they encouraged us to work together, and even encouraged turning in one assignment with two names on it.
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I thought plagarism was when someone stole the ideas of someone else and presented them as his own. This seems more like you both cooperated when you weren't allowed to.
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Canada7170 Posts
On April 30 2008 05:40 stenole wrote:
I thought plagarism was when someone stole the ideas of someone else and presented them as his own. This seems more like you both cooperated when you weren't allowed to.
Hm. You're right actually. My above post isn't as accurate I guess.
All in all, your teacher's still a douche.
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On April 30 2008 05:40 stenole wrote:
I thought plagarism was when someone stole the ideas of someone else and presented them as his own. This seems more like you both cooperated when you weren't allowed to.
This is what I'm saying..it's not like we copy/paste something or anything.
We worked on it together, wrote same answers...what the hell?
On April 30 2008 05:43 mikeymoo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2008 05:40 stenole wrote:
I thought plagarism was when someone stole the ideas of someone else and presented them as his own. This seems more like you both cooperated when you weren't allowed to. Hm. You're right actually. My above post isn't as accurate I guess. All in all, your teacher's still a douche.
I know. We both talked to him.
Should I say anything tomorrow after school? Because this is getting on my nerves.
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I know what u mean dude. That rule really does suck
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it depends on the course
for example with programming you can discuss general abstract concepts, but you can never code together. If you did, that would be auto fail, and possibly fail the course....maybe even expulsion if it was big enough.
if the teacher expected you to work as individuals and not as groups, then yes, technically you were plagiarizing from each other. If you were allowed to work as groups then there should be no problem
It depends on the teacher's view of group work.
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It's not really plagiarism. Plagiarism is when you take someone else's ideas and pass them off as your own. In your case, you're just working with someone else on some bio homework. If anything, it's probably cheating because you're just copying each other's answers, but definately not plagiarizing, and not something to get a 0/60 for.
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On April 30 2008 05:44 fusionsdf wrote:
it depends on the course
for example with programming you can discuss general abstract concepts, but you can never code together. If you did, that would be auto fail, and possibly fail the course....maybe even expulsion if it was big enough.
if the teacher expected you to work as individuals and not as groups, then yes, technically you were plagiarizing from each other. If you were allowed to work as groups then there should be no problem
It depends on the teacher's view of group work.
The course is AP biology.
Our teacher never mentioned prohibiting group work...
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well it supposed to be "your work" not "your work and also bill´s"
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On April 30 2008 05:47 perisie xx wrote:
well it supposed to be "your work" not "your work and also bill´s"
That would be the case if we both did the whole thing together. As I said, we only did the last four questions or so =/
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My friend and I were also accused of plagiarism for working together on assignments, the professor was not amused.
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On April 30 2008 05:48 clazziquai wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2008 05:47 perisie xx wrote:
well it supposed to be "your work" not "your work and also bill´s" That would be the case if we both did the whole thing together. As I said, we only did the last four questions or so =/
That's like saying that you only cheated off of someone else during a test for half of the answers.
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On April 30 2008 05:47 perisie xx wrote:
well it supposed to be "your work" not "your work and also bill´s"
On April 30 2008 05:50 goldrush wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2008 05:48 clazziquai wrote:On April 30 2008 05:47 perisie xx wrote:
well it supposed to be "your work" not "your work and also bill´s" That would be the case if we both did the whole thing together. As I said, we only did the last four questions or so =/ That's like saying that you only cheated off of someone else during a test for half of the answers.
This is bulls***. Have you ever gone to school and taken an advanced class in anything? In engineering, almost all the work is group work, even in higher math classes. Working together is not even close to plagiarism, and if the teacher doesn't see this he's an idiot.
It's biology. If it were a poetry class, I would say that having a 10 line poem in iambic pentameter with only a few words changed in the middle of each line should be autofail. But it's biology, it's a science, and it's a difficult (AP) class, so group work should be encouraged and expected, if not required.
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What should I say to my teacher tomorrow with my friend?
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That's not plagerism.
Did the teacher said you cant work together prior to that??
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EPT
