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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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Calgary25981 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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3861 Posts
Just an FYI, you can also be called out on plagiarising yourself. Careful with it.
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On April 30 2008 05:56 Ancestral 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" Show nested quote +On April 30 2008 05:50 goldrush wrote: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.
Working together is NOT the same as presenting material that contains the exact same content with slightly different wording. You talk together, you discuss the answers and then you go off your separate ways to write the answer. Usually one person will add in some little detail, phrase it in a different manner or change around something.
And yes, I've done labs where the teacher specifically said that while working together with your lab partner was encouraged, the reports should not be presented in the same way and if there were doubts on how it would be taken, to err on the side of discretion and just work alone. It's always up to the marker if he thinks that it's plagarism.
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So of all the classmates, you're teacher noticed you and you're buddie had similar answers? how similar were they? lol
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Well, if you blatantly said you worked together, and she was ok with it, I don't see how it can be called plagiarism.
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Canada7170 Posts
On April 30 2008 06:02 lilsusie wrote:
Just an FYI, you can also be called out on plagiarising yourself. Careful with it.
Avoiding self-plagiarism is fucking annoying.
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working togheter to find answers to questions is not plagiarism. you should refer your teacher to a dictionary, wikipedia or something.
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On April 30 2008 06:14 goldrush wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2008 05:56 Ancestral wrote: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: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. Working together is NOT the same as presenting material that contains the exact same content with slightly different wording. You talk together, you discuss the answers and then you go off your separate ways to write the answer. Usually one person will add in some little detail, phrase it in a different manner or change around something. And yes, I've done labs where the teacher specifically said that while working together with your lab partner was encouraged, the reports should not be presented in the same way and if there were doubts on how it would be taken, to err on the side of discretion and just work alone. It's always up to the marker if he thinks that it's plagarism.
Agreed. I had plenty of classes that encouraged collaboration, but required independent submissions of lab reports, code, projects, etc. I think its fine if the ideas are the same, but if its obvious that two people submitted the same lab report with minor tweaks - death. Ultimately it ends up being at the discretion of the teacher, which should be made abundantly clear prior to work submission.
In the case of the OP, I think your teacher is being a hard ass. Its just AP Bio. I'd just apologize and tell your teacher that you were unclear on the class collaboration policy and that it won't happen again.
On a side note, do they even list that stuff in high school syllabuses? Do high schools even have syllabuses? I honestly can't remember. Collaboration agreements have been on probably 90% of my college syllabuses.
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if it were me in this situation...
first i would bring a dictionary to your teacher and shoe him (im presuming it's a he) the exact definition of plagiarism... which is stealing someone else's ideas and stating them as your own without giving credibility... then refer to your syllabus and show him that there is no section stating that group work is prohibited (which im assuming there isnt)
now with your platform set, here comes the arguing. my main claim would be, if i were to work in together with a friend for this assignment, and we both come to the same conclusion, there aren't many ways to write the conclusion differently. what you did was not plagiarism but a simple matter of co-operative work, and through your cooperation, you both came to the same conclusion, which you both expressed on your papers. you will have to argue your point that you did not plagiarize and that the term "plagiarism" is so subjective that his opinion may not even correspond to that of another teacher.
if that doesn't work... bring it to the department head, in this case would be whoever is the head of the biology department or sciences.
good luck
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United States42934 Posts
Go above his head. He's unlikely to turn round and go "yeah, my bad. you're right, I'm wrong, sorry". So just go to whoever outranks him and plead your case. Firstly they are far more likely to be sympathetic and secondly if you make it an issue with them he'll most likely decide it's not worth it.
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United States42934 Posts
On April 30 2008 06:40 mikeymoo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2008 06:02 lilsusie wrote:
Just an FYI, you can also be called out on plagiarising yourself. Careful with it. Avoiding self-plagiarism is fucking annoying.
I had to redo an assessed essay because it was too similar to one I submitted the term before. I didn't tell the lecturer to redo the questions because they plagiarised the questions he gave last term. Shit should work both ways.
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You seem to have deluded yourself into thinking that plagiarism means that two things are identical. That is not at all true. Plagiarism amounts to having stolen someone else's work. By reading your paper, the teacher determined that it was too similar to your friends, thus the most likely case is that one of you copied from the other. Unless you have a way of proving otherwise (which unless you video recorded yourselves working together is impossible to do), you are hosed.
The best you can do is cut your losses. If you whine about how "but we worked together," the teacher will just treat you like a punkass kid.
When you work with your friend in the future, be sure that you explain things entirely in your own words. Even if the idea is fundamentally the same, your answers should look nothing alike.
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It's tough because for my bio major some classes encourage duplicate group work, some encourage group thinking and studying but different answers, and some ask that all work is done separately.
If it's more of a research assignment and isn't an individual research paper, we usually get into groups of 5 or six to turn in a 30 pg paper or so. It's impossible to not just simply take the other kid's work when you have to build on what they've written about. That's to say that these things chill out some later, especially for harder work (like a lot of people have already said).
It's super important to figure out what is a good time to work together and what is a good time to not though. These teachers are probably being anal because they know that if it's a situation where you should have not worked together in college the consequences are a lot worse.
That's got to be frustrating for now in highschool where the teachers are a lot more finiky and unclear. gl^^
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On April 30 2008 05:40 Chill wrote:
Weird. In my university they encouraged us to work together, and even encouraged turning in one assignment with two names on it.
Canadian education system > American education system
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Physician
United States4146 Posts
Deny you hacked and offer a first person VOD as proof.
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On April 30 2008 07:47 iLjh wrote:
if it were me in this situation...
first i would bring a dictionary to your teacher and shoe him (im presuming it's a he) the exact definition of plagiarism... which is stealing someone else's ideas and stating them as your own without giving credibility... then refer to your syllabus and show him that there is no section stating that group work is prohibited (which im assuming there isnt)
now with your platform set, here comes the arguing. my main claim would be, if i were to work in together with a friend for this assignment, and we both come to the same conclusion, there aren't many ways to write the conclusion differently. what you did was not plagiarism but a simple matter of co-operative work, and through your cooperation, you both came to the same conclusion, which you both expressed on your papers. you will have to argue your point that you did not plagiarize and that the term "plagiarism" is so subjective that his opinion may not even correspond to that of another teacher.
if that doesn't work... bring it to the department head, in this case would be whoever is the head of the biology department or sciences.
good luck
this is good advice, i would just add to be nice about how you present your side, if you put the teacher in a defensive position they won't change their mind no matter what.
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Whatever..
It's 99% sure that colleges won't be contacted. This is my greatest concern.
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Plagiarism is the practice of claiming or implying original authorship of (or incorporating material from) someone else's written or creative work.
Did this happen? I'm fairly sure it didn't. I think the teacher is looking for another word.
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On May 01 2008 08:13 EmeraldSparks wrote:Show nested quote +Plagiarism is the practice of claiming or implying original authorship of (or incorporating material from) someone else's written or creative work. Did this happen? I'm fairly sure it didn't. I think the teacher is looking for another word.
What a dumbass he is. Yes, I didn't do this.
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Well you can go maybe to the head of the department of bio perhaps, or the principal or whatever. I got in trouble for working together at my university after explaining to the prof and providing rough notes that were my own he said that it was good that we were working together. Tell him you really think this is unfair, how he should encourage group work and communication, and that your answers are what you both came up with.
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Take it to the principal, write petition or what ever.
If you are sure you've done no wrong, assert it untill it's been accounted for!
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EPT
