#10 (Downloading Scenario) Ashley, a Chemistry major, finds out that her final Expository Writing I paper is due on the following day. Since there is no time left to do research and plan her topic—and since she still has to study for her organic chemistry exam—she can think of only one solution to her problem: Ashley jumps on the Internet, finds the www.collegepapers.com site, and, after paying $42.50, downloads what is advertised as the “perfect paper.”
The scenarios consist of the four variables that appear most often in my discussions about plagiarism with teachers and students: the writer’s level of intentionality, the degree of appropriation, the borrowing of ideas and/or expression, and the status of the source. I hypothesize that though teachers and students make judgments based upon these variables, disagreements may arise in regards to which variables should be emphasized as well as how they should be interpreted. I describe these variables briefly below.
Intentionality and Appropriation
These two variables are grouped together because the intention of plagiarizers, their conscious desires to deceive their teachers, may directly relate to appropriation, the amount of the source text they use. The Downloading Scenario (#10), for example, indicates an obvious case of academic fraud: The student purchases an online essay and willfully submits it as her own writing; she has, therefore, acted with clear intentions and appropriated the source text completely. Not surprisingly, teachers react strongly to acts in which students are consciously attempting to deceive them, and I thus surmised that teachers would mark these types of scenarios severely.
Ideas and Expressions
These variables are implicit in American copyright law, which separates the ideas of texts from their specific forms of expression. This separation protects the interests of authors by making their particular expressions a property they own; on the other hand, by allowing the public limited access to the ideas of authors, copyright laws insure that society in general can benefit from exploring, extending, and distributing these ideas (Spigelman 246). In her research, Candace Spigelman explores how students working collaboratively in writing groups negotiate these complicated concepts of textual ownership. When students are confronted with the possibility that their ideas and expressions can be separated, Spigelman finds that they apply different ways of thinking about how textual ownership is decided, about when they can claim a text is their own, and about whether ownership can be based upon the origins of expression or that of ideas (247–48). Similar to one of Spigelman’s study participants (248–49), the writer in the Mother Scenario (#7) responds to these questions by indicating that ideas, not surface expression, are what make a text authentically hers.
Status of the Source
This variable refers to the type of source text that the writer has used. Writers may, as in the Friend’s Paper Scenario (#1), appropriate texts from their friends or, as in the Shakespeare Scenario (#6), borrow ideas from a published text on Shakespearean criticism. This consideration of the status of the source—in other words, the difference in power and status between writers and the types of texts they use—may influence how students and teachers determine the severity of the plagiaristic act. Teachers, in particular, will have to examine the differences, if any do exist, of students who borrow from credible, published texts from those who borrow from the texts of their peers.
Many of the scenarios reveal the assumptions and complex judgments that go into making determinations about plagiarism. Because most of the scenarios do represent the problematic gray area of identifying plagiarism, the variables quickly become messy and overlap with each other. For instance, Cody, the student in the Shakespeare Scenario (#6), can be regarded as acting with a high degree of intentionality (though the scenario does not provide us with a clear description of his desires), as appropriating ideas, and as borrowing from a high status source text. Furthermore, the scenarios rarely provide all of the necessary information in order for teachers and students to make definitive decisions about the writers’ intentions and about what rules of plagiarism and academic misconduct were already established in these hypothetical classrooms.
Study Results and Discussion
Overall, the questionnaire results indicate that teachers are more likely to judge the scenarios as acts of plagiarism. A larger percentage of teachers than students rate seven scenarios as plagiarism, although only four of these are statistically significant. Table 1 below lists these results. For each scenario, a higher percentage suggests more agreement that it represents plagiarism.
Table 1: Percentages of Plagiarism Ratings
| Scenario | Teachers (%) | Students (%) |
| 1* | 100 | 94 |
| 2 | 93 | 85 |
| 3 | 64 | 73 |
| 4* | 52 | 26 |
| 5* | 91 | 70 |
| 6 | 88 | 93 |
| 7* | 86 | 65 |
| 8 | 75 | 81 |
| 9 | 55 | 48 |
| 10 | 100 | 99 |
*Differences are statistically significant (p=.005).
Teachers are also more likely to rate cases of plagiarism more severely, though the differences between the teachers and students are less pronounced. Only two of these scenarios, the Friend’s Paper (#1) and Mother (#7) scenarios, are statistically significant, which can be accounted for by the fact that a larger percentage of students do not regard these cases as plagiarism. Table 2 lists the questionnaire averages for teachers and students. An average closer to 1 indicates that the scenario is either not classified as plagiarism or is marked as a less serious case; an average closer to 5 indicates that the scenario is regarded as a more serious offense.
Table 2: Comparison of Levels of Severity
| Scenario | Teachers | Students | Scenario | Teachers | Students |
| 1*2345 | 3.73.11.81.72.3 | 3.32.82.01.52.3 | 67*8910 | 3.02.72.31.85.0 | 3.22.22.61.84.9 |
*Differences are statistically significant (p=.005).
Below, I discuss the questionnaire results according to three categories, the scenarios that show the most agreement between teachers and students, the scenarios that show the most disparity, and the scenarios that show the most variance among teachers.
Scenarios Showing Most Agreement
Although teachers show a tendency to rate the scenarios as more serious and more likely to represent plagiarism, the results do suggest that teachers and students base their judgments upon a similar set of values. The results indicated in Table 2 confirm a strong consensus between teachers and students. It is also interesting to note that a larger percentage of students rate three scenarios as acts of plagiarism and score them more severely, yet the differences are slight and are not statistically significant. It is encouraging, though not surprising, for example, that the response to the Downloading Scenario (#10) is nearly unanimous. This case represents the most clear-cut example of a writer who intends to deceive her teacher and who completely appropriates the outside source. Furthermore, for a scenario such as the Friend’s Paper Scenario (#1), even though it shows statistical significance for both comparisons, the difference is weak. A vast majority of students (94%) agrees with the 100% of instructors who rate this scenario as plagiarism, and students, similar to teachers, rate this scenario as the second most serious act of plagiarism. A small group of students, however, interpret this writer’s attempts to rewrite her friend’s essay exam and “make it sound more like herself” as a suitable strategy for appropriation.
Scenarios Showing Most Disparity
The four statistically significant scenarios, the Friend’s Paper (#1), the Faulty Paraphrase (#4), the Sight Gag (#5), and the Mother (#7) scenarios, are interesting because they represent the most disparity between how teachers and students respond. These differences suggest how subtle interpretations