Australia: Where Up is Down

. . . and cut-and-paste writing is not plagiarism!

Turkiye seviyorum!

I love Turkey! And in 72 hours, I'll be on my way there with my husband, children (both Millennials), and a delegation of American law professors who will teach Turkish lawyers and judges a little about common law analysis. Turkish is a civil law country that has applied to accede to the European Union. This means that their lawyers would need some experience with common law analysis to be able to practice within the European Union courts, which employ common law.

I'll be there for two weeks. This means one of two things: (1) The blog is on hiatus for two weeks; or (2) The blog's topic will be turning to all things Turkish for two weeks. You never know which one it will be, because tomorrow I turn 40. I've waited a long time to be 40, because I've noticed that 40 seems to be the age where you start doing just about whatever you damn well please. It's a small price to pay for crow's feet and the occasional show-stopping twinge in my back.

Three Knols

Knol #1:

What is a knol? According to Google, it's the label for a unit of information. I'm guessing that Google invented the term and that it was done expressly for the purpose of rolling out their new Wikipedia alternative, Knol. Knol is meant to answer the critics of Wikipedia that it is not authoritatively authored, and any yokel can change an entry. Just for grins, I searched through the current information on "legal writing" and it does, in fact, seem that any yokel can contribute and just make stuff up as they go along. On the other hand, when conflict breaks out in an area I'm unfamiliar with, or I want to a map showing the latest hurricane, earthquake, etc., I head to Wikipedia first. So it's not all bad. You wouldn't want to cite it, but that doesn't mean much. You also don't cite Encyclopedia Brittanica; that doesn't mean it's useless.

Anyway, Knol apparently taps experts to write pieces on particular subjects (most of the current ones up have to do with medicine, and they are written by people who purport to have M.D.'s, Ph.D.'s and the like). It's also a little slicker looking, which is interesting because most Google stuff (which I love; don't get me wrong) is less slick than whatever it's competing with (case in point: Google Docs v. Buzzword).

Anyway, take a look at see what you think: http://knol.google.com/k#

Knol #2:

Apparently, you can buy a palm scanner that identifies someone by the unique bloodflow pattern in his or her palm for . . . are you ready . . . $1,000. It seems like every school with large sections of students taking the exam and with previous problems of cheating by impostor has to invest in one of these things. For $1,000, I'm trying to figure how I can use it to detect cheating. What I really need is something that linguistically detects whether the style of the submission (prepared out-of-class) is consistent with the style of submissions in class. I don't think it would come as a surprise to students that it's awfully difficult to determine whether someone has written something for them. Sometimes you get lucky and the quality of the submission is far and above anything that any first year law student would be capable of, regardless of how quick a study they might be. More often, though, the person chosen to ghost write the piece has little more skill than the student who turns it in (which makes sense -- how many truly competent lawyers have the time or inclination to ghost write documents for first year law students?). Ironically, the student would almost always be better off submitting his or her own work since they were actually in class to hear the professor's preferences. But I digress . . .

Knol #3:

Get to know some of the staff folks in your law school. I just started as the half-time dean for academic advising and discipiline issues (the other "half" of my job is a first-year legal writing class). In the short time that I've been doing this, I've learned that there's a TON that goes on in a law school that your average faculty member is completely oblivious to. I've always considered myself a pretty good faculty citizen, and I've always tried to know folks in each department, but I just had no idea what they did or how well they did it. Just like good writing, truly good staffing seems to take a tremendous amount of effort, and the goal is to be invisible and make it look easy. So my hat's off to staff members everywhere who work incredibly hard to create an environment that faculty can be oblivious to.

On Paper Mills & Ambiguity

An interesting article on using paper mills to get through a degree program. Apparently, it's not as cut-and-dried as we might think.

Getting "docx" files from students you can't open?

Try this from Techlearning:

Microsoft has created ways to get around this problem. For Windows users, there is an update for Office XP and Office 2003 that will allow them to use the open and save documents in the newer file format. If you go to http://tinyurl.com/3xr4tt, you can download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. (Nobody can criticize them for giving names that are too short names to their files!) For Mac users, go to http://tinyurl.com/4gymqb to download Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 0.2.1 (Beta). It's a little more limited than the Windows fix, since this doesn't fix your Office program—it's a separate program that will convert the new XML file format to one that your Mac version of office can use. Another issue is that it will only work with the newer versions of OSX, so if you're using an older version of the operating system you may be out of luck.

Adderall as Cheating

The comment to yesterday's post about cheating techniques on YouTube asks if students taking performance-enhancing drugs like Adderall is cheating. Taking drugs to enhance performance is nothing new (see, e.g., methamphetaine and cocaine), but its prevalence, which had dropped for a while, seems to be back up. There's some evidence that today's teens and college students don't equate prescription drug abuse with "street drug" abuse. Unfortunately, many of the studies that track drug use still only focus on non-prescription drugs, so Adderall and other use is probably underreported and, therefore, probably largely still under the radar.

Another thing that seems to be different is the perception among classmates that drug use is a form of academic dishonesty. Until the comment yesterday, it had honestly never occurred to me that taking drugs to enhance academic performance was cheating. To me, it always seemed like the down-side, i.e., "this is your brain on drugs," far outweighed the upside of performing well on a single exam or even a whole degree. But now, it may be the case that student priorities are so dramatically out-of-whack that all non-drug-abusing students see is the performance enhancement. It's an interesting perspective to think that it's "unfair" that a classmate has such poor judgment that she is willing to fry her brain permanently for short-term gain. Of course, if their priorities are that skewed, it's almost certainly the result of parental pressure to perform.

What hasn't changed is the "I can stop anytime I want" justification for taking the drugs. A student in a recent story about Adderall use at University of Wisconsin says she thinks she'll stop using Adderall when she has kids. That's a good plan, since we all know that you don't need any additional energy or concentration to raise children.

What other novel forms of cheating have Millennials come up with, I wonder.


Postscript: My colleague Brett Gilbert, Director Extraordinaire of Touro's Career Services Office pointed out this excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for Adderall:

Adderall is also reportedly widely used as a "study drug" at many American universities. Adderall is reported to help focus energy and concentration to a much higher level than normal. It enables the user to focus and stay awake.[19] Stories of students writing papers for an unusual number of continuous hours [e.g., 14 hours], or cramming all night for an exam with no loss of energy or concentrations are common. However, the user reportedly can suffer from drastic side effects the following day if Adderall was used to avoid a normal sleep pattern. These reported side effects include temporary loss of vision, sleeping over 14 hours, muscle spasms, vomiting, mental confusion, etc. William Frankenberger, psychology professor at University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, led at a study at the university in 2004 that reported 14% of the campus had abused some form of ADHD drug, including Adderall.[19]. College campuses known to be highly competitive or have a high rate of binge drinking had up to 25% of students who misused an ADHD medication within one year, a survey of students at 119 colleges across the country concluded.[19].

Also in the Wikipedia entry is a notation about one of Adderall's medically accepted uses: senile apathetic behavior. Watch for deans to start putting it in the water served at faculty meetings . . . (I kid because I love.)

The Slippery Slope

My friend, colleague, fellow Xer, and Feminist Law Prof Meredith Miller has launched a new general interest law-related podcast called The Slippery Slope. This is a super-cool project, and I'm not just saying that because she's already had me on as a guest! Check it out!

New & Improved: Cheating!

I'm giving a presentation next Tuesday at the biennial Legal Writing Institute conference in Indianapolis on causes and solutions for the new generation of cheating and plagiarism techniques and attitudes (wow, that was a lot of conjunctions in one sentence). So this really caught my eye today.

My Fall Facebook Page with Google Calendar

I've discovered that, even better than the Facebook Group for a course web page supplement, is the Facebook Page or Facebook Organization. Unlike the Groups, the Pages (the organizational equivalent of a user's individual profile) can take advantage of the various Facebook applications.

So I've created a page for my course and linked a Google calendar for my course (which contains all the information from the syllabus on topics, readings, and assignments due). The students can either view the calendar from the Facebook page or add it into their own personal calendar. I've also added some course-related podcasts that are helpful for students. You could also add RSS feeds from blogs you would like students to read (e.g., Wall Street Journal).

Students do not have to join Facebook to view a Facebook Page (they do have to join to view a Facebook Group). Also, students can become a "fan" of the Facebook page and get updates each time new content is added without committing to you as a "friend."

Here are step-by-step instructions for creating a Facebook Page.

Academic Bullying

Via Feminist Law Profs, I learned of a post at Historiann.com, in which she suggests the obvious: when the victim of workplace bullying, get the hell if you can out rather than wait around to make a great legal case.

Workplace bullying is interesting through a generational lense.

With regard to whatever sense of institutional loyalty is necessary for workplace bullying to continue, Bomers are, of course, the last generation to believe in institutional loyalty to any degree. Xers are a lot more practical (some would say cynical) about institutional loyalty to employees, having seen many Boomers end up on the wrong end of the institutional loyalty equation when it turns out that the employee is too costly/unpopular/loud-mouthed to justify the institution's loyalty. Millennials, on the other hand, are more likely to revive a sense of institutional loyalty, but they'll probably also require that the institution treat its employees with a modicum of dignity and respect.

Xers are in a weird place in this equation. Xers on faculties have been hazed (to varying degrees depending on the particular institution's culture, of course) just as their Boomer predecessors were hazed before them. But the hazing that Xers have endured is on top of a lifetime of a lack of parental involvement in issues like schoolyard bullying. So Xers end up falling into approximately three camps: the SuperBully, the Traditional Disaffected Xer, and the Rabid Anti-Bully. The Super Bully combines the ordinary bully's sense of "do unto others" with a lifetime of poor treatment and inadequate supervision to become a workplace bully, the likes of which is just hard to imagine. This leads to a lot of denial on the part of the tenured Boomers, who literally cannot imagine that the bullying behavior is happening as is reported. It leads to a lot of heads in the sand by fellow Xers (see Disaffected Xer category above). This, of course, gives the Super Bully lots of leeway to continue the bullying at warp speed. The object of the Super Bully either becomes a Super Bully in order to cope or moves on. He or she will aspire in their next post to be a Disaffected Xer.

When the Millennials enter the picture, though, it's hard to believe that their lifetime experience with anti-bullying campaigns and helicopter parents is going to allow them to stand for that kind of treatment. In addition, Millennials travel in packs, where Xers are solitary creatures. So the likely response by a Millennial to academic workplace bullying is to fight back and mobilize his or her peers in an anti-bullying campaign. Any Boomers still remaining on the faculty will likely be amenable to anti-bullying policies (after all, they do still have those "peace" tattoos on their left shoulder blades). Watch for Xers to fight for their right to bully (it does sort of always seem like the bad behavior is called to a halt just as we're about to get going really good with it -- see, e.g., Just Say No). Ultimately, I think the Millennials will be successful in their anti-bullying efforts (particularly if even one Xer on the faculty has had a bullied kid and can see the parallel in the situation), but watch for some nasty faculty meetings while the Xers have their say.

Top 7 Baby Boomer Myths About Millennials

Here

Boomer as Double-Edged Sword

Apparently, the 60's are almost completely over. I know it's true because the NY Times says so.

Faculty dynamics are starting to be affected in a pretty big way as generational differences move from the classroom to the faculty meetings. Xers are all grown up now. Tenured even. And the occasional precocious Millennial can even be found at faculty functions. What's the reaction of Boomers?

It's not always pretty. I've given presentations to a lot of faculties at faculty colloquia and faculty retreats over the past 6 or 7 years. And I've given lots of presentations to groups composed of professors from lots of different faculties, but one thing stays the same.

Boomers fall into two distinct groups. There's one group that has a very casual, upbeat attitude about generational differences: "Hey, we may be 60, but 60 is the new 30! We're still hip, with it, cool, groovy. Tell us what there is to love about Xers and Millennial, and we'll love it." I like those folks.

Then there's the other group. They cross their arms when I say anything remotely disparaging about Boomers. These folks are pretty sure that Boomers are the greatest generation ever. They don't want to hear that Xers are a "lost generation" because their parents were Boomers. They don't want to hear that Millennials are the new coolest generation, because these Boomers aren't done being the coolest generation. Believe it or not, I like these folks, too. I don't get to spend much time with them, though, because they take themselves very seriously, and I'm not the kind of person you hang out with for "serious time."

So far, I've had limited experience with Millennial faculty members. For now, let's just say that the jury's still out. :)

Copyright, Plagiarism, and Discipline

For a while now, I've harbored this theory that today's students don't foresee some of the problems they're having with plagiarism because they seem to operate on a copyright paradigm instead of an academic honesty paradigm. For example, I've had scores of students tell me that they don't see anything wrong with copying something from someone if the person who originally wrote it gives them permission to use it. Well . . . okay. While I think it's awfully polite of them to get permission from their accomplice before cheating, this only resolves a copyright problem, not a plagiarism problem.

I've now come to a different conclusion. Some of them clearly don't even care about copyright violations. My trip down the seedy back-alley of law student disrespect for another's work product starting a couple of weeks ago when another law professor let me know (in a more public forum than was probably appropriate, but that's another issue for another day) that someone had posted the answers to many of the exercises from the Interactive Citation Workbook & Workstation. The answers had been posted on a web site called docstoc.com. In trying to figure out how to get my copyrighted material off their web site, I discovered docstoc is a web site for uploading "professional documents" for general access. There's a section specifically for law school documents, and it contains the usual assortment of outlines, class notes, student memo assignments, etc. The site was started by a recent law grad and is partly owned by a current law student. Most of the documents come from a handful of law schools, but I'm guessing that word of the site will spread relatively quickly. Although I wasn't happy to see material from my and my co-author's teacher's manual on the site, I can't complain about the site owner's responsiveness when I requested that he take the material down. Within 24 hours, it was down, and he's offered to work with me to block similar content from appearing down the road. So that's good.

I spent a good two days stewing over the unmitigated nerve of students to post copyrighted material. Then I read an article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed about a web site that hosts uploads of FIVE-THOUSAND COPYRIGHTED TEXTBOOKS. Are you kidding me? I mean, really, are you kidding me? The owner calls the textbook an act of "civil disobedience" to protest the exorbitant prices of textbooks.

The site’s founder, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of legal action
against him, talked to The Chronicle over an Internet phone call last night and
defended his creation, though he described it as operating in a “legal gray
area.” He said he is an undergraduate at a college outside of the United States,
though he would not name the institution or country, and that he operates the
Web site from there.

Wow . . . that's some movement you're running there out of the witness protection program, pal. What's also interesting to me is that he takes down the offending material as soon as someone asks him to. Is that really how civil disobedience works? We protest unless you politely tell us to stop, and then we stop? I think that's actually called "easier to ask forgiveness than permission." Not exactly the hallmark of the moral high ground.

So why do they do it? Why are these concepts so hard for some Millennials to get their minds around? I'm not exactly sure except that I have a huge hunch that it has to do with their core value of collaboration. They're tight with one another and are more than happy to help each other out. You don't see Xers doing this stuff because they're too cynical and cutthroat. If an Xer gets the answers, he's not sharing them with the world. He's keeping them to himself and using them to get the edge over everyone else. Or if he does share, he's doing it for a fee.

I think the answer is more education about why "old people" value honesty over access. Another part of the answer is accountability. When you spend your whole life with someone counting to three before you get a time out that extends the same number of minutes as your current age, it's hard to believe that you're actually going to get prosecuted, expelled, whatever. And because they're so doe-eyed when they say, "I though I was going to have to sit in my carrel for 22 minutes and then apologize," it does make it harder, I think, for some folks to lower the actual boom. After all, they do seem so remorseful after the 22 minutes in time-out is over. Maybe they've learned their lesson.

But don't bet on it.