What constitutes plagiarism?

A Ryerson student is facing academic misconduct charges because his professor found out that he's the administrator of a study group on Facebook.

The student compares the study group to peer tutoring or study groups that meet in person, making it a part of his argument that what he's doing isn't cheating. The university alleges... well, frankly, it's unclear what the university alleges, except that students can't get away with things that they do online.... A university representative also noted generally that students must do their own work.

The story prompts more questions than it answers, specifically:

1. Exactly what was going on in the study group? Were students merely getting help from each other on general concepts or were they specifically asking about questions on assignments? If so, did students actually provide other students with the answers on assignments? If yes, that would be cheating since students wouldn't have done their own work. But...
2. How can the university prove this? Does it have printouts of the group's discussion boards and wall posts?
3. How would this differ from a library study group or peer tutoring? And if it doesn't, does that also mean that library study groups and peer tutoring constitute cheating?
4. What about the possibility that students can help other students learn since they can explain things differently than the prof did in class? That sometimes hearing an explanation the second time or being able to ask questions about it makes a difference? Should students only learn from profs and text books?
   
5. How many first-year Engineering students even know exactly what constitutes cheating? High school students help each other with homework all the time (I remember many phone calls about math homework in my day, and a few years later I'm sure it would have been all MSN instant messaging). Students aren't going to know that practices established earlier might be unacceptable in university. While "not knowing" does not mitigate the offence, the institution still has an obligation to make its students aware of proper and improper academic conduct.
6. Why on earth is Ryerson charging the student with 147 counts of academic misconduct (one for him, one for each member of the group)? The excessiveness smacks of bullying and heavy handed "let's make an example of this one".
7. Don't you think that the study group members have now started a new Facebook group with more stringent privacy settings?

I hate to break it to Ryerson, but students have been "helping" each other with their homework since the dawn of homework. This particular student got "caught" because there must have been a Facebook record.

Incidentally, I don't know why people are all up in arms about a Facebook study group when 100% improper and unethical essay mills get to advertise in the guise of a Facebook group.

Dear M. Dion,

Cher M. Dion, Honourable Leader of the Official Opposition,

No.

Harper wouldn't do the same for you.

Putting the Oscars to bed

My Oscar outrage had very little to do with the list of winners (most of whom seem like nice, genuinely happy people, save perhaps the terse Coen brother) but two things, one at the ceremony and one since, have bothered me to no end.

1. The insulting introduction to the cinematography award. Not only does Cameron Diaz not know how to pronounce "cinematography" (don't overthink it, sweetheart), but she seemed to insult the Academy's first cinematography winner, the beautiful black and white silent film Sunrise, directed by the legendary F.W. Murnau. I couldn't tell if it was Diaz's lines or her delivery, but the intro seemed to suggest that the cinematographer had to work extra hard to compensate for a ridiculous plot in that featured characters named "Man", "Woman" and "Woman from the City". My dear Ms. Diaz, no one insults Sunrise, especially not a model turned wooden comedic 'actress'. (Also, Gary Susman at Entertainment Weekly agrees with me.)

2. I would link to a clip of said offending introduction, but it turns out that the Academy is rather vigilant about copyrights and online video. Fair enough, but why not make these moments available on your own website (no, the backstage "Thank You Cam" doesn't count)? Come on, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences! This was the lowest rated Oscars ever—aren't you at all interested in allowing fan-selected clips to wander all over the internet, giving people a taste of what they missed (e.g., the lovely performance of the song from Once, Marion Cottilard's acceptance speech)? Or you could upload some of the older footage from the vaults so we can watch screen legends deliver gracious, witty acceptance speeches. Viral video can be a force for good—it gets people talking and it raises the profile of your product. TV studios like NBC release official, sanctioned videos on Youtube—why can't you? If the Oscars are at all interested in combatting the criticism that the ceremony is irrevelent, it could do worse than let a few key videos stand on Youtube. Hell, you could call it O-tube. Or not.

Joshua Bell: Estrellita

Enjoy.

My Funny Valentines II

Three hilarious men, one fake feud leading to one of the fakest, funniest brawls in comedy history:



But even better is the behind-the-scenes video (sorry, no embedding option) that shows us how much fun they had faking the brawl.


So, to reiterate from last year: funny is sexy. Get on that, y-chromosomed.

Current and future (and future) reading

This
is The Secret History of Domesticity, all 873 pages of it.

It is shorter than Clarissa, but lacks those characteristics, such as plot, characters, conflict, which renders novels much easier to read.


This is a sample sentence taken at random from the middle of the book:

What dominates the modern idea of the aesthetic is instead one pole of this dialectic, a (therefore) frozen sense of concrete virtuality as monolithic and self-subsistent, virtual yet somehow posited with an idealized objectivity that needs no subjective stimulus.

And this is the modified Homer Simpson quotation that pops into my head whenever I pick the darn thing up.

Okay, book. You don't like me, and I don't like you, but let's get through this thing and then I can go back to killing you with beer.

Can I interest anyone in a readalong?

New, clearer fridge

Sometime between the time that my old, mustard-coloured fridge was designed and the 21st century, someone wised up about making the settings clear.

For the fridge, we still have numbers, but there are also words AND a cute little thermometer to indicate which way is colder.


The freezer compartment has dispensed with that numbers/letters nonsense completely:


Though there is something a little counterintuitive to the "cold" thermometer being fuller than the "colder" thermometer. I know that it's correct, mercury-wise, but if you read it as a gauge, then wouldn't "colder" have, you know, a higher level of coldness? (Maybe some of those "brrr" wavy lines would do the trick!)