Accused of plagiarism but not sure how this happened

[djay1965]

Hi,

If anyone has any advice I would be grateful. In Jan 12 I had three 2000 word essays to hand in and I knew I would have to do the work over Christmas when the kids were sleeping and the house was quiet. Anyway, knowing all of this I started my essays from mid October so that I at least have some family time over the holiday period. One of the essays consisted of ten mini essays, half on seminar material and the other half on lectures. To cut a long story short, something happened to my PC and I completely lost all of the work I had done on that assignment but I still had my handwritten notes and the recordings I had done of the seminar (even though they were a bit distorted). A friend at uni who I have shared my own drafts with in the past emailed me her copy of her draft of the seminar essays. Basically, we had to read a journal article and critique it in the seminar, so mostly everyone had the same sorts of notes and everything. I used her draft as a template but did not copy any of her words, the ideas were the ideas we had all shared in the seminars and I did a lot of research from books to further understand what I was writing. I finished the essay on Boxing Day and it was due for submission early Jan. I emailed her a copy of the ten mini essays - she was yet to begin work on the last five.

The other day the results were due to appear and the tutor asked me to come in to see him. While I was waiting outside the office, my friend arrived and said she had been asked to come in. The tutor asked us both to come into his office and asked if either of us knew what this was about. Obviously I had worked it out that there had to be similarities in our work because we had worked together. I mentioned to the tutor we had worked together on the project and my friend said nothing at all. The tutor said that although our work was different there were similarities and asked if we knew how this had occurred. I said that we had communicated during the draft stages and admitted I had sent a copy of my completed work to my friend. The tutor said because of the similarity although it was not exact he was going to have to reduce our marks or pass the matter to the board, where we would possibly get zero. My friend was outraged and said she would not accept a reduced mark. I asked how much he would reduce the mark by and he said 5 points each. He said before the reduction my friend had 78 and I had 68 but this could be reduced to zero. Maybe, I was wrong I don't know but I said that I would accept the full blame and have my mark reduced. The outcome is that I have a reduced mark of 58 and my friend still retains 78.

I feel as though all the ideas I added have been discredited because he was so willing to believe that I couldn't have had those ideas, even though the task involved generalised seminar discussion that was available to everyone. Probably, I'm just feeling a bit deflated now because this has never happened to me before, I am organised and my marks are always quite good. I would be interested to hear if anyone has had a similar experience.

Thanks for reading,

Djay

I think you just have to let this go.
Did you explain to the lecturer , exactly what happened, with all the detail, like you have on this post?
Why you said you would take all the blame, only the lord knows.
But its done now.
Hopefully your lecturer appreciated that it was more a case of
poor academic practice , rather than moderate plagiarism, and certainly not
serious plagiarism.

However , how you can make some of the comments you have made is beyond me. so naieve.
The bit about, roughly,' we all studied the same texts, so all our notes would be similar.......' Are you serious? I have seen other peoples notes. Both A'level, BA, and MA. And quite frankly I questioned whether we were at the same lecture. They were so very very different.
At Uni (BA), I was always the first to finish my essays. I went round to my friends house, where 3 people on my course, lived. They were all frantically trping away , for submission the next day. I saw all their notes. Bizare how different they were. They had all focused in on different aspects, most of their notes, were things i remembered hearing, but hadn't even written down, as not important to me.
And our 3 essays on Tolstoy were as differnret as you could have got.
I think you have been very naieve.
But it is done now, and i'm not sure there is much you can do, so best to let it go.
Or as an alternative question, what exaclty were you expecting to happen? What are you hoping to achieve.

It looks like your 'friend' used your essay as a base on which to add further ideas. Easy to do when you haven't had to think of the original ideas yourself.

What were you thinking when you emailed her copies of your completed work?! A lesson learned hopefully...

Sounds like a difficult situation but as you voluntarily accepted full blame you also got all the consequences. That's ostensibly fair.

Plus, why did you even need her notes. You had your notes from the lecture,. You hadn't lost THEM.
Once, I had my lecture notes. Then my sheets of scribbes of ideas and essay plans. But nearly all of my essay was typed on computer. All my choices of words and brilliant phrases. And then I lost it. Was so angry. But what could I do. I started writing again. Based ont he essay scribbles and the original lecture notes. And some of the fab words I had used first time, I could not remember the second time, but it was o.k. ish. The first had been better. But it was gone.
why you even needed her notes, I do not understand.

You should never have accepted the blame. But now it's done.

Be very careful of sharing your work in the future because effectively, your card is now marked and they will check your future work more carefully.

Set your computer to auto-save your work and have a back-up drive that you back up to regularly, to avoid losing hours of work again in the future.

And never again let a dishonest "friend" chouse you out of marks, while they stand and take no blame. Stand up for yourself.

Should have said: not only will they check your work more carefully, BUT if any similarities are again found, you having admitted to previous plagiarism will set you up for being the culprit in the future.

Your tutor's way of dealing with it seems pretty dodgy to me. If you've been accused of plagiarism/collusion it should go through the proper channels not be decided by one tutor's whim. That said I think you probably need to get some advice about study skills to make sure something like this doesn't happen again.

wintersnight, I think if the OP hadn't, for some obscure reason, admitted responsibility for it entirely, it would have gone through proper channels. As far as I remember, it's normal to ask the students in question for an explanation first, before setting the official wheels in motion though.

I know what you mean, thumbwitch. It just seems inappropriate to say admit it now and you'll only lose 5 marks rather than risk getting zero and it think it must have made Djay panic. He also shouldn't have just accepted that one student was to blame. They're either both equally to blame for fairly mild collusion or one has stolen the other's work which is a far more serious offence.

Djay, I'm probably not helping you but I think you've been put in a very difficult position.

Yes, I agree it was a bit of a cop-out just to accept her word but I suppose he thought it was an easy way to deal with it as she had taken responsibility. Especially as the other one wasn't saying anything and doing all outraged innocence!

This happened to me in my dim, distant uni days. I wrote up the practical report and stupidly lent it to my feckless colleaugues who copied it verbatim. We were lucky and had 5 points each deduced.

However a similar thing happened to DH in final year, he and his friend were hauled in front of a panel of 4 or 5 lecturers, threatened with expulsion from uni at worst or at best being given a 0% for that module which would have meant not getting an honours degree. They argued their case and were given the minimum pass mark of 40% for the module and got 2:2's in the end

Thanks everyone for responding, I wrote someting for each comment, then the system timed out. So I'll type quickly this time.

Oblomov, I do see your point and I can see that I acted naively. I did use my own notes, in the seminar we had to make certain points and those were the only ones you were supposed to write about. In the past we have emailed drafts to each other just sometimes to check if we are on the right path with our work. I that is one of the reasons why I accepted the blame.

RnB, I know that is why I felt annoyed - when we came out of the tutors office my friend said to me 58 isnt that bad!

Tumbewitch, I always reference whenever I use something from a journal or a book, either in the paragraph or at the end of the paragrah, and always in the referencing section. Oddly enough the last piece of work I had marked was scored at 78 (my friend scored 72) and because my friend and I are not in the same group we did not look at each others drafts.

The other reason I accepted blame as stupid as it seems is because there are quite a few other assignments that have deadlines (most of them I have done already, the ones I haven't do not have to be in until end of April) and as well as being a fulltime student, I am a mum and a full time carer. My life is stressful enough without the added worry of the zero the tutor was offering.

Later that same day (the day we saw the tutor) during one of our lectures my friend asked me whether I knew what to do in one of the upcoming assigments?

It will probably take me a little time to get through this but thanks again for allowing me to vent and for the honesty of your opinions.

I understand why you did it, don't get me wrong - in the choice of taking a small drop or risking losing the whole assignment, or having your entire module marked down, yes, you made the right choice.

What I don't understand is why you let your "friend" off the hook completely! She was at least as much at fault as you were, and yet you allowed her to keep all her points by lying down and taking it! I would not have done that, I would have said something.

Please re-think sharing work with this "friend" as she sounds utterly unscrupulous.

It was me who mentioned study skills. I've seen a lot of students in your position who've innocently shared written work and ended up in trouble. I think it's a lot safer to talk about ideas but not show anybody what you've put in writing if they're doing the same assignment as you.

I would recommend going back and rescinding your acceptance of the blame.

Say that you did it while your friend was there so it didn't look like you were telling on her (primary school behaviour that though), and that you hadn't fully thought about the consequences.

explain exactly what you have explained here and say that you emailed your friend your complete essay.

It sounds like she's the one plagiarizing and yo have taken the blame for it.

I don't believe for one second that there is no plagiarization - but I think it was your friend that did it.

and never ever ever talk to this friend about work again!!

I totally agree. Ask for an appointment with lecturer. Tell the whole story. Nothing will probably change, but atleast you got 58, not zero.

Before complaining take a very careful look at the assessment regulations. I think it's likely as Thumbwitch said you got off more lightly than you would have if this had been pursued through official channels. It's obviously galling to see your friend getting off but the result of an official investigation could be that you both fail the assessment, have to do the work again and then get your mark capped.

Sorry Thumbwitch, I just wanted to type as quickly as possible before I timed out again. I have definately rethought out the sharing thing and it won't happen again.

Wintersnight after seeing the way my friend reacted that was my view totally. This is something I will share with my personal tutor but I don't expect my day in court (so to speak).

Seriously everyone I have learnt a lot but as a budding psychologist who wants to specialise in counselling psychology

The hard thing now is dealing with my friend. She acts as though nothing has happened and is all smiles :(

If I was in your shoes, I'd go to your personal tutor with the evidence that you emailed your friend your essay, and say how awkward you felt with her beside you, and tell your story.

And I would never ever ever breathe a word of what I was doing for assignments to a single living soul ever ever again.

Erm. Do NOT ever discuss essays or exams with this 'friend' ever again. That would be my opinion. Apart from the fact that that is just not how essays are meant to be done, she has totally fucked you over. Seriously, you just don't need to share drafts or notes, and definitely not completed essays!!! Just don't do it! (Advice from someone who has been in further education for almost a decade )

agree, don't deal with the friend - act as if nothing happened, and go through the official channels.