Academic honesty should never be ambiguous

Ok, I know I have a somewhat ambivalent stance on what constitutes plagiarism and the value of collaborative and cooperative learning but one thing I'm clear on is academic honesty.  If you used something that someone else made just say that you did that. And depending on your age and level a simple copy and paste of the link is sufficient.

I recently went around our G5's exhibition project and was thoroughly impressed at their work. I did sneakily ask a few for their sources and most could point to at least a page of attribution as to where they'd got their numbers and facts.  Well done (here is a great video of it by the way).


G5 Exhibition Video 2015 from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.

Fast forward to early this morning. I'm putting the washing in the machine and the kids are getting ready for school and finally my daughter lets me see the video she's been working on for the last 4 days - one holidays and festivals in the middle ages. It's a great video with her narrating the festivals of the year with lovely pictures and music from the middle ages in the background.  And then at the end "Thank you for watching" and black screen.

I told her I thought it was great, but that she didn't have to thank anyone at the end, and instead a list of attribution for the images and music would be good. "Our teacher said we didn't have to do it" was her reply. I told her that she knew that I expected it of her, and she then showed me that she had in fact made a list of the URLs but hadn't put it into EasyBib to get into MLA format. I asked why not, and she came with some story about how citations / attribution hadn't been in the original assignment nor in the rubric and the teacher didn't want to add it on afterwards. I was a little annoyed at this. I said she could at least put it at the end of her video, but she didn't think that would be "fair" on the others who didn't. Fair? How about the fairness of the people to whom the images belonged? OK they're all long dead now, and perhaps most of the images are in common domain, but still, it's the principal.

I was annoyed at myself being annoyed at her, when actually I should be annoyed at the school. How can they go from being citation semi-stars in primary school to not having it expected at middle school. This is not the first instance, it is one of many, many, many in both my children's grades across all subjects - academic honesty really does need to be institutionalised and inside every single assignment across the board! I'm at least glad my ranting has had an effect on my kids and they're at now keeping lists to show me - but if it's only for me for how long will my influence last?

How I used to write

A little while back I did a review of Easybib as an assignment for one of my courses. It's a tool we recommend to our students.  For a while I was impressed by it's notetaking tool and I've tried using it a few times because it kind of makes intuitive sense. But it just doesn't work for me.  And I'm beginning to realise why.

After writing my last assignment I started thinking about this.  When I started out with my studies, it had been nearly 20 years since I'd done any studying.  It was a huge shock to the system. Tons of reading to do, an entirely new field / discipline / subject matter / jargon to master. Unknown demands and expectations and in addition doing it online where you had no eyeballing of your lecturer or fellow students, no way of seeing the nuances of what was being said or not said or left hanging.

Apart from some psychology as a dual major in my business degree and a bit of global politics and society during my MBA, I'd pretty much kept away from the humanities so this truly was a new ball game for me.  I tried to tackle it in what I thought was a logical way. I'd read something and then highlight the sections I found important. I'd read more of other stuff, highlighting highlighting and printing away a forest. And then when it came to the assignment, I'd try and string all those highlights of what all these famous and revered authors in the subject had to say, and weave it with some inter-leading words and paragraphs to make it some kind of coherent summary of the matter and assignment question at hand and submit it. And I got a pass or a credit. For which I was very grateful, because I knew, through the social network that was building up around me on FaceBook, that others were barely passing or failing the same assignments. I guess the ones with distinctions and higher distinctions didn't need to wallow in mutual sympathy and support, or they just weren't mentioning their relative success.

As time went by I became somewhat more experienced in the digital environment and finally had a breakthrough when a fellow student introduced me to Evernote and I could save a rainforest by saving all my notes and readings digitally.  It has a highlighting and annotating tool, but it wasn't ever comfortable to me, so I stopped highlighting.  Instead I started taking notes. With my own funny little colour coding and mind-mapping.  And then I would let things lie for a little bit. And go for long dog walks and talk to my colleagues and friends. Because the universe is big. And this is only one field. And they're specialists, so perhaps they don't really see the bigger picture. And slowly I'd start to form my own ideas about the topic at hand and the assignment question.  And then I'd see if I could find some kind of a structure and flow to my thoughts.  And only then would I start writing and as I came to a claim or assertion I'd revert back to Evernote and type in the keyword and see who else in the readings I'd done agreed with me, or disagreed with me and what they had to say. I could then check in my handwritten notes a summary of their ideas. And in that way I could back up my thoughts or criticise what they'd said.  In a sense that is exactly the opposite to what I'd been doing all my life.  And I think too, the opposite to the formulaic ways that teach notetaking and scaffolding and paraphrasing etc. And the opposite to how tools such as Easybib could lead to perfectly acceptable and passable assignment submissions, without any plagiarism in sight but ones where the students voice and thoughts and originality do not shine through.

My grades have improved in the interim. But I must admit I have also taken some risks, calculated risks whereby what I've written could be considered a little audacious or off the trodden path, and the it could have gone either way.  Funnily enough, the student who introduced me to Evernote remarked to me that she's gone the same way, as we sat for a lunch, nail biting waiting for the results from two different assignments in different courses where we'd both taken a bit of a risk.

Is this a sign of academic maturity? Daring to say what you think and believe? Is it what we should be teaching our students, or do they necessarily need the training wheels and scaffolding to get them there? Should we expect them to get to this point for everything, or just the subjects they're passionate about and topics they care about. Is it just another teachable trick that we could teach instead of the traditional read, note-take, paraphrase, cite, string together?  When in our academic lives are we just hitting the ball across the net and when are we playing the games to win the tournament?

Referencing

At times one has to get right back to basics and the last few weeks I've been huddled over my computer becoming more familiar with "Pages" than any non-design person would ever want to become.  All for the sake of trying to make simple basic posters outlining the most common example of the referencing styles we employ here at school.

We use MLA up to IB level, and then subject heads can decide what citation style is most appropriate for their discipline, choosing between MLA, APA and Chicago.   We decided to use the most commonly cited resources of our students, Journal Article, Website, Book, Video, Image and Newspaper Article.

The 80:20 rule definitely came into play here.  After I thought I was 80%+ finished, Katie started looking through it and then spent further hours and hours refining things. We asked for opinions and checking and refined things further.  Of course by simplifying one leaves out all the infinite varieties and complexities, but we also home that it illustrates the basic principles and we can then help out with the refinements as required.

Here is a link to the Google+ sites where they've been posted for:

APA
MLA
Chicago

All the posters are available under a CC license and we welcome comments and improvements.

Activity 1: Review an electronic resource for children or young adults or about delivering services to children or young adults

A detailed description of the activity undertaken

The bibliographic tool: EasyBib was reviewed.  This tool is used at UWCSEA-East for secondary students for citation, note taking, research paper organisation, the creation of annotated bibliographies and to teach academic honesty.  The topic of

* Digital materials/resources and emerging technologies

is covered in this post.

Firstly the ease of set up was evaluated followed by the creation of citations in EasyBib.

Ease of Setup:

In order to set up EasyBib, the school's library guide was followed.  Following the slide show step by step, the set up was fairly easy.  It took about 30 minutes, including looking for passwords and access codes.  For a student reasonably familiar with add-ons and chrome (which most of our students should be) this part should not be a problem.

Creation of Citations:

In order to review the citation tool, a few of the most common primary resources used by our students was tested using EasyBib.  For each resource, output was created in the 2 most common citation methods used by the school, namely MLA and APA.  The output was then compared to the citation using Zotero (which I am most familiar with and which was previously used by the school as a citation tool) and both were checked to the MLA and APA guidelines.  The other factor that was looked at included how much additional manual input was required and how "intuitive" manual completion was.

Print book - 

I only needed to input the ISBN and the tool did the rest automatically.

MLA Result EasyBib:
Lipson, Charles. Cite Right: A Quick Guide to Citation Styles--MLA, APA, Chicago, the Sciences, Professions, and More. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2011. Print.

MLA Result Zotero:
Lipson, Charles. Cite Right: A Quick Guide to Citation Styles--MLA, APA, Chicago, the Sciences, Professions, and More. 2nd ed. Chicago?; London: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Print. Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing.

APA Result EasyBib:
Lipson, C. (2011). Cite right: A quick guide to citation styles--MLA, APA, Chicago, the sciences, professions, and more. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

APA Result Zotero:
Lipson, C. (2011). Cite right: a quick guide to citation styles--MLA, APA, Chicago, the sciences, professions, and more (2nd ed.). Chicago?; London: University of Chicago Press.


All results were comparable, except EasyBib abbreviated University to "U" (which is acceptable) and added "Print" as the format which is correct, further, EasyBib did not state the edition, whereas Zotero did.

Journal Article -

Two different articles were selected and the DOI was input. EasyBib could find neither of the citations (Zotero could find the citation using the DOI only).  Trying "autocite" using the name of the journal also didn't work, so manual input was required. Unlike Zotero, you cannot chose between author full name and separating between Name, Initial and Surname, so copying and pasting the information requires 3 or 4 steps instead of one.


MLA Result EasyBib:
Croll, Theodore P., DDS, and Kevin J. Donly, DDS. "Tooth Bleaching in Children and Teens." Journal of Esthetic and Restorative Dentistry 26.3 (2014): 147-50. Web.

MLA Result Zotero: 
Croll, Theodore P., and Kevin J. Donly. “Tooth Bleaching in Children and Teens: Perspectives.” Journal of Esthetic and Restorative Dentistry 26.3 (2014): 147–150. CrossRef. Web. 6 Aug. 2014.

APA Result EasyBib:
Croll, T. P., DDS, & Donly, K. J., DDS. (2014). Tooth Bleaching in Children and Teens. Journal of Esthetic and Restorative Dentistry, 26(3), 147-150.

APA Result Zotero:
Croll, T. P., & Donly, K. J. (2014). Tooth Bleaching in Children and Teens: Perspectives. Journal of Esthetic and Restorative Dentistry, 26(3), 147–150. doi:10.1111/jerd.12108

Since EasyBib has a space for a suffix, and the journal article stated the authors were both DDS, this suffix was included, but this does not appear to be necessary. For MLA, once again, EasyBib correctly includes the format (Web) which Zotero doesn't.

Of the APA results, only the Zotero result is in fact correct and up to date with the latest APA guidelines as it includes the DOI. The lack of EasyBib's ability to extract data from the DOI can be seen as a drawback particularly for older students who use journal articles more frequently.  This may be a result of the fact that EasyBib is only linked with JStor and Proquest.  In order to test this hypothesis, another DOI was tested (from a Proquest related journal), and this resulted in a correct link - and correct citation in both MLA and APA.

APA result EasyBib:
Rey, P. J. (2012). Alienation, Exploitation, and Social Media. American Behavioral Scientist, 56(4), 399-420. doi: 10.1177/0002764211429367

APA result Zotero:
Rey, P. J. (2012). Alienation, Exploitation, and Social Media. American Behavioral Scientist, 56(4), 399–420. doi:10.1177/0002764211429367

MLA result EasyBib:
Rey, P. J. "Alienation, Exploitation, and Social Media." American Behavioral Scientist 56.4 (2012): 399-420. Web. 6 Aug. 2014.

MLA result Zotero
Rey, P. J. “Alienation, Exploitation, and Social Media.” American Behavioral Scientist 56.4 (2012): 399–420. CrossRef. Web. 6 Aug. 2014.

The "CrossRef" item in the Zotero MLA result is not correct, it should state "Web".

Internet resource - 

A considerable amount of information was missing.  In fact the only item that was correct was the URL, and every other piece needed to be found. However, every step of the way EasyBib gave helpful hints as to what information was needed and where the information could be found. A particularly useful feature was the way that the "finished" citation evolved alongside the fill in boxes - the "LearnCite" feature.

MLA Result EasyBib:
Hume-Pratuch, Jeff. "How to Use the New DOI Format in APA Style." APA Style Blog. American Psychological Association, 25 July 2014. Web. 06 Aug. 2014.

MLA Result Zotero:
Hume-Pratuch, Jeff. “APA Style Blog: How to Use the New DOI Format in APA Style.” APA Style Blog. Blog. N.p., 25 July 2014. Web. 6 Aug. 2014.

In this instance, the EasyBib citation is the correct one, mainly as a result of the fact that Zotero doesn't have an entry space for the publisher / owner of the website.

APA Result EasyBib:
Hume-Pratuch, J. (2014, July 25). APA Style Blog: How to Use the New DOI Format in APA Style. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2014/07/how-to-use-the-new-doi-format-in-apa-style.html

APA Result Zotero:
Hume-Pratuch, J. (2014, July 25). How to Use the New DOI Format in APA Style. APA Style Blog. Blog. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2014/07/how-to-use-the-new-doi-format-in-apa-style.html

In this instance neither EasyBib nor Zotero are correct.  According to the APA the correct citation would be:

Hume-Pratuch, J. (2014, July 25). How to Use the New DOI Format in APA Style [Blog post]. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2014/07/how-to-use-the-new-doi-format-in-apa-style.html

2. Answers to the following questions:

What did you learn?

I learnt that despite the appearance of ease and automatic generation, one needs to have a healthy dose of scepticism and the willingness to be familiar with the citation rules and to check results or input against these rules. I also became better informed about DOIs and the limitations of two commonly used citation generators. I also contacted the APA to confirm my understanding of the requirements for citation of websites and Zotero about the apparent failure to comply with either MLA or APA for website referencing. To my surprise both organisations got back to me within a few hours, the APA to confirm and Zotero to say that the error would be fixed and they subsequently sent me the system update request to prove it was being dealt with!  This has also taught me that as a consumer I can approach service organisations and make reasonable requests for change.

How was the activity relevant to your professional practice as a librarian for children or young adults?

In my academic life I use Zotero, so I was not fully comfortable with using EasyBib and not fully aware of its capabilities and limitations. This activity has given me the opportunity to explore these. I can now better serve my student clients and find the information needed for them to manage the citation and referencing needed for their research.

Were any gaps in your knowledge revealed? How might you fill those gaps?

Personally I am very familiar with APA, while most of the school uses MLA, with the exception of IB (International Baccalaureate) students in certain subjects.  This has enabled me to become more familiar with the requirements of MLA and to notice the differences in requirements between the two. I have also found some good resources on both APA and MLA that I can consult when in doubt as to the correct citation form. Creating this blog post, with its complications of formatting has also revealed a huge gap in my ability to create a blog with as good a "look and feel" as I can create in a word document.  Understanding HTML may be my next PD learning experience.

Websites consulted and references:

• Barnes, D. (2013, February 5). EasyBib Bibliography tool – a student review [Blog post]. i see teach. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://daibarnes.info/blog/easybib-bibliography-tool-a-student-review/
• Boettiger, C. (2013, June 3). DOI?!= citable [Blog post]. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://www.carlboettiger.info/2013/06/03/DOI-citable.html
• Burkhardt, A. (2011, July 11). A Tale of Two Citation Tools [Blog]. Information Tyrannosaur. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://andyburkhardt.com/2011/07/11/a-tale-of-two-citation-tools/
• Croll, T. P., & Donly, K. J. (2014). Tooth Bleaching in Children and Teens: Perspectives. Journal of Esthetic and Restorative Dentistry, 26(3), 147–150. doi:10.1111/jerd.12108
• Griffith, E. (2012, September 27). Abandoned for Years, Web 2.0 Tool EasyBib Is Now a Thriving Business [News Article]. PandoDaily. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://pando.com/2012/09/27/abandoned-for-years-web-2-0-tool-easybib-is-now-a-thriving-business/
• Hamilton, B. (2012, March 27). Easing Their Citation Pain: Putting the Focus on Critical Thinking in Research with EasyBib [Blog post]. The Unquiet Librarian. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/easing-their-citation-pain-putting-the-focus-on-critical-thinking-in-research-with-easybib/
• Hamilton, B. (2013, January 14). Get Started with EasyBib - EasyBib 101 - [Library Guide]. LibGuides at Creekview High School. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://www.theunquietlibrary.libguides.com/easybib
• Hume-Pratuch, J. (2014, July 25). How to Use the New DOI Format in APA Style [Blog post]. APA Style Blog. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2014/07/how-to-use-the-new-doi-format-in-apa-style.html
• Kessman, J. (2013, October 23). EasyBib Listed as a Great Mobile App to Help Research. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://content.easybib.com/category/product-reviews/#.U-J4woCSyIA
• Lipson, C. (2011). Cite right: a quick guide to citation styles--MLA, APA, Chicago, the sciences, professions, and more (2nd ed.). Chicago?; London: University of Chicago Press.
• OWL Purdue University. (2014a, August 4). APA Formatting and Style Guide. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/
• OWL Purdue University. (2014b, August 4). MLA Works Cited: Electronic Sources (Web Publications). Retrieved August 6, 2014, from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/08/
• Provenzano, N. (2011, April 18). It’s an Easy Choice! My Review of EasyBib. The Nerdy Teacher. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://www.thenerdyteacher.com/2011/04/its-easy-choice-my-review-of-easybib.html
• Rey, P. J. (2012). Alienation, Exploitation, and Social Media. American Behavioral Scientist, 56(4), 399–420. doi:10.1177/0002764211429367
• Teaching Blog Addict. (2011, September). EasyBib: a Free Bibliography Maker [Blog post]. Teaching Blog Addict. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://www.teachingblogaddict.com/2011/09/easybib-free-bibliography-maker.html
• UWCSEA-East Campus. (n.d.). EasyBib - Citation - LibGuides at United World College of Southeast Asia. Retrieved August 6, 2014, from http://research.uwcsea.edu.sg/c.php?g=33290&p=211365