WillDaSnail Wrote:2) Gives you a chance to practice. This will be reflected in tests - it'll show how much you practiced.

Swerve Wrote:Also what gets interesting is when Biology majors take their mandatory neuroscience courses and discover that the brain is just a giant electrical grid for neurons to travel about at given velocities. Then all those Calculus and Physics courses they thought were not important (except for the MCAT) are shoved down their throats before they even have time to adapt their gag reflex to newer heights, or rather depths.

Swerve Wrote:In AP Physics my class would share answers. Certain people would simply just copy the answers because they had no idea what was going on. This resulted in many students passing with a C in a course where they didn't learn any "advanced" material. Sharing homework is not only cheating yourself out of a proper education, it's cheating a teacher from doing their job properly. Homework is used as feedback in order to determine whether they did a good job or need to review the material over again. If they see that their students are consistently getting high scores, then they will proceed with quizzing/testing. I earned my lousy B in AP Physics. I could have cheated and gotten an A because I had smart friends who knew what they were doing. But I chose to tough it out. Turns out when I took College Physics, all the hard work paid off.

Swerve Wrote:Also students tend to be too short-sighted when it comes to their education. It's supposed to be a gradual process where you learn material gradually via homework and other assignments. With all this farce competition over colleges, students screw up big time by failing to look at the big picture. Sure. It sucks that you won't get that extra % so you can get into your Ivy League schools, but you won't be the retarded kid who never learned electromagnetism because he copied from a friend. If you think that it's pointless, then it will be pointless. But there are many things that are pointless if you choose to only think about the "end-result". What's the point in life for example if we all just die? Might as well just cut to the chase and kill yourself. Life is a process just like learning. There are no short-cuts.

Swerve Wrote:In General Chemistry in College I obtained twenty practice exams for the final exam. To be blunt, I really wanted to get into Medical School my freshman year of college and wanted all the practice I could possibly get. On top of studying the course material I also memorized all the questions and answers to the tests in case they got recycled. One practice exam out of the twenty was almost carbon-copy. I scored very high on my Chemistry exam and learned that a pre-med minority group skewed the average with high scores because they were provided with these "carbon-copy" exams. Specifically given to them by the professors of their classes. I became disillusioned with the way things work as that final determined around 40-60% of my grade. I later learned that fraternities keep their own test bank in addition to other academic groups. Everyone works hard, which is why unfair advantages make big differences when it comes to the game of academics. I personally felt guilty and quit accumulating tests, no longer really cared about my GPA, and actually died a bit on the inside. In retrospect I would have done a lot better in college if I didn't try to beat the system.

Swerve Wrote:I personally felt guilty and quit accumulating tests, no longer really cared about my GPA, and actually died a bit on the inside. In retrospect I would have done a lot better in college if I didn't try to beat the system.

Beaner Wrote:it is cheating because it is something YOU should do, not something to COPY from someone else.

and i am a former teacher.

Swerve Wrote:I'm not a freshman in college anymore. I also changed my views after that incident. Read the end.

2147483647 Wrote:I did read the end. The response didn't seem strong. You're still seem end-result oriented, just that you redefined the boundaries you are willing to overstep to achieve it. But I apologize for being judgmental. I'll get off your tail now. If anything, I appreciate the work you do (based on the thread you had about supervising the labs), and your willingness to help strangers you hardly even know. Please don't make me feel guilty for asking you to write about conditional gene knockout if you really don't have the time to. =\

2147483647 Wrote:I question your latter comment because this is not the type of simplicity I'd expect from a teacher. I specifically bring that point out because if anything, teachers should be even more polarized about issues such as this, and thus be even more apt at providing explanations than the common student. Instead, it really appears as though you're preaching out of a Bible. Lay off the morality.

Quote:Plagiarism, as defined in the 1995 Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary, is the "use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work."

Swerve Wrote:Human experimentation is an ethically wrong method to find the cure for cancer.

2147483647 Wrote:Not if people volunteer/get paid for it.

@Beaner: Unless the material you're teaching is truly original, that definition can only at best be narrowly applied. People learn by imitation. Eventually they learn by experimentation, but assuming you're a teacher, you teach your students what's already been known. You can't make those facts truly original. Copying homework is merely obtaining it from a different source. There's seriously no difference between reading 1+1=2 from a textbook and being told by a fellow student that 1+1=2.

Quote:When your homework only consists of clerical copy-work, whether its in the textbook or your friend, you're still not going to get any "practice".

Lucida Wrote:Harrisonized, it sounds like your issue is with your schooling system more than with the topic of this thread. This isn't the first time.

Also

As you said, copying out of the textbook is no different than copying from a friend after all. Still the same amount of work in terms of writing; the only time saving is in looking for the answers.

The mere processing of information needed to find and transfer the information from the textbook to your paper constitutes practice. However (concession), so does copying your friend's work to an extent. Better than not doing it in the first place, so if you forget and it's the period before it's due, you might as well.

y0y0y0y0shi0 Wrote:It seems as if, to me, copying from the book is more beneficial than copying from a friend. When I copy from the book, I seem to read more things that aren't in the questions, but I will need for future reference. When I simply copy someone's work I don't seem to absorb the information as well.