CO #1 Kelsey

Class Observation #1

Composition 4B with Felicia Ciappetta

Today I observed Professor Ciappetta's composition class. As she explained to me at the beginning of the class, the students are working on a research paper. Half of the class has already finished their article reviews, so they have started writing their papers. The other half is learning how to paraphrase and summarize their articles. Ciappetta introduced the program, TurnItIn, to explain that this is a way to check for plagiarism. Students were worried that they had a score that was too high to be acceptable. In order to address this, Ciappetta made suggestions about how to avoid plagiarism. These included using a thesaurus, changing from an active to a passive voice and taking out details that did not seem important. She then asked me if I had any suggestions for the class. I said that sometimes, I will switch around the sentences in a way that still makes sense put forces me to put it into my own words. I also said that TurnItIn will often give you a high plagiarism score if you include the citations in your check. By turning this feature off, you get a lower score and are more encouraged that your work is your own because citations are not part of the plagiarism score. Students were still a bit worried about high scores and Ciappetta explained that for this paper, they are still learning so she will not be as harsh as normal professor would be, but that they need to learn these techniques for the future. For the rest of the class, they continued to work on their papers, asking for assistance when they needed it.