Posts tagged as:

university

What happens when you plagiarize in College

July 9, 2009

PlagarismI came across a wonderful little website ‘flashpapers,’ I would link to it in the post but I don’t want to be connected with them in any way.  This website claims it will give you a fully customized paper just in time for finals!

I’m sure this is an expanding market, where teams of highly educated outsourced third world employee’s labour away to give Johnny or Lucy a paper just in time for finals.  But, the risk of being charged with plagiarism or academic fraud far outweighs the gains.  I’ve been offered extravagant amounts of money to write papers and pass students as a teaching assistant and lecturer.  In my college tutoring business I’ve also been offered money from my own students to just ’solve their paper problem’.  Each time I’ve refused, first because it is fundamentally wrong and second because of the possible ramifications.

What happens when you are caught cheating

Although I’m sure most university students all get that flyer at the beginning of the semester outlining what plagiarism is and why it’s wrong, the majority of students don’t actually know what happens to you if you are caught plagiarizing.  I’ll start by defining how plagiarism is confirmed.  Other than using software which can scan papers for plagiarized content which is illegal in some schools, there are three steps.

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Partial Attention Disorder

July 2, 2009

multitaskingYou’ve probably heard of Attention Deficit Disorder

Well I think many students have another condition that is wider spread and worse than ADD.

Are you ready for this one?

Partial Attention Disorder

In my 5 years as a teaching assistant and university tutor I’ve seen all manner of study problems.  From over studying and writing more notes than the text book has pages to notes written on napkins!

However, in my work the most common mistake I see in students study skills is a lack of adequate concentration on a single task, otherwise known as the dreaded multitasking monster or what I lovingly call ‘partial attention disorder’

Why is PPA so pervasive?

The main reason why PPA is so pervasive is because many students see multitasking as an advantage.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  For some reason, society sees the ability to perform multiple tasks badly an advantage over performing a single task properly.  If you check out Tim Ferriss’ blog he has an excellent post on multitasking and shows that ‘multitaskers’ get less accomplished than pot smokers… I’m not kidding!  I’m not condoning pot smoking as a study tool but this should show you how horrible multitasking can effect your concentration.

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