The school claims it has a staunch opposition against plagiarism. I’ve even heard faculty stating students being expelled for it. However, I know many students who have copied work multiple times and turned it in as their own.
One instance took the cake, however. In one of my classes, we had to make a commercial and a public service announcement (this could be one of many classes, actually). One student tried to pass off some work he did as his own. We were suppose to pick a product, do market research, present the product and our research, and shoot the commercial. Every week (like a handful of the students), this student came in with a different product almost every week. When it came to show some progress of our work, the student presented this:
(Drat! Commercial has been removed from YouTube!)
Here are the issues I saw:
1. The student said the that was his/her family in the commercial. However, the student didn’t look like any of them. I don’t know the student’s family situation, but any statement like that should raise some curiosity.
2. The commercials were to be 30 seconds long. When s/he presented this commercial, it was 25 seconds long.
3. On one of the shots that showed steam coming from the rice, s/he stated, “Getting that steam to come off the rice was really hard to do in After Effects.” It sounded awkward coming from this student.
4. The quality of the video file looked like it was downloaded off Youtube.
5. Right after his presentation, I did a quick search for “Panasonic Rice Cooker” on Youtube. On the first page, the full 30 second version of this commercial was uploaded (the student cut out the last 5 seconds because it showed the company that made the commercial). At the time of the class (early 2014), the upload date for that commercial was “2 years ago.” Technically, even if s/he did make this commercial, using old work for classes does count as plagiarism at this school to my understanding.
When it came time to present the final video, s/he showed a nearly 45 second commercial. The first 25 seconds of the video was this commercial. The end part showed footage that was OBVIOUSLY not shot by the student. It featured a grown white man at a bar drinking martinis, fireworks going off in the background (no fireworks had gone off in Vegas that week), and some clips that s/he claimed were shot in Rome.
S/he claimed the commercial showed that if you use the rice cooker when you are young, you will grow up to be a successful person. There was another part in the middle that “Premiere didn’t export.” (Premiere is a video editing tool from Adobe). If this part had exported, it would have made sense how an Asian toddler could grow up to be a rich white man.
Wait, there’s more!
The student’s Public Service Announcement wasn’t much better. When we were presenting our concepts for the PSA, s/he showed this sketch for the storyboard about a PSA for gay rights:
(Student’s name was blocked out)
The student went in to detail about the shots. The student pointed out things like the clock in the background and the tie of the guy in the upper-left sketch. The student even gave the characters names.
After the presentation was over, a few students asked if s/he had seen something like this before because it looked familiar. One student even stated that he had seen that on the internet, to which the student who presented played ignorance.
(You’ll notice these look familiar)
It was a College Humor piece and can easily be found on Youtube.
(“Gay Men Will Marry Your Girlfriends” Pretty funny if you ask me!)
In the end, the student didn’t show up to present his/her final project, and even turned in some Youtube download of some PSA.
This student still remains there to the day of this post. This student’s actions and works were blatantly works of plagiarizing, but I guess either the instructor didn’t care or the school wanted to look the other way because they wanted the student’s money. In the end, this is a For-Profit school.
This is an extreme case of a student trying to steal someone’s work (because it was presented), but plagiarizing is pretty common place at the school. I’ve been, and a couple others too, a hard working student who has come up with my own projects for every single class, and for those of us who took school seriously, it’s a huge slap in the face and a huge waste of our time to see plagiarized work.
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