Plagiarism in optional classes?

For going on 20 years now, I've taught college courses in English 101 and 102, or upper level lit. classes. I taught as a graduate assistant, graduate instructor, instructor, and here lately as an adjunct. I'm teaching two sophomore level lit. classes right now, 100% online.

I make students do a plagiarism lesson to begin the course. They have to take a detailed quiz about plagiarism and how to avoid it before the rest of the lessons open up for them to complete.

I have a total of 45 students in two courses. Right now, the count is 26 have committed plagiarism at least once. Several have committed it repeatedly, even after earning zeros on the previous plagiarized work and after my pleas to get them to withdraw before I must turn them in to the honor code council (then they'll have to pay a bunch of money to stay in school).

So what's the deal here? These lit. classes can be avoided by most majors. Why are the signing up for a class to plagiarize their way through? The classes are easy. All I'm looking for is a summary of the reading material and some contextual information about the times in which the lit. was written. Why would a student sign up for a $900 course that's totally optional and then plagiarize their way through it? They can plagiarize their way through life for free!

Submitted July 18, 2020 at 09:33AM by NotTheKevinSmith https://ift.tt/3he4QWy