Practices Instructors Notice

Instructors know their discipline very well, and they have considerable experience reading scholarly works. As a result, when reading a student paper, faculty often notice when either ideas or wording comes from another source.

Here are several common practices that instructors might notice.

Content

Ideas expressed reflect researchers known to the instructor.
Ideas attributed to a researcher, but instructor is surprised the research said what is claimed.
Paper uses concepts, arguments, terminology, phrasing that suggest substantially more or different background that what has been covered in class.
An unusual or incorrect problem solution is found on multiple papers.

Example:

When researchers submit papers to journals or conferences, the manuscripts are usually sent to reviewers for review and feedback.

In many context, work is "double blind":
- Author not told who the reviewers are.
- Reviewers not told who the author is.
In many cases, when I get "anonymous" papers to review, I recognize the work and can infer the authors.

Style

Writing style changes from one part of a paper to another.
Paper uses words that students are unlikely to know.
Argument given is familiar to instructor.

created 17 August 2013
last revised 20 August 2013 previous next