Exploring Plagiarism through Pop Culture Scenarios
Description and Purpose: This is intended to be a pop culture variant of an existing plagiarism exercise where students analyze scenarios and determine whether or not the people in them plagiarized. This would likely work with characters from any/a mix of popular shows, but this set reflects the characters in Parks and Recreation. It is complete with a video clip and several scenarios intended to help students think about what to cite in-text. In combination, these exercises are intended to help students learn about plagiarism as well as where to place in-text citations.
Suggested Time: 20-25 minutes
Procedure:
Direct students to plagiarism policies and breakdown of types (on Bb).
Discuss main types and forms with them (Note: You can use an FSU-provided document for these categories):
Deliberate plagiarism: turning in an entire paper someone else wrote as their own. This includes essays purchased online.
Missing quotes: There is a citation, but a quote does not appear in quotes.
Blatant borrowing: There are no quotation marks for something online AND there is no citation.
Sloppy paraphrasing: Paraphrasing a source without including a citation.
Have students count off 1 through 5, distribute scenarios (all included below) to each group. Have them discuss for 5 minutes, with a special focus (they may refer to the aforementioned document) on the following questions:
Is this plagiarism? Why/why not?
What type of plagiarism is it?
How would you fix this?
Bring students together. Display scenarios on the board, have them verbally summarize, and discuss what they discussed. Here are my answers:
S1: Yes, Donna plagiarized. Her type is sloppy paraphrasing. Put citations in for paraphrasing and summary.
S2: Yes, Tommy plagiarized. He used deliberate plagiarism by purchasing a paper online. Tommy should do his own work.
S3: Yes, Ron plagiarized. This could be considered blatant borrowing, sloppy paraphrasing, or missing quotes depending on students’ interpretations of whether or not he quoted. Ron should make sure he cites all outside information.
S4: Yes, Ann plagiarized. Per page 5 of the handout we are using, you cannot turn in work for another class (or from high school) to fulfill an assignment in this course even if it is your own writing. Same rule applies to other classes. This is closest to blatant plagiarism. Although Ann is busy, she should manage her time better.
S5: No, Leslie Knope did not plagiarize, because Leslie Knope is exemplary in every way. And she actually wrote a dissertation, so please don’t do this to me.
Optional: Have students watch this clip of Parks and Recreation (this is where Andy Dwyer re-enacts his favorite movie scenes). Have students consider...
Where is Andy summarizing?
Where is Andy paraphrasing?
Where is Andy quoting?
How would these things be cited if they were in a paper?
Scenario 1
Donna Meagle gets assigned a research paper for her English class. She compiles her research and goes to the tutoring center for help with organization during the prewriting process. The tutor gives her some ideas, and she revises the paper herself. She cites her quotations in text but not paraphrasing or summary. She asks her friend to check over the paper for grammar, and her friend finds a few missing commas. She turns in her paper with a complete works cited page.
Did Donna Meagle plagiarize?
Scenario 2
Tommy Haverford gets assigned a research paper for his English class. Tommy doesn’t like writing. He’d rather be out picking up some Tommy swag, working on the business plan for his new night club, and treatin’ himself, so he goes online and finds the website buyaswankpaper.com. He pays $150 dollars to the owner of the site, who sends him an essay written by someone else. He turns this paper in on the due date.
Did Tommy Haverford plagiarize?
Scenario 3
Ron Swanson gets assigned a research paper for his English class. Ron likes patriotism and dislikes the American government, so he decides to write his paper on how the American government works against expressions of patriotism. He isn’t fond of computers, so he visits his local library. Unfortunately, Tammy One is there, so he doesn’t get any help. Ron thinks he knows enough about America, so he types ten pages on his typewriter and winds up largely paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence. He also adds some quotes from his favorite Western movie.
Did Ron Swanson plagiarize?
Scenario 4
Ann Perkins gets assigned a paper for her nursing class that requires no outside source materials. She writes the paper, citing her own experiences at the hospital. She also relies on some common knowledge, like names of diseases and medical equipment, the location of the heart in the human body, and the usual method for taking blood pressure. Ann turns this paper in to her instructor. When she is assigned a similar assignment in her English class, she is on clinical rotations and has no time to write a paper, so she turns in the same assignment to her English teacher.
Did Ann Perkins plagiarize?
Scenario 5
Leslie Knope gets assigned a research paper for her history course, Influential Women of Pawnee. Leslie Knope reads approximately 3,000 pages of source materials in the library. Knowing she is unfamiliar with citations, she visits the RWC. Her tutor helps her with organization and suggests some wording for her topic sentences in addition to helping her with APA formatting. Although her teacher only asked for 10 pages, Leslie Knope (in her usual fashion) turns in a 120-page paper with 50 outside sources, all of which are documented in-text (paraphrasing, summarizing, and quotes) and on the works cited page.
Did Leslie Knope plagiarize?