The problem I've run into, and the problem that needs to be resolved, is the issue about plagiarism. Here's what I know: 1) Tony plagiarized. 2) He wasn't told NOT to plagiarize.
So, I'm not sure how to handle this and I guess I'm waiting to talk to Barbara this weekend, to get her thoughts. For her, as she explained, this was not a major assignment and it was the last one of the term, so she wanted the students to have some fun with it--a nice kind of end-of-the-semester project to be shared. And yet, the assignment is worth 1/5th or 20% of his final grade. I don't know--there is a disjuncture between her words and the point value she assigned to this assignment, methinks. But, perhaps that's just me.
What DON'T I want to say--well, the teacher said she didn't care if they plagiarized or not. (makes her look bad) Or, Even though he wasn't told not to plagiarize...
What do I WANT? I want this to be an occasion where I can talk about attribution policies and the differences between them on the job and in the classroom. I think I've done a good job walking the reader through the process of assemblage that Tony uses on the job, with the Competency Manual. I think I really do a good job of documenting and dramatizing how that document came into existence. The question, now, is what to say about his "The 1960s" presentation? It was easier, in some ways, before--when I didn't know the actual assignment. I guess what I'm trying to do here is pick up the pieces a bit, now that I do know the assignment and still find a way to do what I wanted to do originally--which is what? I think, just to raise awareness. To SHOW how it works in one sphere and how that method has been transported to another.
And that's the point and now it doesn't really matter whether he was told he could or not! The point is, he has transported this composing method--right-click-steal--from one sphere to the other and...and here is where I am on slimmer ice, now that I know the assignment--it doesn't work. It's not allowed. He's breaking the rules, whether his prof meant to allow him to or not.
Finally, the added information. There are two things that I want to bring to this revision, in addition to the actual assignment itself. But, first, I want to add that, since I did the "when I shared my analysis with Tony..." in the first half of the article, I think I need to do that same thing in the second part, and I think I can, with the notes from Interview 8. But, the two things:
1. Here's the part that's really interesting:
It’s kind of hard because there are really no in-text citations in a PPT presentation. So, where do you list your references. There is no way to connect to a source. You can list, at the end, all your references. But there is really no connection to which part of the speech this was, unless you did, say, a direct quote. Other than that, there is no way to accurately site a source. Anything that is published should be—that’s what I look at when I look at articles. What are the references. Where are you referencing your material from? If I look at an article and there are no references, it’s all speculation, yeah, I may agree with the idea, but who is to say that it has any validity? I think listing sources is good for giving the people that did the work some credit.
What's interesting about this? Most interesting and perhaps most important: Tony gets it. He understands, as he reveals near the end of this passage, why it's important to cite sources, why we do it. And, in fact, he doesn't just understand it in theory, he actually looks at sources. He reads Domain3--and in this publication, sources are cited in many of the articles. So, one important point to make here is that it is NOT the case that Tony doesn't understand how the rules of citation work or that we cite sources to both give credit to others (when we incorporate their words and ideas into our own work) and to establish, as Tony puts it, the "validity" of our own work.
Sidebar: why do I use sources? I feel like Tony is saying something here about the role of sources in a paper which is very common and very typical of students and people who are not academics. This view is that you use authoritative sources--to do what? The sources are supposed to "back up" or bring some level of credibility to your own words (this is the sense in which Tony seems to understand sources). For Tony, he wants to know that the people behind the article or upon whom the writer is drawing in the article know their stuff. So, we talk to students about the ways in which some sources (academic journals) are more authoritative than others (some jerk in Nebraska's personal webpage rant on...whatever). And we tell them they must have references because if they don't--well, I guess the presumption is that just your own opinion is not enough. You need to call on "experts" to help you make your argument.
But, of course, the odd thing is that we don't use sources that way--those of us who are actually participating in the discourse community, contributing to it. Or, maybe we do, but I'm not--at least, not in this article. I am using sources to do something totally different. I am using sources to frame the entire focus of the article, in the case of Brandt, in the beginning of the essay. And then I am using sources or bringing theoretical information from sources (genre repertoires/antecedent genres and assemblage) to bear on something new (Tony's two writing assignments). This is a very different use of sources. Closer, I think, to the idea of what to do with sources that comes from Ways of Reading or Joe Harris' Rewriting.
Back to Tony. So, we have these conflicting pieces of information: 1) he has plagiarized the whole thing. 2) but at the same time, he understands what sources are and why and how we use them. It is not the case, in this second half of the article, that I am going to say--well, he just didn't know or understand so we need to make sure to teach students and don't assume that they know. This may be the case for some adult students, but I'm guessing that most of the students in my study had at least some knowledge of the fact (whether from work, as in Tony's case, or from memories of school) that they needed to avoid plagiarizing. Most of us learn this stuff, albeit at a very rudimentary level, in high school: if you are going to incorporate the words and ideas of others into your own work, you must somehow give them credit.
The other point to make--he works frequently in PPT. When he does so, presumably, he doesn't have to worry much about this issue. Now he's using PPT in a different context/sphere. He says, "there are really no in-text citations in a PPT presentation" and "there is no way to accurately site a source." Well, this just isn't true. People create PPT presentations all the time and cite their sources. I have--although, it occurs to me now that I have never created a Works Cited slide in my PPT presentations. You can do endnotes or footnotes. There is a page, here, which gives instructions on how to cite sources in PPT.
There are certain sections of this presentation in which Tony quotes verbatim from Lonestar College's page (for example: slide #2, "Facts about the 1960s" is copied verbatim). There are other sections where he has patch-written (for example, the final slide is a rough paraphrase of the first paragraph on the Lonestar page).
Rebecca Moore Howard (1993) discussed one strategy writers in development use to begin learning to participate in discourse communities. “Patchwriting,” according to Howard, “involves copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym-substitutes” (p. 233, qtd. in Selber article, p. 382).
But, now that I look at this presentation again, it's definitely the case that he went elsewhere for material. Not all the pictures in his PPT presentation appear on the Lonestar page. They must come from somewhere else. It's interesting to note that Lonestar page contains information about art and architecture, fashion, etc., Tony's presentation focuses mostly or entirely on just a few categories: "events," "television," "movies," "music."
So, what has Tony done? Well, he has assembled the document. Similarities:
- I would note that like the Competency Manual, the design that contains his writing with "The 1960s" is pre-established. With the Competency Manual, he has the grid from the hospital. He has to write some text to fill into the grid. With "The 1960s," he can just choose a background for his slides and this will organize his writing. In other words, there are these pre-established containers into which he can write--in both instances. Content is something you add to a pre-existing structure.
- Writing--sheer quantity--is minimal. Words/sentences/phrases are just one element of construction (balanced, in teh case of the "The 1960s" with images).
- With the Competency Manual, he has to devise the various competencies that he will include. He needs an organizational structure and the structure he chooses is a page for each competency. With "The 1960s" he must also devise a structure, and he goes with a year-by-year approach (the Lonestar Library page was not organized this way). There will be a slide or a series of slides for each year.
The point: he shares this document with me because it's what he's good at: putting stuff together. Assemblage. And I should try to come full circle with this point. Talking about plagiarism is, in some ways, beyond the point, or should be held to the end. I should talk, more explicitly, about how the process of assemblage plays out in this Competency Manual and then compare/contrast with how it plays out with "The 1960s." (Problem: I don't have him saying a whole lot about how he created "The 1960s," do I?
The point: What he did is more important than the consequences of what he did.
(I think?) I need to steer this away from plagiarize and more towards the logic of transporting assemblage as a composing strategy. Plagiarism discussion should come last.
Of what does assemblage consist?
- Selecting Content
- Designing and Arranging (or re-arranging) Content
- Creating (new) Content
To find/re-review:
- Tony talking about "The 1960s."
- How Selber and the other dude describe the process of assemblage. Is it the three elements I've identified above?
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