One of the unfortunate aspects of this panic is that it discourages students from serious written engagement with their readings. This undermines the core learning activity of university education. In a forthcoming chapter in P. Boscolo & P. Klein (Eds.), Writing as a learning activity, we have quantitative evidence that writing about reading improves the expressed thought in student writing. Below I paste the opening paragraph.
Best,
Chuck
Bazerman, C., Simon, K, & Pieng, P. (forthcoming). Writing about reading to advance thinking: A study in situated cognitive development. P. Boscolo & P. Klein (Eds.), Writing as a learning activity. EBrill.
As teachers, we would like to think that students’ thinking improves through discussing texts they find meaningful. The belief that becoming familiar with concepts through reading and rehearsing those concepts in challenging writing tasks will lead to integration of the concepts into the developing intellect of the student, provides the rationale for reading and writing assignments in many university subjects, where students are asked to become familiar with theoretical concepts of a field and use those concepts to discuss issues and solve problems. At this moment when
media are transforming the modes of academic reading and writing from traditional print to digital multimedia hypertext, a well-grounded and detailed understanding of conceptual learning from reading realized through writing assignments would serve us well in designing assignments mediated in new ways. As a by-product of previous study looking at the role of genres in cognitive development (Bazerman, Simon, Ewing & Pieng, forthcoming), we have found evidence of increased cognitive sophistication when students in their writing engage the meanings they find in texts in relation to problems and experiences they are attempting to work through. This evidence confirms that conceptual development occurs through writing about reading and gives us insight into the processes by which intellectual growth occurs.
----- Original Message -----
From: Stefanie Haacke <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 9:51 am
Subject: Re: Plagiarism panics welcomed
To: [log in to unmask]
> Dear John,
>
> the German federal gouvernment has recently funded a research project
> on cheating in higher education:
> http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/soz/fairuse/. Maybe you find some useful
> information there.
>
> Best regards
>
> Stefanie
>
> ---
> Stefanie Haacke
> Universität Bielefeld - SL_K5
> Lehren & Lernen / Schreiblabor
> Universitätsstraße 25
> D-33615 Bielefeld
>
> Tel: xx49 - (0)521 - 106-4698
> www.uni-bielefeld.de/Lehren-Lernen
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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