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Dear All
A codger writes:
I cannot be the only member of this network who has done private work, for private payment, to support students. Although I am retired now, I have done some over the last 10 years or so. (Although I tailed it off in the last few years of employment, I see no harm in any of you who want to pass on the attached in doing so!) I worked mostly with Postgraduate students whose first language was not English. As you can see in the attached advertisement, I charged £20:00 an hour of my time, or £100 a day - cheap, perhaps, for a professional person of my education and experience, but expensive for most students.
The ethical dimension of this work has seemed problematic. I believe I have been scrupulous – aren’t we all? – but I am not sure that all who provide such service are. (Stop pussy-footing around Wilson! - there are sharks out there, of course, unreliable, exploitative and plagiarizing cheats.) And these must be a concern to academia, and within that to ALDinHE. In the end, ethics comes down to trustworthy professionals, and there will always be disagreements about who has transgressed which line; about which teachers have given more than legitimate help to their students; and where the centre of the grey line is.
I will give a few pointers from my own practice which may prove suggestive to some, and a scope for argument to others.
The advertisement says “What I will not do is change your ideas. They are your business. My business is to help you express your ideas better in English.” This has been varied so far as my asking an East Asian speaker (PhD candidate in Economics, or Business) “When you say ‘demand’, don’t you mean ‘supply’?” This illustrates a real knotty point - when is the content of a Thesis ‘English’ and when is it ‘ideas’? My judgement is that the student was using the wrong WORD, and that I was correcting that – not his understanding of Economics. And my being a 65 year-old English teacher gives me the background to be able to suggest some references, quotations or general background that a student may not have – e.g. that James I is an ambiguous title (Scotland 1407-1437 and UK 1603-1625), what a metaphor is, or the correction of any one of a myriad petty howlers. Here, my rationale is that I am TEACHING, and this is an ethically acceptable thing to do.
And when I do things like it – and indeed all my work – I use the Track Changes (Reviewing Toolbar) feature in Microsoft Word. I give this to the student with no alterations ‘accepted’, so s/he has to be aware of what changes I am suggesting ( and , I hope, why) before accepting them.
At times, when a student has used an inappropriate word, I will point this out - and then offer not one word to replace it, but several between which to choose.
It also allows me to preserve an ‘audit trail’. I notice in the recent correspondence a concern that Universities don’t know what is going on. Many of my clients included an acknowledgement to me in their prefatory matter, but not all. (I’m not aware that it is bound on them to acknowledge what I do.) When a client submits a draft to me, I store it on my own computer. I then open a copy as ‘Edited …[filename]’ which is the copy I work on. This has in any case been done doing Track Changes; but I can now demonstrate more clearly and quickly what has been the effect of my work. I don’t keep both copies for much more than a year, but the 2nd one hangs around a little longer. Interestingly, I have never been challenged to supply this evidence. Does that indicate a) that I am squeaky clean; b) that my clients have never been deemed questionable; or c) that the University has never been bothered?
And that takes me back to an earlier point: the whole system relies on the twin values of trust and professionalism. Things DO go wrong – I’m well aware of it; but we should not get involved in witch hunts. The line between a) teaching someone who by definition knows less, and b) giving an unfair advantage by helping a student to cheat is not as clearcut as putting it like that implies. Chris Pickering has the clear example of “Buying complete essays on the other hand is a whole different ball game.” but then asks “If someone got their mum to do it for no fee would that be a different case?” In my schoolteaching days, to get help from your mum would often be admirable, particularly with weaker kids; but completely unacceptable in GCSE or A level coursework. It’s a matter of judgement, and I return to the idea of professionalism: just as hard to define as cheating; but we who are in the job have an idea of what it means.
Maybe this is all special pleading. I’ll be interested in any responses.
Peter
Peter Wilson
quondam Academic Writing and Study Skills adviser
formerly of Study Advice Service
University of Hull
(All opinions in this are purely the author’s own. And I haven’t consciously plagiarized any.)