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A student plagiarized something that I had written when I was a student, and then submitted it to me.
I have been a debate coach for several years now and I am also a staff member at several debate camps around the country. At debate camps, students are divided by skill level and then assigned several instructors, called lab leaders.
I was the senior lab leader for a camp in Boston and I ran a tight ship. I am not easy on my students because debate is incredibly esoteric and difficult to learn so I have to push them.
One of my pedagogical strategies is to assign them work that I know they will struggle with. There is no correct way to debate, so everyone will eventually develop their own style of argumentation but to do that, they must have a solid grasp of the fundamentals of argumentation itself. They are better served if they struggle through different types of arguments because once they understand, they understand.
One of the types of arguments I teach my students is called theory. Debate does not have formal rules, seriously you can debate about anything you want—it doesn't even have to be the topic, but theory is a type of argument that is meant to establish rules for the debate.
Students struggle with this because it is hard to conceptualize why you can debate about debate itself. Students assume that the only type of debate is topical debate. I love to teach theory debate because it is intellectually stimulating and I debated theory a lot when I was a debater.
For homework, I assigned them to write a theory shell (just a type of theory argument). Every morning I would review their homework in the dropbox and ask them questions about their submissions to see how well they accomplished the assignment.
I came across one theory shell that looked incredibly familiar. As I was reading, I felt something was off. Then I came across this (yes, this is a real screenshot of what they submitted to me-I highlighted the offending part):
Now, when they took this from a theory file someone had given them, they probably thought nothing of it. Debaters will talk about other debaters in round as evidence that a particular style of debate is good or bad. Why did that stick out to me then?
Because I am Pflugerville TH (Tillman Huett) and I wrote that as a joke several years prior. Everyone else talks about other debaters so why should I not make a jab at myself (I can't even take myself seriously).
The conversation went something like this (Jon isn't his real name):
“Hey Jon, how was the assignment last night”
“Oh it was easy, I was able to get it done quickly.”
“Awesome, that is great to hear. A lot of people struggled with the assignment, you didn't use any outside sources did you? Everything is 100% original?”
“Yeah I wrote it myself—I just didn't think it was that hard”
“Who is Pflugerville TH?”
“What?”
“You have that name in the document, who is that?”
“Oh, um, he is a debater who debates in my area.”
“No he isn’t”
“What?”
“That is me—I am Pflugerville TH.”
The entire lab went dead silent because they know that I don’t take kindly to being lied to. He couldn't even look me in the eyes. I told him to redo the assignment and assigned him additional work.
Some kid took an argument that I had written several years prior and tried to pass it off as his own.
A student plagiarized something that I had written when I was a student, and then submitted it to me.
I have been a debate coach for several years now and I am also a staff member at several debate camps around the country. At debate camps, students are divided by skill level and then assigned several instructors, called lab leaders.
I was the senior lab leader for a camp in Boston and I ran a tight ship. I am not easy on my students because debate is incredibly esoteric and difficult to learn so I have to push them.
One of my pedagogical strategies is to assign them work that I know they will struggle with. There is no correct way to debate, so everyone will eventually develop their own style of argumentation but to do that, they must have a solid grasp of the fundamentals of argumentation itself. They are better served if they struggle through different types of arguments because once they understand, they understand.
One of the types of arguments I teach my students is called theory. Debate does not have formal rules, seriously you can debate about anything you want—it doesn't even have to be the topic, but theory is a type of argument that is meant to establish rules for the debate.
Students struggle with this because it is hard to conceptualize why you can debate about debate itself. Students assume that the only type of debate is topical debate. I love to teach theory debate because it is intellectually stimulating and I debated theory a lot when I was a debater.
For homework, I assigned them to write a theory shell (just a type of theory argument). Every morning I would review their homework in the dropbox and ask them questions about their submissions to see how well they accomplished the assignment.
I came across one theory shell that looked incredibly familiar. As I was reading, I felt something was off. Then I came across this (yes, this is a real screenshot of what they submitted to me-I highlighted the offending part):
Now, when they took this from a theory file someone had given them, they probably thought nothing of it. Debaters will talk about other debaters in round as evidence that a particular style of debate is good or bad. Why did that stick out to me then?
Because I am Pflugerville TH (Tillman Huett) and I wrote that as a joke several years prior. Everyone else talks about other debaters so why should I not make a jab at myself (I can't even take myself seriously).
The conversation went something like this (Jon isn't his real name):
“Hey Jon, how was the assignment last night”
“Oh it was easy, I was able to get it done quickly.”
“Awesome, that is great to hear. A lot of people struggled with the assignment, you didn't use any outside sources did you? Everything is 100% original?”
“Yeah I wrote it myself—I just didn't think it was that hard”
“Who is Pflugerville TH?”
“What?”
“You have that name in the document, who is that?”
“Oh, um, he is a debater who debates in my area.”
“No he isn’t”
“What?”
“That is me—I am Pflugerville TH.”
The entire lab went dead silent because they know that I don’t take kindly to being lied to. He couldn't even look me in the eyes. I told him to redo the assignment and assigned him additional work.
Some kid took an argument that I had written several years prior and tried to pass it off as his own.
