Honor Coding: Analogies and Algorithms in PlagiarismDetection Elizabeth Losh University of Californi

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Honor CodingAnalogies and Algorithms in
Plagiarism-Detection Elizabeth LoshUniversity
of California, Irvine
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• How does the meaning of these words change with
  the advent of electronic distributed networks?
• Academic Labor
• Academic Freedom
• Academic Honesty
• And these more generally . . .?
• Labor
• Freedom
• Honesty

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• The current two cultures problem
• The culture of knowledge
• The culture of information

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Metal Detectors

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Drug Tests

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• Metal Detectors at Airports
• Purpose is primarily detection
• Operates in public space
• Applies to all equally
• Labor is lessened by the machine
• Guilty parties are manifestly guilty
  (terrorists)

• Drug Testing
• Purpose is primarily diagnosis
• Operates in private space
• Objectifies one party and elevates the other to
  expert
• Labor is created by the machine
• Possibility of false positives

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Fingerprint Matching

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Radar Screens

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Why is Tool Literacy dominating the debate?

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Rebecca Moore Howard on Patchwriting

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How do we judge the most artful fabricator?

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What about the academic labor of students?
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What does academic credit or a university diploma
signify?
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The Honor Code Approach
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Is this the best way to learn?
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Does it recognize the social dimension of
literacy and the difficulties of negotiating
public/private distinctions?
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In teaching composition, do we want to emphasize
practices or principles?
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What does honor mean in our culture?
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• What does a rhetoric of integrity suggest?
• In relationship to diversity
• In relationship to
• political correctness

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• What happens to the rift between the two
  cultures?
• The culture of knowledge
• The culture of information

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• The choice to license turnitin.com

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Making deals with proprietary technologies

How do universities create certain kinds of
winners and losers and legitimate certain
intellectual property regimes?
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Thinking more about software . . .
Is this, as Ted Nelson might say, a legacy of the
cut-and-paste algorithm itself? How do our
choices about document production software have
resonance when the rules are made in places like
Xerox, Microsoft, and Google?