I thought I would post this here since there are a lot of instructors on this forum and get some opinions. I am in a graduate level class at Ashford in which the new week for class started as of yesterday. One of my classmates, who is historically late on posting anything, suddenly became the first person to post a response to the discussion questions for the week. After taking a quick look, I noticed right away that two of the words in her response have blue underlined hyperlinks. When you scroll over the words, it lists a connection to Investopedia.com. I clicked on one of these words and it took me to a paragraph on this site in which she obviously copied and pasted a significant portion of her answer. Of course, this is plagiarism as there is no reference to this site on her posting, no mention of the author, no nothing. It really bothers me that someone at any level would resort to this, especially in a graduate level finance class. I was wondering if I should bring this to the instructor's attention or wait for a little while as it is pretty obvious. (At least to me it was). Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated. Rich
I have had students bring these issues to my attention in the past (they seen the post before me) and I am always thankful. I would send an email such as: Dear Instructor, I am sure you have noticed the hyperlinks within Mr/Ms Cheater's post. It is concerning that a fellow student at this level would (1) copy/paste information directly from a website and (2) do it from an unreliable source such as XXX.com.
Randell is correct with his answer, as the Professor may have over 100 plus students, and is not able to catch such wrong-doings.
Thanks guys. Your responses are right in line with my opinion on how to handle this. I just wanted to make sure I was not thinking out of bounds on this.
It really bothers me that someone at any level would resort to this, especially in a graduate level finance class.
