Plagiarism and Group Work

I wonder if anyone has been in my situation, here's the story:

Basically i'm in my final year studying business management, should get a 2:1. In this course most of the work is group work. We had an assignment to do on immigration which was ONLY 15% of the module and we had to do it groups of 3. In my group i had a girl who was from greece, who's english wasn't all that great but she had good research skills and i had a bloke who's over 50 years old, very nice guy, been working with him for over 2 and half years, very clever too. I was the perfect definition for average, i was not particularly great in anything but my english was better than both of them.

Anyway we decided that the greek girl does only the research regarding immigration. When she's done that, she gives the links to me, i check if they will be suitable for our project. I look through the dozens of links and i copy and paste relevant informatiom which i referenced at the bottom. We did this so the 50 year old guy can use the information to argue his points and basically do the actual assignment. After he done this, it's my job to check for grammer errors, refernces and then submit the work. We thought it was great idea, we would be fully utilizing our skills which in return would get us a good grade. There is nothing wrong with this apporach as it is group work and everyone is happy.

Anyway it appeared that the 50 year old guy actually copied and pasted 50% of the work from a site which wasn't referenced but as i was responsible for referencing, i made sure every book, journal, site we read was in the bibliography and the site he used was there. lol So now the greek girl and myself who are totally innocent will have to be punished because of the stupid mistake the old guy made because it is group work and we're all responsible.

i told the lecturers not to punish the girl but they said they have to because of group work but i was hoping the old guy would say the same thing for me but he keopt silent. I thought he'd have the decency to apologise to me and the girl but NO, now possibly our degree means nothing.

I'm thinking of packing it all in, drop out and do the 3rd year again at different uni, anyone know if this is possible?

Reply 1

john williams

15

LOL dont be such a drama queen its only 15% and they have to be strict about these things, tho there should be some appeal procedures.

HOWEVER from your post above you seem to have made the old man do all the bulk of the work and your justifying it by saying you did referencing and handed it in (which isnt much), so its your own fault.

Reply 2

Ivor Biggun

OP

john williams

LOL dont be such a drama queen its only 15% and they have to be strict about these things, tho there should be some appeal procedures.

HOWEVER from your post above you seem to have made the old man do all the bulk of the work and your justifying it by saying you did referencing and handed it in (which isnt much), so its your own fault.

yeah but the thing was he didn't like group work and was more than happy to do it. I mean he was happy to do the MAIN work but surely if you aren't happy, you just tell me but he didn't do that. I defnitely blame myself for the approach but do i deserved to be labelled a cheat?

Reply 3

Apricot Fairy

16

Didn't you say it was your job to check the references after he'd written it? In which case you probably should have realised.

Reply 4

Fusion

20

group work is really unfair because other people can screw up their bit and then effect your grades and degree classification. I had to threaten some guy once because he was completely gonna f*** up the whole group project (worth 15%) so I said if you don't do what your supposed to do and we end up messing up I'll beat you up. Simple as and he ended up doing his bit!

Reply 5

Ivor Biggun

OP

susiemakemeblue

Didn't you say it was your job to check the references after he'd written it? In which case you probably should have realised.

yeah thats right but because i read so much stuff, i just didn't realise. The site he copied his work from was actually an essay by someone, the work was already refernced. I just assumed it was his work and he refernced it. The thing is, i've been working with the guy for over 2 years, good friends, i would trust him totally in everything, he is really clever, never in a million years i'd think he would do such a thing. Thats the mentality i had which was the problem.

Plagiarism and Group Work

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