Highly entertaining article on cheating at university The Shadow Scholar: The man who writes your students' papers tells his story. Well worth a read.
This is, needless to say, not a service provided by SFeditor.ca. And why the blurb on editing theses and dissertations emphasizes "ethical" assistance. So far, no one has asked me to help them cheat, so not a problem with which I've had to deal.
I am somewhat sympathetic to the article-writer's position that the profs who get these falsified assignments deserves them, since they are the product of bad assignment structures, poor assessment practices and a lack of proper help to students who need it. As I teach my student teachers, if they use authentic assessments, students won't want to cheat because it will be about the learning, not the grade; if they are providing formative assessments, they will be coaching students through the process, so they will know something is up if the paper that is handed in is not the one that was in process for the three weeks before; and if they are using properly designed rubrics, the sort of inflated rubbish they get from these bought papers won't pass muster. And, if universities were serious about stopping students using these services, cheating would have negative consequences for the cheaters rather than for the professors who report it.
But it is fascinating to think that that so many of these papers pass through the system without a blink. So many out there with credentials they don't deserve, certifying competencies they don't have.
My favourite term paper story is the student who handed my own term paper into me. I'd written it ten years before as an undergrad, and when another student approached me and asked if he could borrow it -- because I'd gotten an "A-" whereas he'd gotten a "C" and he wanted to see what he had to do to get an "A" next time -- I said sure. Apparently my "friend" had photocopied it and put it in his fraternity's term paper file, where it had, apparently, had a long and prosperous career as a paper in that course. Since the course was almost always taught by grad students, and that grad students only teach the course once before graduating themselves meant that the rapid turnover prevented anyone from seeing the paper twice. But then I was a grad student teaching that course and suddenly had the strangest sense of deju vu reading a student paper -- but being the compulsive hoarder I am, I actually had copies of all the papers I've ever written back to Grade 9, so I pulled mine out and sure enough, this was it.
My favourite dissertation story I only have second hand: A colleague told me that when he was in seminary he had attended a dissertation defence, his faculty using the public defence model. Apparently the appointed External on the committee had suffered an attack of appendicitis and been unable to attend at the last minute; but to the supervisor's delight, had recommended the leading German authority on the topic, who by complete coincidence, happened to be attending a conference in the neighbouring city. It had been a simple matter to contact him and have him add a short extra jog to his trip to Canada to attend the defence. The problem of course came when the newly appointed external arrived, opened the dissertation and discovered it was his dissertation. The miscreant had found his unpublished dissertation and translated it from the German, thinking, what were the odds of anyone on his committee ever finding an unpublished dissertation in another language? Again, the irony of a seminarian cheating to become a qualified man of god is hilarious; but the coincidence of the original external getting sick and being replaced by the one guy on Earth who could call it looks to me to be the direct hand of god! Mysterious but hilarious ways! Made for, apparently, a highly intense defence since the external made the point of announcing his find at the public portion of the defence, lest, I assume, someone tried to cover it up. Spectacular end to that career, I would think.
Writing advice and commentary from the editors at Essential Edits / SFeditor.ca
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Kobo becomes Publisher
News story on Kobo following Amazon's example to become a publisher as well as a book seller: http://t.co/8avHPQxT
What drives me crazy in this media frenzy about Amazon and Kobo etc "cutting out the middleman — the publishers" is that is not what is happening at all. It is a complete misstatement/ misunderstanding of what publishing is and what publishers do. This sort of coverage greatly adds to the confusion around developments in the publishing industry and increases the likelihood of new writers making serious mistakes.
When Amazon announces that it is publishing 122 new books this year, this is not an example of authors going direct to consumers, this is an example of a distributor adding a publishing house to their business. Amazon is doing, with these 122 books, everything that a publisher does — providing for cover art, book design and extensive editing — the whole 9 yards. This isn't cutting out publishers, this is joining the ranks of publishers. It's a development with all sorts of interesting implications: what if Amazon gives preference to its own titles over other publishers titles in its distribution arm. In the long term, the danger is that a few massive online distributors like Amazon may be the only market left standing, with worrisome issues about monopoly and censorship. But it is NOT a story about "eliminating the publisher".
The story that Amazon is "cutting out the middle man--the publisher"— is already long past. Amazon has been selling self-published ebooks for years. Selling self-published ebooks for which the author has found the coverart themselves and foregone editing and book design is an example of cutting out the middleman, because these books have been written but not published. (I would argue that there is an analytical difference between Arthur Slade self-publishing books that have been professionally edited, designed and have professional coverart, and the authors that Krista has been complaining about who put their books up on Amazon without even proofreading their drafts. The former is self-publishing, the latter is non-published.)
For years the public and many beginning writers have believed that publishers took an author's book, distributed it, and skimmed off 90% of the profits in the process. The steps of refereeing, editing, design, marketing, etc remain largely invisible to the public, and mere annoying barriers to many beginning authors. Media coverage of the emergence of publisher-distributors like Amazon is not helping to resolve this confusion, but rather compounds it. The result, I am afraid, is many more authors choosing to 'go with Amazon' by which they will mean uploading their unedited, underdeveoped, manuscripts rather than submitting to Amazon's publishing arm and getting (from all accounts) really good covers and editing....
What drives me crazy in this media frenzy about Amazon and Kobo etc "cutting out the middleman — the publishers" is that is not what is happening at all. It is a complete misstatement/ misunderstanding of what publishing is and what publishers do. This sort of coverage greatly adds to the confusion around developments in the publishing industry and increases the likelihood of new writers making serious mistakes.
When Amazon announces that it is publishing 122 new books this year, this is not an example of authors going direct to consumers, this is an example of a distributor adding a publishing house to their business. Amazon is doing, with these 122 books, everything that a publisher does — providing for cover art, book design and extensive editing — the whole 9 yards. This isn't cutting out publishers, this is joining the ranks of publishers. It's a development with all sorts of interesting implications: what if Amazon gives preference to its own titles over other publishers titles in its distribution arm. In the long term, the danger is that a few massive online distributors like Amazon may be the only market left standing, with worrisome issues about monopoly and censorship. But it is NOT a story about "eliminating the publisher".
The story that Amazon is "cutting out the middle man--the publisher"— is already long past. Amazon has been selling self-published ebooks for years. Selling self-published ebooks for which the author has found the coverart themselves and foregone editing and book design is an example of cutting out the middleman, because these books have been written but not published. (I would argue that there is an analytical difference between Arthur Slade self-publishing books that have been professionally edited, designed and have professional coverart, and the authors that Krista has been complaining about who put their books up on Amazon without even proofreading their drafts. The former is self-publishing, the latter is non-published.)
For years the public and many beginning writers have believed that publishers took an author's book, distributed it, and skimmed off 90% of the profits in the process. The steps of refereeing, editing, design, marketing, etc remain largely invisible to the public, and mere annoying barriers to many beginning authors. Media coverage of the emergence of publisher-distributors like Amazon is not helping to resolve this confusion, but rather compounds it. The result, I am afraid, is many more authors choosing to 'go with Amazon' by which they will mean uploading their unedited, underdeveoped, manuscripts rather than submitting to Amazon's publishing arm and getting (from all accounts) really good covers and editing....
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Word on the Street (Lethbridge) 2011
Today was the Word on the Street Festival, the first iteration for Lethbridge. On the upside, it was nice to see some version of this national event in the city; on the downside, organization left something to be desired.
My primary complaint is that the contracted organizer seemed to miss that this was supposed to be about the written word. Three quarters of the booths and activities had some other focus: ethnic food, a roller derby booth, blood donors, jazz and country musicians, ethnic dancers, face painting, and so on. I get that the organizer was trying for a festive atmosphere with lots of interesting things happening, but it did rather end up feeling more like the random collection of tables/tents one gets at the weekly farmer's market than anything remotely related to the written word.
Furthermore, the logic of setting up a bandstand and installing a country singer at one end of the block while setting up poetry readings and meet-the-author events downwind along the same block of his city-blasting sound system escapes me. At one point Tigana and I walked past what appeared to be a choir of 20 or more singers whose lips appeared to be moving but from whom we could detect no sound, given the banshee wail of the country performer. What was the point of this arrangement? If I were the choir, I would have been supremely pissed to have been asked to perform under such inappropriate conditions. I know that we certainly didn't bother even trying to listen to the various author readings, for it was clearly a hopeless endeavour. Giving priority to the bandstand over the authors seems to rather severely miss the whole point of the exercise! Why weren't the authors given the bandstand sound system, and the musicians off in the corners, instead of the other way around?
And where were the literary activities? Face paint for the kids is all well and good, but where is the instant poetry booth, the magnetic poetry board, the graffiti wall, the improve group, the word-oriented kids activities? Or adult activities, for that matter? There was nothing to involve, engage the passerby that had anything to do with writing or reading -- clearly, the organizer didn't believe words would be enough and opted for Festival Filler instead.
And Tigana burst into laughter at the sight of the heavily advertized 'bouncy house for the kids' -- it was smaller by half than our own family's backyard version, purchased from Costco; it wasn't even the size of the entrance to the bouncy house at the house party we had attended the night before. For a city-wide event, advertizing a bouncy house as the main attraction for the kids, I think we imagined something bigger than a toddler's wading pool. It was embarrassing.
I have to give some credit for organizing skype conferences with various authors; but I know it embarrassed Mary to live in a community with so few writers we had to skype in speakers. And when I talked to a couple of writers I knew forlornly manning the autograph table and asked how sales of their books had been, one Edmonton author confessed she'd only sold one book, and that to the out of town author sitting next to her.
The University bookstore did an excellent job of profiling itself as somewhere to buy books other than texts, and they were good to have copies of all the featured authors available for sale. But I can't help wondering if they broke even on the deal....
I hope the event goes again next year...but I hope the organization is a little better.
My primary complaint is that the contracted organizer seemed to miss that this was supposed to be about the written word. Three quarters of the booths and activities had some other focus: ethnic food, a roller derby booth, blood donors, jazz and country musicians, ethnic dancers, face painting, and so on. I get that the organizer was trying for a festive atmosphere with lots of interesting things happening, but it did rather end up feeling more like the random collection of tables/tents one gets at the weekly farmer's market than anything remotely related to the written word.
Furthermore, the logic of setting up a bandstand and installing a country singer at one end of the block while setting up poetry readings and meet-the-author events downwind along the same block of his city-blasting sound system escapes me. At one point Tigana and I walked past what appeared to be a choir of 20 or more singers whose lips appeared to be moving but from whom we could detect no sound, given the banshee wail of the country performer. What was the point of this arrangement? If I were the choir, I would have been supremely pissed to have been asked to perform under such inappropriate conditions. I know that we certainly didn't bother even trying to listen to the various author readings, for it was clearly a hopeless endeavour. Giving priority to the bandstand over the authors seems to rather severely miss the whole point of the exercise! Why weren't the authors given the bandstand sound system, and the musicians off in the corners, instead of the other way around?
And where were the literary activities? Face paint for the kids is all well and good, but where is the instant poetry booth, the magnetic poetry board, the graffiti wall, the improve group, the word-oriented kids activities? Or adult activities, for that matter? There was nothing to involve, engage the passerby that had anything to do with writing or reading -- clearly, the organizer didn't believe words would be enough and opted for Festival Filler instead.
And Tigana burst into laughter at the sight of the heavily advertized 'bouncy house for the kids' -- it was smaller by half than our own family's backyard version, purchased from Costco; it wasn't even the size of the entrance to the bouncy house at the house party we had attended the night before. For a city-wide event, advertizing a bouncy house as the main attraction for the kids, I think we imagined something bigger than a toddler's wading pool. It was embarrassing.
I have to give some credit for organizing skype conferences with various authors; but I know it embarrassed Mary to live in a community with so few writers we had to skype in speakers. And when I talked to a couple of writers I knew forlornly manning the autograph table and asked how sales of their books had been, one Edmonton author confessed she'd only sold one book, and that to the out of town author sitting next to her.
The University bookstore did an excellent job of profiling itself as somewhere to buy books other than texts, and they were good to have copies of all the featured authors available for sale. But I can't help wondering if they broke even on the deal....
I hope the event goes again next year...but I hope the organization is a little better.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Too Much Tracking
I've been editing for a while now, and I generally use "track changes" in Word as the best way to add to, delete from, and comment on a manuscript. As I was finishing up a document recently, however, the damn program kept crashing on me every 8 minutes or so. Very frustrating. I took my computer into my IT guys, and their suggestion was simply to upgrade to the most recent version of Word, since it seemed likely my current Word had corrupted somewhere. Okay, fair enough. Slight nusiance to have to reconfigure all my personal preferences and menu options and so on, but needs must. And on the whole, I like the new MacWord interface just fine and am getting quite used to it quickly enough.
However.
One unexpected change was that when I reopened the document on which I had been working, I discovered that all of the comments had now been numbered automatically. I can see how this could be a useful feature. Several people working on the same document and wanting to discuss a comment on page 236 could now say, "comment 27" and know they were all talking about the same thing. My problem is not with the functionality of this new feature, but with a latent dysfunction -- the psychological impact -- that the software engineers failed to consider.
I like to think that I am a pretty good development editor and catch a lot of mistakes that otherwise might get missed, and that I have a lot of helpful suggestions to make. It is therefore not uncommon for me to be making three or four comments per page, over and above the usual grammatical additions and deletions. And authors have always been good with that, happy that I was doing such a thorough job. But now comes sequential numbering -- and suddenly it is unavoidably brought to the author's attention that that three or four comments per page add up to -- in this case -- 425 requested changes.
I cannot blame the author -- any author!-- for freaking a little bit at the prospect of having to address over 400 changes. It must seem completely daunting, in a way that three or four changes per page might not. Just as the journey of a thousand miles starts with but a single step, so responding to the comment on the first page, then a couple on the next, appears doable; whereas taking on all four 400 at once may sound like a good time to bail....
Anyone know how to turn comment numbering off?
However.
One unexpected change was that when I reopened the document on which I had been working, I discovered that all of the comments had now been numbered automatically. I can see how this could be a useful feature. Several people working on the same document and wanting to discuss a comment on page 236 could now say, "comment 27" and know they were all talking about the same thing. My problem is not with the functionality of this new feature, but with a latent dysfunction -- the psychological impact -- that the software engineers failed to consider.
I like to think that I am a pretty good development editor and catch a lot of mistakes that otherwise might get missed, and that I have a lot of helpful suggestions to make. It is therefore not uncommon for me to be making three or four comments per page, over and above the usual grammatical additions and deletions. And authors have always been good with that, happy that I was doing such a thorough job. But now comes sequential numbering -- and suddenly it is unavoidably brought to the author's attention that that three or four comments per page add up to -- in this case -- 425 requested changes.
I cannot blame the author -- any author!-- for freaking a little bit at the prospect of having to address over 400 changes. It must seem completely daunting, in a way that three or four changes per page might not. Just as the journey of a thousand miles starts with but a single step, so responding to the comment on the first page, then a couple on the next, appears doable; whereas taking on all four 400 at once may sound like a good time to bail....
Anyone know how to turn comment numbering off?
Interview on Editing
Interview with me on editing by Mike Plested on his regular Get Published podcast. Mike's questions covered a lot of ground and I think the interview came out rather well-- i.e., he did a good job of editing out all of my more stupid comments.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Quote of the Week
If I rave about a book I love and I have it with me, I am absolutely not going to give it to you. If I love it that much, I am going to keep it. And if I love it even more than that, the thought of you even borrowing it and maybe smudging up the dust jacket and cracking the spine makes me throw up a little in my mouth. So buy your own copy. Or pirate it.
-Sandra Kasturi, publisher, editor, poet.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
SF/Fantasy Cover Art
Interesting article on history of SF Cover Art. (Thanks to Barb Galler-Smith for pointing it out to me.)
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