Course Wayne State University College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs (CULMA) Department of Interdisciplinary Studies (DIS) Fall 2004 semester Creativity: Building the New, ISP 5660, 3 cr or  4 cr	Instructor
	David R. Bowen 2311 A/AB Wayne State University Detroit, MI 48202	Daytime tel: (313) 577-1498 Evening tel: (248) 549-8518 At Ford: 313-390-2155 FAX: (313) 577-8585 Home Page:     http://www.is.wayne.edu/drbowen Email: d.r.bowen@wayne.edu

Last updated: 12/16/04
Link back to course Welcome

Syllabus, ISP 5660
Creativity: Building the New

Contents:

• Content, Overall Schedule, Textbooks
• Instructor and Office Hours
• Grading and grading scales
• Course information form (not ready yet) Email account, Online Grade Reports and Course Passwords
• Important Dates
• Assignment Schedule
• Class Meetings
• Assignment Descriptions
• Plagiarism

Content and Overall Schedule. For detailed assignments and schedules, see the "Assignments" page on the course web site.

There is an overview of the course below, for those taking the course for undergraduate credit, and also attending the four required class meetings. If you are taking the course for graduate credit, and/or if you do not attend the four required class meetings, see the additional assignments after the overview.

Three-credit course:

1. Week 1. What do we mean by Creativity?
   1. There is an initial description of Creativity offered in the web page, "What is Creativity?" (see the link from the course "jump page"). This is a common although not universal description. There is no black-and-white definition of creativity that everyone agrees to.
   2. Students develop their own working description, and describe at least one creative person they know, both through postings in the computer conference.
2. Weeks 2 - 6. A survey of Creativity
   1. There is an initial class meeting to demonstrate the web site and computer conference, and to go over the assignments and content of the course.
   2. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in Creativity, reports on a study of ninety-one twentieth-century creators. the study is based on in-depth interviews. This technique allows a more uniform analysis than one based, for example, on historical sources, or on autobiographical writings, which are not uniform for person to person. On the other hand, the sample cannot be as selective as a case-study approach, and we cannot be as sure of the judgment of history about the creativity of the participants. However, the uniform interview approach and the large sample size allow firm conclusions to be drawn about common elements. Csikszentmihalyi also breaks the sample down into broad domains of creative activity, and finds that while there are common elements across fields, there are also consistent differences.
   3. Csikszentmihalyi also adopts what he calls a Systems View of creativity. This recognizes a dilemma for creativity researchers; they often cannot independently understand what it is about a particular development that makes it creative, particularly in a field that is far from their own area of expertise. Therefore, they must rely on people in that field to evaluate the creative nature of a development. In some fields, such as Physics, there is a relatively precise, numerical standard for which creative theory explains facts better. Hence it is easier to measure what is a change, and which changes are successful. Csikszentmihalyi remarks that in his own field, Psychology, there are no such clear metrics, and different schools of thought will not agree. So, the nature of the field influences how changes can be evaluated, or even detected or perceived.
   4. Also, Creativity applies its conclusions as to how we can make our own lives more creative, and even why we might want to.
   5. Participation in the computer conference continues throughout the semester. (moved from first week to here)
   6. Essay 1 is due. The essays are described below, and there is a separate web page for essay topics.
3. Weeks 7 - 10. Corporate Creativity, or creativity in the business world.
   1. In their book Corporate Creativity, the authors Robinson and Stern give many case studies of creativity and innovation in the business world. The Creativity here ranges from minor innovations ("little c" creativity) to the creation of whole new industries ("big C" creativity), in contrast to Gardner's focus on "big C" creativity. While the conclusions are often startling from a business perspective, they are generally consistent with Gardner's conclusions from his case study approach.
   2. Essay 2 is due.
4. Weeks 11 - 15: Methods in Creativity, and a study of highly creative people, people who changed our culture
   1. Howard Gardner, in Creating Minds, starts out with a survey of methods that have been applied to the study of Creativity. Whatever method of study a researcher uses, s/he usually relies on experts in that field of work to assess the creativity of specific people and products.
   2. The largest part of Creating Minds is a series of case studies of creative individuals of the modern era. Gardner also draws conclusions from these case studies about the general nature of creating and creativity. Again, these conclusions are common within the field, although not universal. Elsewhere, Gardner writes that were he to choose a second rank of creative individuals, or to focus more on individual works instead of careers, there would be disagreements over how creative his choices really were.
   3. Essay 3 is due.

Four-credit course. The four-credit course follows the schedule above, and in addition: weeks 2 - 15: Work on a personal interest in the area of Creativity

1. During the semester, students will choose a fourth book with the approval of the Instructor, and read this fourth book. A list of pre-approved choices for the fourth book is given below, but books outside this list of your own choice can also be used, with the approval of the Instructor.
2. Students will choose a final topic for Essay 4, with the approval of the Instructor.
3. Essay 4 is due at the end of classes.

Graduate Assignments: If you are taking the course for graduate credit, for either three or four credits, you are assigned an additional book and an additional essay.

Assignment to make up missed face-to-face classes: If you miss more than one of the four required course meetings, you are assigned an additional essay from the list of topics, but not an additional book. Note, for example, that a graduate student taking the course for four credits and missing two or more of the required meetings, is assigned a total of five books and six essays.

ISP 5660 Textbooks

All textbooks below are required, and are in at the WSU Barnes and Noble Campus Bookstore, although there are many other places where you can buy them. WARNING: do not try to buy the first book, Creativity, online, since the slow delivery time can seriously delay your being able to start the reading. These books are available at many local bookstores.

1. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (paper), Harper Perennial / Harper Collins, New York NY, 1997. ISBN 0-06-092820-4
2. Alan G. Robinson & Sam Stern, Corporate Creativity: How Innovation and Improvement Actually Happen, pub. Berrett-Koehler Publishers (San Francisco) 1997 (paperback if available). ISBN (hardbound) 1-57675-009-4
3. Howard Gardner, Creating Minds, pub. Basic Books 1993 (paperback). ISBN 0-465-01454-2

Pre-approved choices for fourth (and fifth, if needed) book for four-credit courses. You can choose any of the books in the list below as your fourth book, and just inform the Instructor of your choice. If you choose a book not on the list below, you must get the Instructor's approval first.

* - I also have reading questions for the three books marked below with asterisks (*)

1. * The HP Way. Hewlett Packard has been very successful, a market leader, and consistently innovative.
2. * Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Peter Drucker is one of the foremost business "gurus." Here, he speaks forcefully for the need for innovation, gives many case histories, and describes methods for innovation. He argues against the idea of innovators as risk-takers. "Big C" creativity, he argues, the type that creates a whole new product, is unreliable for business purposes.
3. The Nature of Creativity, Cambridge University Press 1988. Research papers on creativity. Apparently out of print, but can be found in large libraries.. A survey of academic approaches to creativity. The contributions of society are analyzed.
4. John Kao, Jamming. pub. HarperCollins, 1996. A quick tour of management and business techniques to foster creativity and innovation. Makes use of analogy to "jamming" by jazz musicians.
5. Daniel Goleman et al., The Creative Spirit, pub. by Dutton and Penguin USA 1992. Companion to a PBS series on creativity. A survey of creativity in art and culture, children and business.
6. Rollo May, The Courage to Create, pub W.W. Norton & Co 1994 (first published in 1975). Rollo May is a psychoanalyst who is also an artist, and here he describes artistic and cultural creativity from both perspectives. A large part of the courage here is making a full commitment to a domain of endeavor.
7. Tom Peters, Liberation Management, pub Fawcett Columbine 1992. I haven't read this one yet, but Tom Peters is another business "guru." The book advocates "Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nineties" (the quote here is the subtitle). Something like this was implemented by Chrysler to develop the Viper supercar in record time. But this way-out thinking may also have gone too far, perhaps contributing to the "stock market bubble," for example. At this point, I don't know whether or not this is correct.
8. Robert Lutz, Guts pub Wiley 1998. A Chrysler VP (now at General Motors) given a lot of credit for innovation and creativity in the automobile industry, tells what he did and how he did it. An iconoclastic and passionate presentation.
9. * Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow pub. Harper and Row 1990. Presents Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "flow" as optimal experience. Based on extensive research on everyday lives of a large number of people.  This is the work on "everyday" creativity that Csikszentmihalyi is famous for, but the book does not really do the concept justice. I liked the audotape better, and Finding Flow is also a very good description.
10. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow pub. Basic Books 1997. A detailed experimental study of how people find meaning in everyday lives. Also, how to increase the level of creativity or "flow" in your own life. An excellent choice if you want to pursue your personal creativity.
11. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Isabella Selega Csikszentmihalyi, editors, Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness pub Cambridge University Press 1988 (and later dates for paperback). Research studies by the editors and others on the Flow experience.
12. Ed Frank Barron et al., Creators on Creating pub. Tarcher/Putnam 1997. Individual creators, classical to contemporary, tell their own stories of how they create. Also has an extensive introduction on the nature of creativity and creativity research.
13. Ed. Margaret A. Boden, Dimensions of Creativity, pub MIT Press 1994. A cognitive approach, seeking to understand the creative process in some detail.
14. Ed. Steven M. Smith, Thomas B. Ward and Ronald A. Finke, The Creative Cognition Approach, pub MIT Press 1995. Also takes a cognitive approach.
15. Teresa Amabile, Creativity in Context, pub Westview Press (Perseus) 1996. The negative effects of external motivation on creativity, and creative business environments.
16. Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, Basic Books 2002. On often-cited description of how creative people create opportunities for creativity, innovation and growth in urban areas.
17. Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life. a Practical Guide. Simon and Schuster 2003. By the best-known contemporary American modern dance choreographer, an artistic heir to Martha Graham.
18. Philip Sandblom, Creativity and Disease: How Illness Affects Literature, Art and Music, pub Marion Boyars 1997.

Again, you can definitely go outside of this list. If you do, you need my approval, and I will want more than an author, title, publisher and date of publication. Give me a paragraph to read about the content, say from a book review. You can find books and this information in libraries, or at amazon.com, or other places. If you have a particular interest, ask me for help in finding a suitable book.

Instructor and Office Hours

The Instructor is David Bowen / Department of Interdisciplinary Studies / Science and Technology Division.

Assignment listing: the ISP 5660 course grade will be calculated as follows:

Grading Scale

The "-" range for a grade is the lower three points, and gets averaged at the middle. For example, A- is 90 to 92 and gets averaged as 91. The "+" for a grade is the top three points, and gets averaged at the middle. For example, B+ is 87 to 89 and gets averaged as 88. A grade of 100 is an A+. Note that the highest grade recognized by the University is A.

NOTE 1: If you want to drop a course, you should withdraw officially using an official Drop/Add form. If you simply stop attending, you are supposed to receive a grade of "X", or possibly "I" if you have completed most of the work. You cannot graduate with these grades on your records, so you will have to retake the courses.

NOTE 2: I will allow you to redo assignments and turn in missing work after the course is over. Such work will not appear in your regular grade, but it will be taken into account in a Change of Grade, and it will eventually appear on your official transcript. The University will allow me to file a Change of Grade up to one calendar year after the end of the semester in which you took the course. For this course, that is through the end of the Fall 2005 semester. I will not accept major assignments during the last month of this period. If you are redoing an assignment, the original assignment with my comments and grades must be turned in along with the redone assignment.

Course information form

Fill out the Course Information Form on the course web site, hopefully tonight but no later than Friday September 24. You access the form using your first name, last name (as they are registered with the University) and your password. I have set your initial password to your AccessID. If you say that you are registered for the three credit version, when in fact you are registered for the four credit version, or vice versa, that will create problems for you and me at the end of the semester. The telephone numbers should be current and valid. The email address you give should be for an account that you check regularly. If you do not yet have an email account, put "none" for the address, update the form when you do have an account set up, and email me that you have updated the form..

Email Account

You will need an email account for this course. All WSU students are provided free Internet email (and dial-up Internet access). You can, however, use any Internet email account (an email account with "@" in the address).

You will also need world wide web access to take this course. This can be from a home computer, a WSU lab computer, a computer at your local library, or any other site with world wide web access.

Weekly Reports

There is a web form to fill out and submit each week after the first week of classes. The web form will tell me how you are doing in the course. This will not be graded for content, but only for whether or not you turn them in on time.

On-line Grade Reports

There will be a link on the course web site for on-line grade reports. These reports will let you look at your line in my grade book. This feature has been very popular with most students, and is the earliest way that you can find out about your grades for assignments and for the course. This is available by default. If you want to turn the online grade reports off, contact me.

To get an on-line grade report, you will enter your first and last names, and your password.

Course passwords

You will have several IDs and passwords for this course:

1. Your UserID and password for your Internet Service Provider
2. Your UserID and password for the computer conference
3. Your password for on-line grade reports, if enabled

It can be a problem to keep all of these straight. Be aware that you can choose #2 and #3 to match #1, if you want. Ask me for details.

Important Dates

Dates of major assignments and evaluations:

NOTE: Near the end of the semester, in the event that some of your work is incomplete, or appears to be incomplete, it is important that I can get in touch with you. Make sure that my information for your telephone number(s) and email address are up to date!

Other important dates:

• Tuesday September 7: Classes begin.
• Tuesday September - Monday September 20: Late open registration, $70 late fee
• Monday September 20: Last day to file certificate or degree applications
• Monday November 8 - Friday December 17: Priority Registration for Winter Term.
• Tuesday Nov 23: day scheduled as a Thursday (i.e. go to your Thursday classes, not your Tuesday classes today).
• Wednesday November 24: day scheduled as a Friday. (i.e. go to your Friday classes, not your Wednesday classes today).
• Wednesday December 15: last day of classes.
• Thursday December 16: Study Day. No classes or exams.
• Thursday December 16: Commencement
• Friday December 17 - Thursday December 23: Finals.

Assignment Schedule:

Late Assignments:

With some exceptions, I will accept late assignments with no reduction in credit. However, ISP 5660 Essays 1 and 2 must be in no later than 11/19 in order to count in the regular course grade (they will be accepted after these dates for a change of grade after the regular grades. The file test and the three initial postings will not be accepted after 10/1. Here are the assignments that will not be accepted after their due dates:

• Weekly course reports
• Conference postings will not be accepted for inclusion in the regular course grade after 12/10. The computer conference can still be used after this date, for a Change of Grade.

NOTE: You should never just stop working on a WSU course; nothing but bad can happen to you. The single exception is a serious (life threatening) illness or other health situation, for you or a close relative. In this case, you should ask about a Medical Withdrawal. But otherwise, if circumstances pile up and you simply cannot finish, you should always discuss the situation with the Instructor.

Class Meetings.

All class meetings will be on Saturday mornings, and on campus.

• Saturday September 11, 9 AM - Noon in 223 State Hall on campus. Alternative time and location for this first meeting only: Wednesday, September 15 in 223 State Hall on campus. Topics:
  • Creativity as a course topic
  • Course syllabus: textbooks and assignments
  • Taking an online class
  • Course web site - the course hub
    • Online course information form
    • Online grade reports
    • Online discussion forum
    • Submitting homework via email, and getting it back
    • Examples of writing from past classes - putting your writing on the course web site
  • Checking software compatibility.
• Saturday October 23, 9 - 11 AM in 223 State Hall on campus. Topics:
  • Technical issues for online students
  • Review of access and compatibility checks
  • Initial ideas about Creativity
  • Assignment details
  • Writing for the Creativity course
• Saturday November 20, 9 - 11 AM in 223 State Hall on campus. Topics:
  • Review of readings so far
  • Creativity as a course topic (again)
  • Types of Creativity
  • Research on Creativity
• Saturday December 11, 10 AM - Noon in 223 State Hall on campus. Topics:
  • Review of readings so far
  • Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET)
  • Discussion: what I like about Creativity. What I dislike. Becoming more creative personally.
  • Finishing up the semester.
    • What is an Incomplete (grade of I)? Do you need an I? Alternatives to the I.

Agendas will be posted on the course web site, and updated to show what actually occurred during the class. Whether or not you attend a meeting, you will be responsible for the material in the updated agendas.

Assignment descriptions:

Essays. Essays are to be four to six pages, double-spaced, 10- or 12-point font, top and bottom margins one inch, right and left margins one-and-one-half inch, or the equivalent. Essay topics are posted on a separate web page. There will be approximately five topic choices for each essay; choose one. A creative work is also acceptable for Essay 4. In this case, a preliminary description is also required. A contribution to the web site for this course is also an acceptable alternative. Call or email the Instructor to work out a project.

The essays should be written for a general reader, say a magazine reader or a newspaper reader. Specifically, the essay should not be written "to" the Instructor. A general reader will not be interested in whether or not the essay was written for a particular course, or to fill a particular assignment, so these aspects of the assignment should not be mentioned in the essay. If you cannot get interested in your Essay, pretend that you are.

The essay should have the following parts, in this order:

• Header, a separate page, not counted in the four to six pages, containing
  • Your name
  • Assignment (which essay this is)
  • Topic (both the number and statement of the topic)
  • Course, semester, year.
• A descriptive Title; that is, a title that describes the specific contents of the essay. "Creativity Essay" is not descriptive in this sense, because it is general and does not describe the specific content.
• An Introduction that describes what the reader should expect in the essay; a road map for the essay. Snappy titles should not count extra, but they do make life more interesting for me, and I am often grateful for that.
• A Body that contains the information in the essay and addresses the specific points above. The Body should contain detail to support the general points. References to readings can be made "in line", for example "as Howard Gardner states on Pg 37 of Creating Minds". Titles of books should be underlined; other sources, including conference postings, should be in quotation marks.
• A Conclusion that summarizes the main points of the essay as a whole. New material should not be introduced in the conclusion; the conclusion should be a summary of material presented earlier. New material in the Conclusion is a signal that you have not finished thinking about your Essay. The 

A cover page is not necessary, but the header is necessary.

Essays will be graded on the following basis:

• Content. 40%. Content includes the ideas, arguments, concepts, and references to the readings and the computer conference discussion.
• Form 40%. Form includes the presence of the parts Header, Title, Introduction, Body, Conclusion and Bibliography, and the organization of the essay in a logical and progressive manner. The essay should flow well or naturally from one topic and part to the next. The essay should have a consistent voice (first person, second person, etc.) and tense (past, present, future) throughout.
• Mechanics 20%. This includes grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other mechanical aspects of writing. It also includes having the header described above, and the correct file name.

NOTE 1: The essay form counts for a major part of the essay grade. It requires careful reading in the textbook, and careful writing. You should read the description of the form carefully, and clear up any questions or doubts you may have about it, before starting to write an essay. The requirements for the Introduction and Conclusion mean that you should have written a draft or an outline or at least thought through your content before you begin to write the final version.

NOTE 2: Your Essay should be based on the textbook reading. These Essays are not simply book reports, which describe the content, nor are they research papers, which refer to other books that you find on your own. Each of your Essays should use the reading in that textbook to focus on the topic you choose from the list of topics.

Naming your Essay files

In this course, you will turn your Essays in as word-processing files attached to email messages. If two people use the same file name, then the file that is turned in second will replace the file that is turned in first. Also, as the Instructor, I want the file name to tell me about the person and the assignment. Therefore, make up the names for your homework files with the following parts, in order:

• Your three initials. If you do not have a middle initial, use the underline or understroke character _, <shift>hyphen on the keyboard.
• The Essay number (1, 2, 3 or 4)
• "cf4" to indicate Creativity, Fall 2004
• Normal extension for your word processor. (Note: Macs do not use file extensions, so Mac files would not have extensions.)

So for example, since my middle initial is "R" and I use Microsoft Word, the file name for my Essay 2 would be drb2cf4.doc

When I grade the assignments, I will add a "g" to the end of the filename and return it as an email attachment. So I would return my graded Essay with the file name drb2cf4g.doc

Why Essays?
The Department of Interdisciplinary Studies likes essay assignments because:

• A well-written essay should demonstrate completion and understanding of the reading assignments.
• A well-written essay requires thought about the topic.

We will go over the essay assignments in more detail during the first class.

Computer Conference assignments (computer conference not ready yet)

• There will be a web-based computer conference (only web browser needed). This is not a chat, where everybody has to log in at the same time, but a conference, in which you can log at any time. The conference web site will be announced later.
• Using the computer conference, contribute a minimum of five lines, on the average of twice a week after the first week, for a total for the semester of 30 (actually this is a bit more than two per week). These contributions must be substantive, concerning the readings or other points from the conference. For example, "Gee, I thought that was right on" is not substantive -- it does not make a contribution. As an alternative, you can agree with another comment, and then explain it further, extend or go beyond it, or apply it in a new way. The following special postings are included within the 30 total:
  • A self-introduction under the topic "Introduce Yourself." NOTE: This requires your understanding of how to post a message under a given topic.
  • A description of "What about Creativity is most interesting" to you. This posting must be under the appropriate topic.
  • "Creative people we know," a description of someone whom you think is creative (this person can certainly be you). Describe the person, describe how they relate to other people, and describe what they do that is creative. This posting must be under the appropriate topic
  • Post a minimum of nine times by the date in the table above
  • For students in the four-credit course, post a draft topic for Essay 4 by the date in the table above. This posting must be under the appropriate topic.
  • By the date given in the table above, go back and read your "Creative people we know" description, and say how you would change it as a result of your work in the course
  • Periodically, the Instructor will post reading questions. You must post a response to each of these questions.  These postings must be under the appropriate topics.

NOTE 1: This does NOT mean that you have to log on to the computer conference twice or three times a week. You can make multiple postings during a single session.

NOTE 2: "Under the appropriate topic" means that you must be able to find an existing message on the left-hand (yellow) side, pull up the message, and respond to it, either as "Reply" or "Reply/Quote."

NOTE 3: Postings must make use of the following techniques for helping your readers establish a context:

• If you are responding to an earlier posting, editing the title to indicate that this is a response and not the original positing
• If you are responding to an earlier posting, using "Reply/Quote" but editing out parts of the original posting that you are not responding to

Here is a summary of the required computer conferencing skills for this course:

1. Log in to computer conferencing system
2. Read NewMessages
3. Reply to new messages, including
   1. changing the Topic of the message to reflect what is new in your Reply
   2. Using Reply/Quote to establish the context for your Reply, but editing the original message to focus the context
4. Posting a message under the appropriate specific Main topic and subtopic
5. Using "Mark All Conferences Read" to keep your list of New Messages down to a reasonable size
6. Finding a message in the list of all messages (new plus old)
   1. using the list
   2. using Search

We will learn from each other. I encourage you to quote each other's postings in your Essays.

Online Citizenship

Online citizenship is: helping others online, keeping your temper online if you feel you are attacked, not talking about another person but about yourself (e.g. not "you are wrong" but "here is what I think is right"), not "hijacking" the conference, keeping your messages reasonably brief, and not quoting a whole lot of another's message, especially if your reply is only about one aspect, and doing your part in keeping the conference organized.

Weekly Course Reports

Each week after the first week of classes, you will send me a Course Report, describing your status and progress in this course. There will be an online report form on the course web site, which you will fill out to complete a report each week. These are the way that I will keep in touch with how you feel the course is working out for you, and whether or not we need to discuss how things are going. These reports will not be optional; filing one each week is part of your grade for the course. "There are many valid excuses for being late with an assignment, but there is no acceptable excuse for missing a weekly class report."

Changes to Syllabus

A course Syllabus is like a contract, but it is different in that the Syllabus is often changed during the semester (I once scheduled an exam for Thanksgiving Day!). For a face-to-face class, changes are simply announced in class. For an online class, you should always be sure where changes will be made officially. Here, official changes to the Syllabus will be announced in the course computer conference, and will also be made to the online version of the Syllabus.

What you should do in this course to get started:

• Set up computer conferencing account (details to be announced)
• Three initial postings
• Fill out online course information form (ready by the start of classes)
  
• File test (details to be announced). Can you email files to me as email attachments, and can we each read each other's files?

What you should do in this course on a regular basis:

• After the first week, file weekly course reports no matter what.
• Reading (both books and web pages) and writing as assigned.
• After the first week, check computer conference at least weekly (if it really gets cranking, two or three checks per week can be needed).
• Check course web site at least weekly.
• Check email at least weekly.
• For four-credit courses, work on the fourth book throughout the semester.

Putting this topic at the end does not imply that I think it is unimportant, but instead that I think it applies to everything in this course. In academic work, plagiarism is treated as a serious breaking of the rules. Plagiarism basically means passing off someone else's work as your own. It does not matter whether this is done on purpose or by accident, by commission or omission, from one source or from many sources; it is still plagiarism, and it is still serious. The most obvious form of plagiarism is "copying" - using another author's words, without a hint that they are not yours. Changing one or two words in a sentence still results in plagiarism. On the other hand, using quotation marks and a reference to the source is OK, since you are not passing off the work as yours. Such references can even add to an impression that you have read the assignments!  References to opinions can also be used to strengthen your arguments, since a reference makes clear that someone else feels the same way that you do.

In this course, work that contains any plagiarism will be ignored, as if it were never turned in. In order to receive credit for the assignment, another topic must be chosen, and the work completely rewritten. The assignment will also be counted as late. Note that at the end of the course, there may not be enough time to redo the work, or even to notify you, before grades are due. Therefore, plagiarism near the end of the semester can have a particularly serious effect on your grade.

If you have any doubt about what plagiarism is, make sure to ask the instructor. To be safe, make sure that you give credit to any authors you borrow from. The Department of Interdisciplinary Studies has a formal Plagiarism Policy, which describes plagiarism in detail, and describes consequences.

I feel that the main consequence of plagiarism, whether or not it is detected, is that you will not have the confidence that you can do the course work. The ability to step up in the outside world and say with confidence, "I can do that" is surely one of the primary benefits of a college-level course, and is the source of the other benefits. You may "get away" with plagiarism once or even more than once, but the main cost is that your college education, one of the best things you can do for yourself, will not have the benefits you were looking for.