blog 7 by Gina

From the tutorial that Dr Bloch prevent I found out some quite important facts that I wasn’t care enough before. One issue is about group work. The question described that in a peer group work the whole group came up a great idea, and whether it is necessary to cite the idea if it has been applied in your work. The answer indicated that the idea cannot be as an “intellectual property”, but it is better to cite it as a “personal communication” in order not to be considered as plagiarism.  From this case I learn a proper way to handle idea that work by groups. This might be a challenge because sometimes group work might hard to define. On one hand this actually include the personal work, on the other hand this might also mixed in some other people’s work. So it is not easy to define whether to cite or not. In my country we actually don’t care that much of ideas that come out by bunch of people. So we don’t have to worry about being accused as plagiarism. However as long as I learned the solution for this issue I may not have problem in it.

The second issue is about how to cite the things appear in the text book. The question mainly argues the way to give proper definition of common knowledge and to cite it or not. In the answer it shows that the safest way is to cite. This could be a huge challenge for us international student because we might have a different view for “common knowledge”. In our country I think the ideas appeared in a text book can be called “common knowledge”, and don’t have to be cited. After the correct direction given by the tutorial I will be more careful to cite any resource.