Combating Plagiarism

Dr. Brenda Boudreau

“If we cannot place a reasonable degree of trust in our scholars,

we cannot trust anyone.”

A.D. Nuttal, Professor of English, University of Oxford from his book, Dead From the Waist Down

2

What is Plagiarism? A paper or assignment actually written in whole

or part by another.

A paper or assignment copied word-for-word or with only minor changes from a book, magazine, or other resource.

A paper copied in part from one or more sources, without proper identification and acknowledgment of the sources.

A paper which is merely a paraphrase of one or more sources, using ideas and/or logic without credit, even though the actual words may be changed.

3

Center for Academic Integrity found that almost 80% of students admit to cheating at least once.

Education Week survey found that 54% of students admitted to plagiarizing from the internet.

47% believe their teachers sometimes choose to ignore students who are cheating. From “Plagiarism: Playing By the Rules” Black Issues Book Review

4

Strategies of Awareness:Educate yourself about plagiarism

First, understand why students cheat. Students are most tempted to copy a paper when they have planned poorly and run out of time near the due date for a paper. If you structure your research assignment so that intermediate parts of it (topic, early research, prospectus, outline) are due at regular intervals, students will be less likely to get in a time-pressure panic and look for an expedient shortcut. Second, learn about the various sites

that give or sell research papers.

5

Dead Giveaways

Essay refers to or cites the lectures of a mystery instructor (from another institution, no doubt).

Essay contains a reference to its origin on the last page (e.g. "This essay is from www.cyberessays.com – join today!“ or a “paper mill”).

Essay is grade-school quality. The vast majority of essays available on the net have not been written by rocket scientists.

Essay is way off topic.

6

More Dead Giveaways Strange / poor layout. Page numbers, headings,

spacing, and page breaks are all out of whack.

The ultimate sign of sloth... The essay has been printed from the student's Internet browser.

The references are all from books not available in your institution’s library, or are all from another country.

A good sign of a plagiarized paper is that all the references in the bibliography are at least five or ten years old.

7

Detecting Plagiarism Find some distinctive phrases or misspellings.

Search using www.yahoo.com, www.google.com, www.metacrawler.com or www.profusion.com.

Look at information generally available on a subject. Replicate the research for the paper by tracing the subject, author(s), title(s) online. See what abstracts and articles are available from FirstSearch, EBSCO and Lexis-Nexis Academic.

Try specialist discussion groups, listservs, newsgroups, etc.

Look at commercial term paper services.Use SafeAssign!

8

Strategies for Prevention

Make the assignment clear. Be specific about your expectations. Make the penalties clear, as well.

Provide a list of specific topics and require students to choose one or two of them. Change topics from semester to semester if possible. Unusual topics usually mean less papers have been written on them. Give assignments tied to course goals.

9

More Prevention Strategies

Ask for and comment on specific components of the paper. For example, “The paper must contain two Internet sources, two book sources, two online journal articles, a personal interview,” or “You must make use of the Well’s article and material from the Jones book.”

You might also suggest using sources written within the last year.

10

Further Prevention Strategies

Require process steps (set a series of due dates for various steps: proposal, outline, rough draft, etc.)

Require oral reports of student papers and ask students questions about their research and writing process.

Have students include an annotated bibliography; limit references to Holman Library resources.

Require a meta-learning essay.

11

Protect Yourself

Make sure your syllabus clearly lays out your plagiarism policy.

Consider Academic Honesty ContractMake sure that you at least briefly discuss

quoting, paraphrasing and summarizing and how to properly cite sources (APA? MLA?) and give students appropriate resources.

DIVISION OF HEALTH PROFESSSIONSACADEMIC INTEGRITY POLICY   I ______________ understand the Academic Integrity Policy of McKendree University as well as the risks of violation.  On my honor as a McKendree University Student I will not give or receive unauthorized assistance on the work in this

class.  

  _________________________________ ________________________Student Signature Date _________________________________Class   Students failing to complete the statement by the second class period will be denied

entrance to the course until the statement is completed.  

12

13

Different Kinds of Plagiarism

Egregious (student copies the paper from the internet).

Patchwork plagiarism (student cuts and pastes considerable secondary material without proper citation)

Unintentional (?) Plagiarism (student cites the source but copies material without putting quotation marks around the material taken from the source).

14

Make sure you have evidence

Keep at least three copies of the plagiarized paper: one for you, one for the Provost’s office, and one for the student. Also, copy the pages from the article(s) or book(s) in which you found evidence of the plagiarism.

15

Confronting the student

You should always try to discuss the plagiarism with the student before filing a report with the Provost’s office.

Give the student a chance to explain what happened from his/her perspective.

Decide on how you are going to respond before meeting with the student.

16

Possible reactions—How do we deal with them?

“I did NOT plagiarize.”“I didn’t realize that was plagiarism…

nobody has even taught me that before.”“I’m going to lose my scholarship.” or “I

won’t graduate if I don’t pass this class.” or “I’m really sorry; my mother has cancer.”

17

Report to the Provost’s office

Why should you bother filing a report?What happens when a report is filed?How do we change the campus

community?

SafeAssign

Free tool on Blackboard.SafeAssign for Instructors—teaching tool

vs. DetectionSafe Assign for Students—learning tool

18