Plagiarism: Ways to Prevent It
1. Distribute a printed statement defining plagiarism from your discipline's perspective, offering examples, and outlining the consequences. Make a clear statement on your syllabus and assignment sheets. See the attached syllabus blurb used by Glen Avantaggio. Eric Baer has started using a "zero tolerance" policy on plagiarism, which he explains at the beginning of the quarter. He gave several "0.0's" on the first assignment and then didn't have a problem the rest of the quarter.
2. Talk about plagiarism as an ethical and moral issue and discuss it as a legal issue of fair use and intellectual property. Students need to know and understand these issues. Point out the penalties (they aren't the same as for using the wrong margins or forgetting an apostrophe). Talk about past cases, let them know that you have caught other students and tell them what happened (failed the assignment? Failed the course?)
3. Define plagiarism for yourself. Distinguish in your own mind between intentional cheating and inadvertent plagiarism due to misunderstanding or ignorance of writing and citation conventions.
4. Define plagiarism for students. Students often have different understandings of plagiarism. Discuss different types of plagiarism with them:
- Copying a paper or part of a paper from a friend
- Using chunks of a published paper or an entire published paper
- Improperly citing sources -- not using quotes or not paraphrasing correctly
5. Teach them to summarize, paraphrase and quote sources. Students often plagiarize because they don't know how to include sources properly through summary, paraphrase and quotation. Use a handout on summary, paraphrase and quotation to explain these techniques (attached). Do a short writing-to-learn exercise that allows students to practice summary, paraphrase or quoting:
Have everyone in your class turn to a specific section in the course reading and practice quoting it properly and then practice paraphrasing it. Collect and check for accuracy. Discuss questions and misunderstanding.
For other ideas on how you can use daily lessons to teach students citation skills, see this handout.
6. Assignment Design
- Limit the topic choices and change those topics from quarter to quarter.
- Designate a specific audience, purpose, and form for your assignments and make slight changes each time you teach the course.
- Specify a date after which students cannot change their topics (often a signal for plagiarism!).
- Avoid general, open-ended "Research this topic" assignments.
- See attached sample for how to make an assignment more plagiarism proof.
7. Limit the format and sources for your assignment
- Don't accept papers deviating from a clearly specified format.
- Put limitations on the kind of sources. For example, require that a certain number of sources be very recent.
8. Have students show evidence of the writing/research process as they are working on the paper:
- Have students turn in a research proposal.
- Schedule a library research session with a librarian and have students write a report of where they searched and what they found. See sample of this type of assignment.
- Ask for a working bibliography early in the term and have students note where they found each source.
- Ask for a tentative outline well before the final version of the paper is due.
- Require multiple drafts of essays, with early drafts submitted early, and require early drafts with your feedback be submitted along with final drafts.
- Require students to keep a writing log where they record--step by step--the writing processes used in composing the paper they are submitting.
9. Have students foreground use of sources when they turn the essay in:
- Have students submit notes and all drafts with the final paper.
- Along with the final copy, ask for photocopies of outside sources (or a printed version of downloaded files) with quoted passages highlighted.