Teachers,
This article defines plagiarism as "copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit; failing to put a quotation in quotation marks; giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation; changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit; and copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not".
Further, "a survey by U.S. News and World Report found that 80 percent of "high achieving" high schoolers admitted to cheating; 51 percent of high schoolers surveyed didn't think cheating was wrong. Ninety-five percent of surveyed students who cheat said that they had not been detected".
Its easy to plagiarize. The student doesn’t have to look at the person’s paper next to him any more and the teacher is sometimes easily fooled.. Adults plagiarize; the standard of respect for others’ accomplishments is not necessarily set by culture. Cheating is becoming normalized. Some teens like that plagiarized works makes their performance look better regardless of the immorality of this.
Some schools are putting systems in place for students to anonymously report those suspected of cheating.
Welcome to Ethics 101. Current Events. Weekly Reader Corp., Gale Group (Jan 9, 2004) Washington, D.C.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EPF/is_15_103/ai_112354637/pg_2
Retrieved 6/5/06
Robert Harris discusses reasons why students cheat and gives many practical helps for teachers to discourage plagiarism. Students may plagiarize because they run out of time from procrastinating, they lack confidence in their writing ability, they just think its fun to cheat, and… its easy.
This site lists ideas for teacher to implement to discourage plagiarism such as:
- Require students to use sources that are less than 5 years old, preferably less than 1 year, when possible for the topic, because many sites don’t have newer research papers for students to cheat with.
- Require an outline and rough draft(steps along the way of the research process).
- Require that certain select sources be used that you are familiar with (an article you give the student) and specify the variety of sources (book, magazine, internet, interview) that must be used.
- Give a impromptu class assignment in which the student reflects on their research process and paper explaining how they proceeded, what went well, and what the difficulties were.
Harris, Robert. Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers. Virtual Salt. (November 17, 2004)
http://www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm
Retrieved 6/6/06
For free or by paying, students can access over 100 sites to obtain research papers. One way teachers can check for plagiarism is by putting quotes around a portion of the student’s writing and searching it on the Internet. Another idea is to have each student do a writing paper at the beginning of the school year so that you can use this to compare future writing with.
This school librarian has outlined a helpful presentation for teachers, on the topic of plagiarism, and a guide for students.
Lincoln, Margaret. Internet Plagiarism: An Agenda for Staff Inservice and Student Awareness. MultiMedia Schools. (January/February 2002).
http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan02/lincoln.htm Retrieved 6/6/06
Lincoln, Margaret. Cheating An insider’s guide to cheating at Lakeview High School. MultiMedia Schools. (January/February 2002).
http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan02/Cheating.pdf Retrieved 6/6/06
Student Researchers
Be true to yourself! Make it your own thought.
To paraphrase:
READ
LOOK AWAY
RETELL changing the sentence structure and words.
CITE the author’s last name/source and page number, if there is one, after each sentence or paragraph that contains paraphrases (Brown, 3)
Other items to cite:
QUOTE "exact words" also citing.
GRAPHICS are cited too.
Ink:
BI-COLORED WRITING in one color for your own thoughts, interpretations, opinions, and analysis AND another color for paraphrases and quotes.
Works Cited:
Lincoln, Margaret. Cheating An insider’s guide to cheating at Lakeview High School. MultiMedia Schools. (January/February 2002).
http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan02/Cheating.pdf
Retrieved 6/6/06
Lincoln, Margaret. Internet Plagiarism: An Agenda for Staff Inservice and Student Awareness. MultiMedia Schools. (January/February 2002).
http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan02/lincoln.htm
Retrieved 6/6/06
For samples of acceptable and unacceptable paraphrasing, try the site below.
Plagiarism- What it is and how to recognize it and avoid it.
http://www.indiana.edu/%7Ewts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml
Retrieved 6/606
There are just enough examples for this to be a useful guide for citing resources in a bibliography.
Robert Harris Citing Web Sources MLA Style. Virtual Salt. (March 12, 2001)
http://www.virtualsalt.com/mla.htm
Retrieved 6/606
Debby Hare, MS
June 2006