Plagiarism & Student Cheating

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Ways to Discourage Cheating and Plagiarizing from the Internet and Other Electronic Resources

Define and discuss plagiarism .

  • On your syllabus, and in going over your expectations for the course, give a clear definition of plagiarism and provide examples, and clearly state penalties. [See "Factors Influencing Engineering Students' Decisions to Cheat By Type of Assessment," by Honor J. Passow, et al. Research in Higher Education v. 47, no. 6 (September 2006), pp. 643-684. "[I]n the absence of enforced policies, they [students] do cheat on types of assessments for which policies are least defined and enforced, such as homework....Students don’t see cheating as a single construct and their decisions to cheat or not to cheat are influenced differently depending on the type of assessment. Therefore, faculty and administrators should carefully define for students what does and does not constitute cheating for each type of assessment, such as exams, homework, term papers, projects, laboratory reports, and oral presentations." ]
  • Discuss prominent cases accusing students, professors, and other authors of plagiarism, including some that were discovered years after the fact (ex: current case involving former graduate students in Mechanical Engineering at Ohio University -- see "Student Plagiarism, Faculty Response," by Doug Lederman, in Inside Higher Ed, June 1, 2006, and coverage elsewhere) and what the discovery can do to degrees, careers, etc.
  • See the section below on "Teaching Students About Plagiarism," for examples of tutorials, articles, and hand-outs.

Practice good pedagogy.

  • Sally Cole & Elizabeth Kiss, "What Can We Do About Student Cheating?" About Campus, May/June 2000: 5-12. They found that students are less inclined to cheat where they see tasks as worth doing, when the admire their teachers, and when they are excited about what they are learning.
  • Plagiarism: A Good Practice Guide, by Jude Carroll and Jon Appleton (May 2001) reviews research on reasons for cheating. They state: "[r]esearch at Sheffield Hallam University showed that students saw cheating as 'relatively legitimate where a course is seen as of marginal importance or badly taught'" (citing R. Macdonald,"Why Don’t We Turn the Tide of Plagiarism to the Learners’ Advantage?", Times Higher Education Supplement, November 24, 2000). Additionally, P. Bannister and P. Ashworth ("Four Good Reasons for Cheating and Plagiarism" pp. 233-241 in Improving Student Learning Symposium," ed. by Chris Rust, Oxford Centre for Staff Development, Oxford Brookes University, 1998) say students cheat "because they feel alienated and ignored by lecturers, disengaged by assessment tasks and disrespected by assessment that does not 'require original thought ...but rather the reiteration of well established ideas and concepts' (p. 239). Where students felt the subject had been exhausted, where the assignment had been set year after year, and where the lecturer did not seem to value what was being taught, students’ commitment drops and they become 'open to cheating' (p. 239)."

Incorporate the Web and other online resources into your courses

  • Incorporate web resources and add links to articles in journals to which your campus library provides e-access, on any bibliography or course readings you hand out. Become familiar with the general purpose fulltext databases and relevant discipline-based fulltext databases made available by your campus library. To locate vetted websites with academic value, find a meta-site for your discipline and browse it from time. Such sites are frequently updated and are often annotated. Examples of meta-sites: H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, Intute: Social Sciences, and Voice of the Shuttle (Humanities).
  • Discuss criteria for evaluating web resources. See the UW-Madison Libraries' Worksheet for Evaluating Websites or use the tutorial "Evaluating Web Search Results". Be familiar with sites such as Wikipedia that students may draw from. Have them look at entries for controversial topics several times over the course of the semester to see how they've been "edited."
  • Include assignments that draw on web resources.
  • Add formats for citation of Internet resources to hand-outs on bibliographic style for papers. MLA, APA, and other style manuals have e-sections. Add format for citation of articles found within aggregator databases or individual fulltext journals (e.g., the name of the database should be included, and there generally are no page numbers available).

Craft assignments wisely :

  • DOS

    • Put papers through drafts/revisions whenever possible.
    • Make understanding plagiarism just one element in the research and writing process. There are some commercial products that claim to help in this regard. Examples:
      • NoodleBib from Noodle Tools is web-based MLA and APA bibliographic software that instructs all phases of the research process, including correct citing. Calls itself "a proactive antidote to plagiarism."
      • PowerResearcher Company says it helps prevent accidental plagiarism by providing automatic source tracking, logging, and organization tools. "For plagiarism reduction, the basic idea is that if conducting research and citing sources the correct way is quick and easy, the temptation to plagiarize is removed or greatly reduced."
      • Citation management systems, such as RefWorks, are also thought to reduce plagiarism by keeping track of sources and formatting them according to established styles.
    • If you mount student papers as part of a class website, limit access to the site to class members, or remove the papers at the end of the semester.
    • Have students do some in-class writing; compare the writing style to out-of-class writing.
    • Have students turn in photocopies/downloads of several pages from each source used.
    • Have students include their search strategy or where they found the actual material (ex: campus library and classification number for books, including page numbers for bibliographies within books that were sources of additional articles; which periodical databases they used and which search terms in those databases -- if they used web sources, which search engine and search terms did they use, etc.)
    • Have students exchange papers (or redistribute anonymously) and ask them to locate all the articles cited on the bibliography.
    • Turn web term papers into a student project: have students locate and critique a paper related to the course subject, or have students compare and contrast several websites on the same topic but from very different perspectives. Librarians can help find such examples.

    DON'TS

    • Don't have students turn in their papers into an insecure box outside your office.
    • Don't offer "write on any topic you want" or use the same assignment and topic year-after-year.

Create a climate in your institution and in your classroom that discourages plagiarism

  • Encourage your campus to create an honor code if it doesn't already have one. [See "Honesty and Honor Codes," by Donald McCabe and Linda Klebe Trevino. Academe v. 88, no. 1 (Jan/Feb 2002), p.37, 5p. Survey of 2,200 students on 21 campuses (9 without honor codes, 8 with traditional codes, one a hybrid between a traditional and modified code, and 3 large public universities with modified codes) found that self-reported cheating was lower at schools with codes. (Article is accessible in Academic Search and in Proquest Research Library on campuses whose libraries subscribe to these databases.) Summarized also in an interview with McCabe on the College Administration Publications' website. See also "New Honor Codes for a New Generation," by Donald L. McCabe and Gary Pavela, Inside Higher Ed (March 11, 2005), and the Center for Academic Integrity's site.]
  • Stress the values underpinning (academic) honesty.[ See David Callahan's The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead (Harcourt, 2004) or perhaps assign a reading by him, such as "On Campus: Author Discusses the "Cheating Culture" With College Students," Plagiary v. 1, no. 4: 1-8 (8 March 2006), whose abstract states: "[h]is concrete suggestions for leveling the playing field and resisting the cheating culture are a challenge to college students to 'Be the change you want to see in the world'". ]
  • Model academic values (in lectures, give credit to others when you use their ideas, etc.)
  • Establish an honor code for your class even if your campus does not have one.
  • Stress the intellectual enterprise involved in scholarly communication (a positive) rather than dwell on plagiarism (a negative) (Russell Hunt, "Four Reasons to be Happy About Internet Plagiarism," Teaching Perspectives v. 5 (December 2002): 1-5
  • Encourage campus programs and activities that foster and teach ethical behavior. For high school application, see Smart & Good High Schools report (2005) on character education from the Center for the 4th & 5th Rs: Respect & Responsibility, SUNY Cortland.
  • Do all of the above!
    • See "Strategies to Promote a Climate of Academic Integrity and Minimize Student Cheating and Plagiarism," by Craig Scanlon. Journal of Allied Health v. 35, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 179-185 (available on some campuses through Ingenta). Scanlon argues that "further reduction in student cheating and plagiarism can be achieved only via a comprehensive strategy that promotes an institutional culture of academic integrity."
    • Read "The Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity," from the Center for Academic Integrity, Duke Univesity. The values described are honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility.

Rehabilitate instead of punish.

  • See "Traffic School for Essay Thieves," by Paul D. Thacker, Inside Higher Education, Nov. 29, 2006. This is a report on a program at Pima Community College, where students who have plagiarized have the option of attending a five-step plagiarism program instead of receiving academic punishment. They "[w]rite a detailed, self-exam on 'Why I plagiarized,' read case studies of plagiarism ... [w]rite a paragraph defining plagiarism, meet with a tutor to discuss proper citation etiquette and complete a short worksheet on citations, [and] [m]eet with a faculty committee to talk about how to avoid plagiarism and lessons learned."

Teaching Students about Plagiarism: Tutorials and Exercises

"Plagiarized Papers," Tech Talk column by Billie Peterson in LIRT [Library Instruction Round Table] News (click on Sept. 2002) lists several useful tutorials:

Other anti-plagiarism tutorials:

  • How to Avoid Plagiarism, Online Writing Center, University of Maryland University College, provides the basics, with examples and quizzes.
  • Plagiarism Self-test Page, University of Toronto Engineering Communication Centre, presents a published source and student writing sample based on the source along with a multiple choice question on whether the student has properly documented the source.
  • Plagiarism Tutorial from University of Southern Mississippi includes pre and post quizzes.

To find more such tutorials, do a web search with the keywords plagiarism tutorial.

Articles with more suggestions about ways to discourage plagiarism; some are suitable as handouts.

  • "Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers," by Robert Harris, Vanguard University of Southern California (2001). Includes strategies for awareness of the issue (some for the instructor, some for the students), prevention, and detection.
  • "Downloadable Term Papers: What's a Prof. to Do?", by Tom Rocklin, Director of the Center for Teaching, University of Iowa (May 1997). Recommended focusing on the writing process, tying written assignments to course goals, and co-opting downloadable papers by using them as examples for grades and comments or by having students critique them.
  • "Partnering with Students to Avoid “Cut and Paste” Plagiarism," by Ellen R. Cohn and Charles J. Ansorge. Low Threshold Applications #32, 2003? Suggested student-faculty partnership will reduce plagiarism.
  • "How to Avoid Plagiarism," by Earle Babbie, Social Sciences Research and Instructional Council, Teaching Resources Depository: Other Teaching Tools (useful as a handout to students)
  • "Plagiarism and the Web," by Bruce Leland, includes suggestions on prevention, along with links to several other useful articles.
  • Plagiarism information compiled by Donald Dudley, UC Davis, on the School Sucks site (may be useful as a handout to students)
  • Teaching About Plagiarism in a Digital Age, and Resources on Plagiarism and Other Ethical Issues are both from the Council Chronicle (Nov. 2005), publication of the National Council of Teachers of English.
  • "Thinking and Talking About Plagiarism," by Nick Carbone, offers a way to discuss plagiarism in the syllabus in terms of Dos and Don'ts.