How to Prevent Plagiarism in Your Classroom

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How to Prevent Plagiarism in Your Classroom
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The Strategies

• Awareness
• Detection
• Prevention

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Awareness Educate yourself

• Understand what plagiarism is and is not
• Educate yourself on the ever-growing problem of
  internet plagiarism

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Awareness Educate your students

• Educate students on the ethics of plagiarism and
  how to avoid it
• Develop an academic integrity policy for your
  classroom with firm penalties and make your
  students aware of it from day one

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Detection Look for clues in your students work

• Style/Diction above students level
• Lengthy quotations
• Mixed citations
• Lack of references
• Unusual formatting
• Does not fit the topic of the assignment

• Indications from the internet
• Signs of outdated material

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Detection Question your student

• You can skip the accusation, most students will
  not be able to pass the question test

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I was surprised by your paper, so I did some
investigation. Before I tell you what I found is
there anything you want to tell me?
This article from.looks good. May I have a copy
of it? Can you tell me how you found it?
I am curious to know why your writing style is so
good in some parts and so poor in others. Why
have you not shown such wonderful skills on the
in-class essays?
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Detection Search major internet sources

• Search engines (google, yahoo, lycos, ask jeeves,
  dogpile)
• Online encyclopedias or similar outline sites
  (encarta, sparknotes)
• Term paper sites

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Detection Use commercial plagiarism detection
services

• Free sites
• www.howoriginal.com
• www.integriguard.com
• www.plagiserve.com
• www.fastsearch.com
• www.findsame.com

• Fee-based sites
• www.copycatch.freeserve.co.uk.com
• www.plagiarism.org
• www.turnitin.com
• www.interguard.com
• www.paperbin.com
• www.wordchecksystems.com

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Prevention Create original assignments

• Change the point of view- Imagine you are the
  parent/child of (significant figure).
  Describefrom your perspective. How wouldeffect
  you?
• Change the time- Prequel/sequel to the event,
  Ifdid not dohow would things have changed?
• Change the type- Resume, obituary, editorial,
  newspaper article
• Make unusual connections- How did effect? How
  issimilar/different to?

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Prevention Focus on the research process

• Make the research process as public as possible-
  time in the library/lab during class
• Ask students to share data, information at
  several intervals
• Require students to use note cards and turn them
  in to you

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Prevention Focus on the writing process

• Require a graphic organizer or a written proposal
  of the topic
• Require examples of progress through outlines,
  logs or drafts at different times
• Conference with students
• Have students write in class
• Require students to save their work to the
  network/ disk or turn in a copy to be checked
  daily/weekly

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Prevention Focus on the final product

• Require
• Works cited/ Annotated bib.
• Specific sources current, primary, books,
  journals
• Copies of drafts, notes
• Oral reports
• Meta-learning essays What I learned from the
  process

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Prevention Your classroom policy and procedure

• Create and inform students of your personal
  policy on plagiarism
• Notify the office
• Notify parents
• Zero on the assignment
• 50 on rewrite
• Teacher detention
• Review research and citation skills with your
  students before the writing assignment

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Prevention PTHS policy

• Handbook policy
• Plagiarism will be addressed initially by the
  teacher and referred to the appropriate grade
  level principal. First offence plagiarism deemed
  by the teacher to be minor in nature will result
  in a verbal warning and points may be deducted at
  the teachers discretion. Second/repeated offense
  plagiarism or initial instances of plagiarism
  deemed by the teacher to be serious in nature
  will result in a 0 for the assignment and will
  include a disciplinary consequence.

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Prevention Using PT policy effectively

• Write up every offence
• Specify if it is major or minor
• Document evidence
• Direct suggestions for rewrite of current policy
  to Debbie

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Prevention PTHS procedure

• Starting in 2003-2004 each high school student
  will participate in a program that will review
  the characteristics of plagiarism and how to
  avoid it

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Courtesy Dr. Patricia Liotta-Kolencik

• Give credit where credit is due.