As the semester passes the midterm mark and papers and reports come due, we begin to get requests from faculty for ways to teach students how to avoid plagiarism. Most often students plagiarize unintentionally, because they don’t know how to cite sources properly, cut and paste from e-resources, and aren’t skilled in the arts of paraphrase and summary.
Recently a colleague, Lynne Stuart, the MSEL Librarian for Economics, Government, Law, Policy Studies, pointed me to a great web site on plagiarism at Arizona University that addresses this, and is called, appropriately, Accidental Plagiarism. There are two tutorials that provide background information on what plagiarism is and provide examples of how to properly summarize, paraphrase, and quote sources. The first has a sidebar menu for navigating; the second is an interactive tutorial that resembles a series of slides. In both cases students can practice skills and test themselves.
A Google search “plagiarism exercises college” yielded many, many more examples. Here’s an editor’s pick of some of the best.
Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education offers the Principles of Paraphrasing, How to Avoid Inadvertent Plagiarism in Three Easy Modules, which is pretty slick and comprehensive. The format is PowerPoint with audio, worksheets with answer keys and handouts. Exercises are included.
Cornell University’s College of Arts and Sciences recognizing and avoiding plagiarism site is divided into three sections: principles, logistics (how to recognize and check for plagiarism), and exercises. It provides a good overview, plus the exercises (quizzes), which you can take as a guest. The quizzes cover a variety of disciplinary examples.
Indiana University School of Education Understanding Plagiarism site provides an overview, links to real plagiarism cases, plagiarism examples and explanations, self-practice, and a test that is available for non-IU visitors.
The University of Southern Mississippi, University Libraries’ Plagiarism Tutorial has a tutorial adapted from tutorial was adapted from Robert A. Harris’s The Plagiarism Handbook : Strategies for Preventing, Detecting, and Dealing with Plagiarism (Los Angeles, CA : Pyrczak Publishing, 2001), combined with a true-false pre-test and two interactive quizzes.
WISC-Online [Wisc-Online is a digital library of Web-based learning resources called “learning objects.”] There is a short learning object on plagiarism that provides a basic overview then presents six examples for self-testing.
Purdue University’s OWL [online Writing Lab] is a great general resource for scholarly writing. It includes sections on using research you’ve conducted in your writing: Quoting, Paraphrasing and Summarizing, Paraphrasing, a Paraphrasing Sample Essay, Paraphrase Exercises, and Avoiding Plagiarism. There are some plagiarism exercises; however these are less useful than those found on other sites, as there are no answers or comments provided. These are meant for class discussion.
The Center for Educational Resources also supports Turnitin, a plagiarism prevention application. Find out more about using Turnitin at JHU on the CER website.
And don’t forget the Sheridan Libraries Research Help where you can find information on a variety of topics including proper citation and evaluating materials found on the Internet.
Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources
Image Source: Microsoft Clip Art edited by Macie Hall
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For as long as I can remember, the plagiarism question has confused many minds.
However, the problem takes root not only in the dishonest purposes of a person. It can also be a catatonic mistake as a consequence of ignorance of academic formatting standards.
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