Happy...Plagiarism Education Week! Yay!

Image used with permission from turnitin.com.

 
      April is a wonderful, bursting-forth-at-the-writing-seams type of month, what with all of the term papers at DACC coming due, Waiting for Rain accepting submissions, the Brosi Poetry Contest at DACC, Maureen Hughes, a DACC student, presenting her book, Sins of the South on April 11 (more info can be found at https://www.facebook.com/DanvilleAreaCommunityCollege?fref=ts ), it being National Poetry Month, and now we have Plagiarism Education Week (April 22-26) to add to the mix.  Between now and April 26, the WR Notebook will post a series dealing with plagiarism and plagiarism education.

     Most people think of plagiarism as a "one size fits all" ethical transgression.  The word is commonly used to refer to stealing another persons words or ideas without giving credit where it is due.  Instructors often assert that plagiarizing "a little" or "unintentionally" doesn't happen. Perhaps that's like being "a little bit pregnant." You either are or you're not.  You're either guilty of violating the academic standards of your college or class or you're not.  Simple, right?  However, a study of almost 900 secondary and higher education instructors and their students' works  conducted last May by plagiarism.org revealed that the problem of plagiarism and whether or not it has occurred isn't quite that cut and dry.  In light of this, they developed the Plagiarism Spectrum and encourage instructors to use it when developing their ethics policies as well as in educating their students. Here are the top ten types of plagiarism violations they found:

Information and graphics used with permission from plagiarism.org.

      How many of these do you see in your students' work?  Which of them do you consider plagiarism? Do some of them carry heavier penalties than others for your students?  You can visit plagiarism.org to download a copy of this chart if you wish to use it (or their other materials) to help educate your students.  All they ask is that you don't alter their materials and that you list to URL on what you distribute.

      During in-service last January, instructors at DACC were presented with research regarding issues surrounding plagiarism and given the opportunity to discuss these issues and various hypothetical situations.  If you are interested in finding out more about plagiarism and your options for handling it in your classroom, you can take advantage of a series of free webcasts presented by turnitin.com, The International Center for Academic Integrity, The School for Ethical Education, and Plagiarism Today.  You can register for these webcasts which discuss the causes of plagiarism, the types of plagiarism, various responses and approaches to dealing with plagiarism as well as originality and creativity on the turnitin.com website at http://turnitin.com/en_us/resources/plagiarism-education-week.