Teaching Strategy: Discouraging Plagiarism

Back to The First Year Writing Program - for Faculty

University Workshop
Montclair State University
Emily Isaacs
 

I.     My assumptions about plagiarism
a.     A significant number of students—enough to create a culture—do not consider plagiarism wrong.
b.     A significant number of students believe, from experience and lore, that plagiarism is
                1) not detected, and
                2) not terribly consequential in terms of grades or academic standing.
c.     There are different types of plagiarists
i. Accidental Plagiarists. These students don’t get it.  They can be taught.  Note: Sometimes students belong to cultural groups that value collective work and/or showing respect by repeating the words, without attribution, of another.  All students need to be informed of the particular cultural values of American academia.
ii. Determined Plagiarists.  These students are thoughtful, pre-mediated, and determined plagiarists.  These we can’t do much about other than failing them and making examples of them.
iii. Impulsive Plagiarists.  The majority of students who plagiarize do so on impulse when they are feeling under pressure (frequently at mid-semester and at the end of the semester; in classes they are doing poorly in, etc.).  They aren’t particularly aware or conscious that plagiarism is wrong or something that is likely to be a big problem for them.  These students are the ones we can influence by changing the culture of our individual classes and of the university.

II.     Strategies for All Types of Plagiarists and Impulsive Plagiarists
a. Make plagiarism an issue in all of your classes
b. Include definition and sanctions on your syllabus.
c. Address the issue in class, particularly prior to an upcoming writing assignment.  Cautionary tales can be useful.
d. Include some in-class writing assignments so that you have a sense of students' writing styles on work that you know they have completed themselves.
e. Provide samples of appropriately documented papers.
f. Stage assignments.  For example,
1. have due dates for proposals and/or drafts
2. where appropriate, do some work in class: pre-write on a topic, work on integrating a direct quote, practice paraphrasing.
3. require and collect outlines, research notes and/or drafts with the final draft.  (You don’t have to read all this; just collect it and read when there is a problem.)
g. Make assignments unique.  Note: There are drawbacks to this method.  It doesn’t allow students to develop topics as real writers and researchers do—from their own inquiry.
1. Require that students answer a particular question that is written by you and that you haven’t used before.
2. Require students to use a selection of essays that are unlikely to be written about together.

III.     Accidental Plagiarists
a. College Writing I and II; entry level courses in the disciplines.
b. One-on-one remedial instruction in documentation for some students.
1. have students read the University definition.
2. have students summarize while looking away from the text.
3. have students practice with a handbook or website citation manual (see Writing Center web page).
4. give disciplinary-specific advice on appropriateness of direct quotation vs. paraphrase or summary.
5. For some students, discuss the differences between home values and American academics values about writing and attribution.

IV.     Determined Plagiarists
a. Catch and fail them.  Word will get out about the consequences of plagiarism and we will have changed the culture.