Writing & Learning Blog

Making Plagiarism Difficult

In surveys from 2006 to 2010 by Donald L. McCabe, a co-founder of the Center for Academic Integrity and a business professor at Rutgers University, about 40 percent of 14,000 undergraduates admitted to copying a few sentences in written assignments.

“Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age” 

Some Strategies

The Google Habit. Search your assignment topics on Google to see what is readily available online. Add “free paper” to your search terms.

The Gray Areas. Address common misconceptions about plagiarism in course materials and class discussions. Although most students know that submitting someone else’s paper is wrong, they are often less certain whether the following practices are acceptable: borrowing ideas but not actual words; using portions of other people’s works (e.g. a sentence, phrase, or a few words); imitating sentence structures and rhythms; consulting sources but not quoting them directly; “forgetting” to use an appropriate citation style; collaborating with other writers; recycling work from other classes, etc.

Critical Thinking. Ask students to do more than present information on a topic or summarize canonical sources. Emphasize the importance of building knowledge, thinking critically, analyzing findings, making an argument, etc. Assignments that are more narrowly focused or “authentic” in terms of genre, purpose and audience can be much more difficult to plagiarize than conventional term papers. Ask “ill-structured” questions that demand higher-order thinking.

Never Step into the Same River Twice. Modify assignments each semester, if only slightly. For example, require the use of a certain source (perhaps a recently published one), data set, or methodology.

Scaffold a Composing Process. Have students submit in-class writing, planning work and/or drafts to help you identify potential problems. Ask students to submit a memo with their final work that reflects on how they developed their ideas and built on published work. Consider requiring oral presentations of final work.

Notice the Clues. In addition to explicit forms of plagiarism, watch for signs such as the following: formatting glitches (font changes, headers, citation styles, etc.); shifts in voice, tone, diction, and style; use of dated sources and examples; reliance on common knowledge or “canned” information; excessive quotation (or none at all); overly polished prose on a draft; failure to submit planning work, drafts, or reflections.

Selected Resources

UW-L Policy: http://www.uwlax.edu/studentlife/academic_misconduct.htm#14.03

Murphy Library Resources: http://www.uwlax.edu/murphylibrary/research/plagiarism.html

“Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers.” http://www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm

“Discouraging Plagiarism.” http://www.indiana.edu/~cwp/plagiarism.shtml

Free Detection Services (of varying quality):

• http://plagiarisma.net/
• http://www.plagiarism.com/self.detect.htm
• http://www.academicplagiarism.com/
• http://www.crossrefme.net/

 

FERPA and Student Writing

FERPA (the Family and Educational Rights Act), and its cousin, HIPPA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), have become increasingly familiar acronyms steeped in the ethics of protecting privacy and personal information from public and prying eyes. However, while most of us have a working understanding about and generally agree with the concepts of student rights to privacy, many instructors find themselves inadvertently violating some of the essential and governing principles of FERPA. More specifically, many writing instructors, working in traditional modes of collecting and returning student writing, often provide opportunities for student privacy to be compromised. For example, leaving student work in boxes, crates, or piles outside our office doors where students can clearly view identified names and grades of other students is a violation of FERPA. The actual language from FERPA states that (from section 99.30) "The parent or eligible student shall provide a signed and dated written consent before an educational agency or institution discloses personally identifiable information from the student's education records." For more detailed information on FERPA: http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/reg/ferpa/index.html

Understanding that returning student work, especially at the end of the semester, can sometimes be challenging, there are other options. If returning work to students during class or having students collect their work from you during office hours is not possible, another route might be to have students submit their work in envelopes that can be sealed and then leave these outside your office. Yet another alternative is to have students submit their work with envelopes, an address, and postage and then send their work to them. Finally, perhaps the most foolproof method of maintaining student privacy is to use course management software like D2L that is password protected (for both collecting and returning materials) or to return student work to their private, university issued e-mail accounts.