One of the hot topics in educational technology is plagiarism. Students plagiarize for a number of reasons. Some students are lazy, some are desperate to finish an assignment, some are disorganized, and some don't understand what plagiarism is. As teachers it is important to set our kids up for success. In order to help students understand plagiarism and cut down on instances of plagiarism, teachers can take a number of proactive steps.
--Discuss the forms plagiarism can take. While purchasing a paper online is a clear violation, so is taking a paragraph, sentence, or phrase from an article or book.
--Let students know that you're aware of websites that sell or give away papers. One idea would be to purchase or download such a paper and dissect the content. Show students how these papers are not up to your standards and would not receive a good grade.
--Set deadlines for research notes, bibliographies, outlines, and rough drafts so that you may see the progress students are making on their papers and so you may help them if they need it.
--Make sure students know how to citing references. Provide examples for mutliple authors, online sources, reference materials, etc. Let there be no question about how to cite a reference. You could even give students time at the end of class to ask questions about any problems they have come across so far. Work through these problems together as a class.
--Make sure students know how to create bibliographies. Work through one together so there are no questions about what to do.
While these steps will not necessarily eliminate cases of plagiarism, it will alert students to important issues and help them avoid problems when writing their papers.
No comments:
Post a Comment