How to Prevent Internet Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined as using someone else's words, thoughts and/or ideas without giving credit to the source. This includes not only using text verbatim (unchanged), but re-phrasing someone else's thoughts or ideas and passing them off as your own. Many websites provide research essays and reports for students to crib from, but teachers and parents who watch for tell-tale signs can discourage this behavior in students
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Instructions
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Educate students about know how easy it can be to plagiarize, even unintentionally, and warn them of the traps they can fall into. The plagiarism.org website explains that many believe that plagiarism only involves copying an author's work verbatim. Students may assume that it's acceptable to convey the same story, ideas or opinions in their own words or by altering the original version only slightly. Also stress the basics, such as the importance of surrounding verbatim text in quotes and including a bibliography to cite sources.
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Motivate students to respect writers' work and to give credit where it's due. Invoke the "do unto others" rationale by pointing out that they wouldn't appreciate someone stealing their work. "It's best to approach it as an issue of fair use and intellectual property," Bruce Leland of the University of Western Illinois, explains. Also, emphasize the importance to these budding researchers of not merely collecting information--which anyone can do--but discussing it, from their own viewpoints, in their papers. "Teach your students that the real skills they need to learn are interpretation and analysis," plagiarism.org advises.
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Look for the websites that tempt students to plagiarize by posting papers for their use. Let students know you're aware of the existence of these sites. In an article on the Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education website, Jill Suarez and Allison Martin of the Bossier Parish Community College list several of the more popular research "papermill" websites. Let students know that you'll be checking these sites and others, in part through key word/phrase spot-checks to reveal intellectual property theft.
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Check in with students periodically to see how they're handling their research/writing assignments. To make sure they don't get lazy and start cutting corners, make students share their process and progress with you, Leland adds. Require that they show you their research notes or first drafts. Discuss their progress with them one-on-one or have other students comment on what they've come up with prior to submission. When they submit the paper, ask them to describe some key concepts, new opinions or vocabulary they've picked up. Students who can't discuss what they've written and learned probably didn't do the work.
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Tips & Warnings
Get parents involved in preventing plagiarism. Talk to them about the challenge and encourage them to place the home computer in a room at home where they can monitor students' Internet use and help spot when they're visiting research papermill sites.
Pick a few badly-written papers at one of these sites and review them with students to point out their flaws. Criticizing these inferior samples may discourage students from using papers from these sites if they think they won't get them a passing grade, Western Ill. Univ. source Bruce Leland writes.
Review the papers on these sites to get a feel for what's being peddled; it may trigger a red flag.
Keep an eye out for sloppy punctuation, different word patterns in a paper or even signs of fatigue in a student the day he turns one in. Students who have trouble meeting deadlines are more likely to cheat in paper-writing than those who don't.
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