April 2002

General | Grades K-2 | Grades 3-5 | Grades 6-8 | Grades 9-12

Many students are working on and completing research reports at this time of the year. With accessibility to the Internet and its many resources, the temptation to cut and paste in fulfilling assignments becomes a reality in our classrooms. How can we impress upon students the importance of creating work that is each student’s own? How can we help them to understand that it is not appropriate to simply change a word here or there? Students need information literacy skills to help them properly cite quotes and resources so research for assignments can become a positive learning tool.

There are numerous sources to help you. Many publishers put out software you can purchase for a nominal fee. Some teachers require a floppy disk to be turned in with the report. With these resources, you can check each paper for possible plagiarism violations. But most of us just don't have the time to do that.

One strategy is to change the focus of your assignments requiring students to relate a character or topic to the student’s own personal experience. Ask students to compare something they research with what has been discussed in class. The more specific the assignment, the more difficult it might be to cheat. If you are familiar with a student’s writing, it should help you determine the student’s voice in whatever he or she writes. If you vary the format, such as writing the researched material as a skit, a letter, an interview, a news story, or a poem, students will be able to let their creativity shine.

Make your policies clear to both students and parents. It is not okay to cheat. Let students and parents know of the severity of the consequences of plagiarism and of breaking school rules. (Does your school have a written plagiarism policy?) Let students and parents know that you are aware of the sites to obtain paper-writing services such as:
http://www.geniuspapers.com/
http://www.cheathouse.com/
http://www.termpapers-on-file.com/
http://www.papermasters.com/
http://www.essaycity.com/cgi-bin/essay_reports/papers.cgi

Let them know that you have resources to check for plagiarism such as:

Turnitin.com which offers a free trial at
http://www.turnitin.com/free_trial.html

-and-

PlagiServe
This free Global Academic Integrity Service assists educators in detecting academic dishonesty. It will search over 1.3 billion pages, analyzing student work for originality, and generating a comprehensive report in less than 12 hours.
http://www.plagiserve.com/

and, the ultimate free resource to combat plagiarism:
In quotations, type the full sentence that you suspect is not the student’s into the Google search engine http://www.google.com/, and the source of the sentence comes up. This is less time-consuming than checking entire papers on disks, and it’s a free resource that is relatively accurate. Once students are aware of the accountability for plagiarism, you can focus positively on the information literacy skills you want students to acquire. Students will learn to follow the correct literary research skills you teach them to improve in their quest for excellence.

Here are additional resources you can check out as time permits:

10 Big Myths about Copyright Explained
Brad Templeton answers the questions facing most educators concerning copyright issues.
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html