Plagiarism Prevention Tutorial: How to Avoid Common Forms of Plagiarism

PLAGIARISM PREVENTION TUTORIAL1

Plagiarism Prevention Tutorial: How to Avoid Common Forms of Plagiarism

Kosha D. Bramesfeld

Humber College

Author contact information:

Dr. Kosha Bramesfeld

Professor of Social Sciences

Humber College

School of Liberal Arts and Sciences

205 Humber College Blvd., Toronto, Ontario, Canada. M9W 5L7

OR

Copyright 2015 by Kosha D. Bramesfeld. All rights reserved. You may reproduce multiple copies of this material for your own personal use, including use in your classes and/or sharing with individual colleagues as long as the author’s name and institution and the Office of Teaching Resources in Psychology heading or other identifying information appear on the copied document. No other permission is implied or granted to print, copy, reproduce, or distribute additional copies of this material. Anyone who wishes to produce copies forpurposes other than those specified above must obtain the permission of the author.

Description of the Tutorial

Some acts of plagiarism are blatant and intentional but most border that murky line between plagiarism and pure misunderstanding. Many studentsthink that they are paraphrasing the work of others when,in reality,all they are doing is rearranging a few words here and there. Other studentsweave together an artwork of quotations – properly cited and in quotation marks – but awkward to read, and certainly not a reflection of the student’s own understanding.

I began to realize that my students needed guidance, not only on how to properly format their citations and references, but also on how and when to paraphrase. Thus, I created the plagiarism prevention tutorial. The tutorial can be covered in class or posted online for students to work through at their own pace. The tutorial discusses common errors that can lead to plagiarism, including (a) failure to properly cite sources, (b) overreliance on the words or organizational structure of someone else’s work, and (c) overuse of other people’s work, at the expense of one’s own contributions. Students learn how to correct these errors as they progress through five sections of the tutorial: (1) What is plagiarism? (2) Citing sources using APA style, (3) Paraphrasing information, (4) Making it your own,and (5) Preparing a list of references.

I started using the tutorial in my research methods courses and now include it as a required element of all of my courses (including General Psychology, Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior, Group Dynamics, Community Psychology, Critical Thinking in Psychology, and Senior Seminar). As part of the tutorial, I require that students paraphrase, cite, and reference an assigned passage. Upon completion of the tutorial, students take an online quiz on the material (via our course management system)and submit their paraphrased passage for review. The passage that I assign for the paraphrase assignment tends to vary based on the course. In the version of the tutorial presented here, which was created for my General Psychology courses, I assign a paraphrase of a passage from Myers’ (2013, p.45) textbook on the topic of biological psychology. The plagiarism prevention tutorial is assigned at about the same time as we start the chapter on biological psychology. Thus, the assignment helps students learn to paraphrase, and it also helps the students think about the role of biology in psychology in preparation for the upcoming course material. For upper-level classes, I tend to assign longer passages, or even a short research article, for the students to paraphrase. Instructors may wish to similarly adapt the paraphrase assignment for their own needs.

Since implementing the tutorial,incidents of plagiarism have gone down in my classes, and students seembetter equipped to paraphrase and cite their sources. In addition, in the few rare cases when an act of plagiarism does arise, I can now refer back to the tutorial to give teeth to my argument that the student “should have known better.”

Acknowledgements: I originally created this plagiarism prevention tutorial in 2009 when Itaught at Maryville University in St. Louis, MO, USA. I revised it in 2014 when Ibecame affiliated with Ryerson University in Toronto, ON. Canada. Many thanks go to Tammy Gocialand Peter Green of Maryville University; Ruth Ault, the OTRP Director; and the OTRP reviewers for their many helpful suggestions in revising and improving the tutorial. I would also like to thank Marie-Claude Richard and Sophie Dubéfor their French translation of the resource.