Plagiarism Information^[1]

What Should be Cited?

• Students should be taught from an early age to credit others for their words and ideas.
• All media must be cited: pictures, music, videos, etc.
• This includes any original material or ideas.
• Common knowledge does not have to be cited; facts that would not be known by a student should be cited.
• Personal opinion does not have to be cited
• Paraphrasing or changing a few words does not make the work someone's own.
• Creative Commons has a variety of licencing that may still require citation.

Teacher Tips for Footnotes

• teachers can use footnotes to include annotations or explanations of text
• can also be used for definitions, synonyms, acronyms
• can be used to write the name of person editing section
• can be used for questions
• use footnotes to provide additional resources such as a web address
• Teachers should decide in advance which format they want for citations: APA, MLA, etc.
• Give students resources to assist with citation, for example, the programs that are listed here.
• For web pages/wikis/etc., if you don't want to ruin the look of your work, use a small font to put your citation, or create a link to a new page or pop-up.

How to Tell if Students are Plagiarizing?

• Use TurnitIn.
• Ask students to submit their work electronically. Check to see if they have used "web formatting" or their work is in tables, or if there are hyperlinks.
• If the student's language is just a little too sophisticated, pick out a phrase and put it in a search engine to see if you get any hits.

Web Resources for Citation and Plagiarism

The Owl at Purdue: Avoiding Plagiarism

Ted Frick http://www.indiana.edu/~tedfrick/plag...     - has a good quiz to test your knowledge of this issue