Understanding & Avoiding Plagiarism

Understanding & Avoiding Plagiarism Slide 1: StudentLingo StudentLingo – Focused On Student Success For screen reader accessible documents, please cli...
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Understanding & Avoiding Plagiarism Slide 1: StudentLingo StudentLingo – Focused On Student Success For screen reader accessible documents, please click on the ADA Transcripts link on your launch page. This link contains complete transcripts, action plans, and resources for each workshop. Also, be sure to complete the evaluation at the end of the workshop. Each workshop session will be timed and tracked and submitting the evaluation will validate workshop completion.

Slide 2: Introduction Understanding & Avoiding Plagiarism Hi. I’m Stephanie Carter, and I work with students on their writing. Today I’m going to talk to you about avoiding plagiarism, which is a topic I cover with students in small and large groups and one-on-one in the Writing Center. Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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So the three main topics on our agenda today are defining plagiarism and what exactly that means. We’ll also talk about how to use your sources effectively and what you need to do to document them correctly. Finally, I’ll give you some tips on how to avoid plagiarism in your own writing. Before we start talking about that though, I’d like you to take a moment to take a short quiz on some plagiarism-related issues.

Slide 3: Short Quiz Plagiarism True or False quiz.

Slide 4: Definition So don’t worry if you didn’t feel like you knew all the answers to those questions. These are really common scenarios for students, and they’re really often confusing. So at the end of the workshop, hopefully you’ll have Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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a better understanding of all of these scenarios and whether or not they’re plagiarism. But at the same time, we’ll take a little time at the end to look at those in more detail and make sure you have explanations for each of them. So let’s just get started. What do you think the definition of plagiarism is? Many students really think that plagiarism is defined as using someone’s exact words and putting that into your own writing without giving credit; however the definition of plagiarism is a little broader than that. It also involves using other people’s ideas, their style of language, and even their visuals that they may have developed. All of those things could be considered plagiarism if you’re not giving credit for them.

Slide 5: Three Reasons So why do people plagiarize in their writing? Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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There are three really common reasons that we see, especially with students in their writing. The first one is that many students just make mistakes in their citations. They don’t really know how to cite things correctly, and so when they turn in a paper with those sorts of errors, the professor may consider that a plagiarized paper. Another common reason for students when it comes to plagiarism is that they feel really overwhelmed by the assignment. They might feel like their own ideas are not nearly as good as any of the ideas that they have read in their sources, and they don’t really feel confident about their own writing enough to use that, as opposed to using someone else’s ideas. The third most common reason that students plagiarize is that they simply run out of time to complete the assignment. You may have had this situation yourself where you were up the night before, you’re trying to finish a ten-page paper, and you realize that the time is Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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ticking away. For some students that really creates the sense of desperation, and what they do is take matters into their own hands and plagiarize the writing of someone else just so they have something to turn in to their professor. So in many cases, professors do take into account why a student plagiarized, but in other cases they don’t. The penalty may be the same no matter what your reason was.

Slide 6: What to Cite So when do we give credit for the information that we use? There are three main situations that you need to keep in mind when you’re writing a paper. The first is whenever you use information that comes from an outside source whether that’s the direct words or just the ideas from that source, you definitely need to cite where you got that information from. So some of the more common types of sources that Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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you will use when you’re doing academic writing are journal articles, newspaper articles, books, maybe even magazines. But you need to broaden your definition of what a source is when you’re thinking about citing your sources. You also need to consider television programs, movies, like documentaries, any type of information that you got maybe from You Tube or from another website as well. All of that information needs to be cited. The second type of information that you need to be sure to cite is any information that you may have gained from doing an interview or have a conversation with someone else. So say your professor gives you an assignment where you need to go and interview a professional from a company, and you end up using some of that information that the person you interviewed told you when you met with them. You would need to make sure that you cited that person in your paper because that information came Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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from somewhere else. The third type of source that you’d need to be sure to cite is any type of visuals that you use in your paper that you may have gotten from somewhere else. So say you’re working on a paper and you find this really great diagram in a journal article that ties in really well with the writing that you’re doing. It’s fine for you to use that diagram in your paper but you need to tell your reader where you find that diagram. So to sum up the three types of information that you need to cite in your paper, the first is any source that you find, second would be any information gained from an interview, and third would be any visuals that you used in your paper.

Slide 7: What NOT to Cite There are, however, other situations where you don’t need to worry about documenting. The first of those is when you’re using your own ideas, your own opinions, or writing about your own Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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experiences, you don’t need to worry about citing yourself in your paper. The second type of information that you don’t need to cite is what we consider common knowledge, and we’ll get into that in a little bit more in a moment. But common knowledge are things like folklore, fairy tales, common sayings that everyone in our society or culture is familiar with. The third type of information that you don’t need to worry about citing are facts that you find are really commonly known or generally accepted in the field that you’re writing in. So to sum up the three types of information you don’t need to cite in your paper include your own experiences, common knowledge, and facts accepted in the field that you’re writing in.

Slide 8: Common Knowledge So students often ask me what common knowledge means. Well here are a couple of definitions that you might find helpful as you’re thinking about it. Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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The first is that common knowledge is any information you can find easily in at least five credible sources. Another definition of common knowledge says that if you can find some information in a general reference source like an Encyclopedia, you can consider that information to be common knowledge. So an example I like to use is that George Washington was the first President of the United States. We don’t need to cite that in our papers. That’s generally-accepted information that just about everyone in our culture would know. So sometimes students have questions about whether something is or isn’t common knowledge in the field that they’re working in. And what I would suggest to you if you have that situation is to speak with your professor about whether or not they would consider it common knowledge. Also, if you’re ever in doubt about whether or not something is common knowledge, it’s usually a safe Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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bet to just go ahead and cite it, and that way you know that you’re safe in that your teacher will understand that you got that information from another source.

Slide 9: Styles of Documentation So now that we’ve finished defining what plagiarism is, it’s time to talk a little bit more about how to effectively cite your sources and document them in your paper. So there are many different styles of documentation, and those vary depending upon the course that you’re taking or the professor that you’re working with and the field that you writing in. So some common styles that you may have used in the past include the American Psychological Association, or APA style; the Modern Language Association; or MLA style; or the Chicago Manual of Style. No matter what system that you use in your paper, all of them have some things in common. They all require that you’re citing your information in two places of your paper. Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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The first is called an “intact citation,” and that includes citing your source immediately after you use the information that you gain from it. The second is on your bibliography page, sometimes called the “references page” or a “work cited page,” and on that page you would be listing all of the sources that you use in your paper from beginning to end.

Slide 10: Resources All of these citation styles have some complicated rules and some specific ways that they want the information presented, so it’s really difficult sometimes for students to know how to go ahead and cite those sources. What I would recommend is that you find a good writer’s resource book that you could reference. In addition, on our resources handout you will find a good list of websites and books that you could use so that you can look up a little bit more information on how to cite in these different citation styles.

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Slide 11: Using the Information There are three different ways that you can use information that you gain from your sources: quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing. I’m just going to take a moment now to explain what each of those are. Quoting is when you use the exact words that you find in another source and you put quotations marks around them. Paraphrasing is when you take someone else’s words and you put them into your own words and your own style, so instead of just writing exactly the way that the original author wrote it, you would be blending it more into your own paragraph and the way that you’re doing your own writing. Summarizing is very similar to paraphrasing except that it involves taking a large amount of information and boiling it down into a shorter amount of information. So say you’re writing a paper where you were required to do a review of a journal article. Instead of writing everything that was mentioned in that Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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journal article, your teacher would be expecting you to be pulling out the most relevant information and summarizing that in a shorter piece rather than the full length of the original article.

Slide 12: Quotations So here on the screen you see an example of something that’s been quoted. “Three days after the world watched a giant balloon fly through the air as a tearful family expressed fears that their 6-year-old boy could be inside, authorities announced what millions suspected: The whole thing was staged” (Morrison and DiGiacomo). The original authors are Morrison and DiGiacomo, and there information is included in parentheses right after the quote. Quotation marks indicate that everything inside the quotation marks is the exact words of Morrison and DiGiacomo.

Slide 13: Paraphrasing Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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One of the most common questions that we see when it comes to students writing about other sources is that they have a difficult time understanding how to paraphrase correctly. So I’d like to take a little time now to explain how to use a paraphrase in a way that wouldn’t be considered plagiarism. If you could just take a moment to read the quote on the left and then read the information on the right, and as you’re reading, think about why this may be considered plagiarized. When you’re done reading, click the button to continue.

Slide 14: Paraphrased vs. Plagiarism So the version on the right of your screen shows an example of when a student attempted to paraphrase but ended up plagiarizing instead. The reason why this paraphrase would be considered plagiarism is because it is too close to the original source. So even though the student included a citation at the Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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end with the author’s name, they used many of the same words and the same style of those original authors. So they changed “From three days after the world watched a giant balloon fly” to “shortly after the world watched an enormous balloon fly.” So they pretty much used a thesaurus and pulled out a few different words to make it sound slightly different, but they left the rest of the quote intact. The reader of this paper, most likely the student’s professor, would be under the impression that this was the student’s own idea of how to structure the sentence, but we know that that’s not correct. The original structure of the sentence came from the authors, Morrison and DiGiacomo. So this would be considered plagiarism as opposed to an appropriate paraphrase.

Slide 15: Correctly Paraphrased Now here is another version of the same sentence, which was paraphrased appropriately. Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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Take a moment to read through this, and when you’ve finished reading, click on the button to continue. Original: Three days after the world watched a giant balloon fly through the air as a tearful family expressed fears that their 6-year-old boy could be inside, authorities announced what millions suspected: The whole thing was staged.

Correctly Paraphrased: Many people who watched the saga of the runaway balloon were suspicious, despite the family’s emotional assertions that their young son may be in it, and these viewers were not surprised to learn that the parents had staged this hoax as a publicity event (Morrison and DiGiacomo).

Slide 16: Why it is Correct So here on the right you see an appropriate paraphrase. What makes this different from the previous version is that the information is presented in a different order, different words are used as well as a different style, so the student’s own unique writing style Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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comes through in this paraphrase, and it’s quite different from the original quote. If you’re having trouble when you’re a paraphrasing, a better idea would be to just quote your original source instead rather than to end up paraphrasing inappropriately and ending up plagiarizing.

Slide 17: Tips for Avoiding Plagiarism Now that we have defined plagiarism and we have also looked at the requirements for documenting your sources, it’s time to talk a little bit more about how you can avoid plagiarism in your own writing. The first tip that I would give to you is to be really careful in the note-taking phase of your project. When you’re taking notes on your sources, try to avoid writing down quotes or inappropriate paraphrases without making any specific notations in your writing. So for instance, if you’re writing down a quote, be really careful to put quotation marks around it in your notes so that you don’t accidentally think that you paraphrased it correctly already and would forget to put quotes in the paper when you turn in your final Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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draft.

Slide 18: Managing Your Sources One of the challenges of writing a research paper is really trying to manage all of the notes and the sources that you’re gathering, and this could be really difficult when it comes to the later phases of the writing process when you’re trying to cite all of those sources in the documentation style that the teacher requires. So starting out a research paper with a really good system in place in terms of how to keep track of your notes and all of your sources is really important. Some students like to have their own notebook, a special notebook for all their research and they keep all of their information organized in there. Other students like to use a note card system, where every piece of information that they gain from their sources they write onto a separate note card, and then they can reorganize and reorganize those note cards as they’re putting together an outline for their paper. So there are a variety of different systems that you Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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can use to manage your sources. But I would just recommend that right from the start of a research project you’re putting those systems into place, then you’ll be much happier at the end of your project when you’re trying to put together your bibliography and make sure that you’re citing all the page numbers and the authors in the way that you need to.

Slide 19: Managing Your Time My final suggestion to you would be to avoid procrastinating when it comes to writing papers. As I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest causes of plagiarism is that students simply run out of time with a project. So if you’re really trying to manage your time well from the very start of the assignment, you’ll be less likely to make those inadvertent mistakes or to feel desperate at the end of your project. Break up your project into a lot of smaller steps that you can set deadlines for so that your paper will not end up being a last-minute project. Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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Slide 20: Answers to Quiz Remember that questionnaire that you took at the beginning of this workshop? Hopefully the answers to those questions are much clearer to you now. If there are any questions that you’re still unsure of, take a few minutes to read the explanations up on the screen and on the next 2 slides. 1. I conducted an e-interview of an expert for my economics paper. I sent her some questions via email and she responded via email. I need to include a citation for the information, even though it came in email form. Answer: TRUE. Any information from another source should be cited, including interviews of any type.

2. I am running out of time on my project. My professor said to only use scholarly sources, but I can’t find enough material in those articles. It’s fine to cut and paste some minor facts from a Wikipedia page, and just leave that source out of my bibliography.

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Answer: FALSE. Because you used a Wikipedia page to gather information, you are required to list it in your bibliography, even though the source wasn’t an approved source by the professor. A better alternative would be to NOT use the Wikipedia page at all, and follow the requirements of the assignment to use scholarly sources. If you are having trouble with finding scholarly sources that work well, check with your professor or a librarian.

Slide 21: Answers to Quiz

3. I am using the phrase, “A penny saved is a penny earned” in my paper. I will need to track down who originally said this and when, and cite that person in my paper. Answer: FALSE. “A penny saved is a penny earned” is a common phrase that is part of common knowledge. You would not need to track down the originator of the phrase.

4. I find a passage from a newspaper article that fits well with my essay. It’s fine to just change a few minor words around as long as I cite the source. Answer: FALSE. If you only change around a few minor words, you are leaving the style of the writing Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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intact from the original author. This is not a legitimate way to paraphrase your source and would mislead your reader to think that the passage’s style was your original creation. When paraphrasing, it is important to use your own style and own wording. If this is going to be too difficult, then it’s better to quote the passage instead.

5. Instead of directly quoting my research, I paraphrase my sources, putting them into my own words. When I paraphrase, I not only have to list the sources in my bibliography, but have to use in-text citations too. Answer: TRUE. Anytime you use information from another source, whether paraphrased, summarized or quoted, you must cite it in two places; in the text and in the bibliography at the end of your paper.

Slide 22: Answers to Quiz

6. I did a semester-long internship at a middle school. I write about some of my personal experiences there in an essay for my sociology class. I don’t need to cite myself in my bibliography.

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Answer: TRUE. You do not need to cite yourself or knowledge you gained through your own personal experiences.

7. I interviewed my classmate about his views on global warming and he makes some great points. I do not need to cite these points if I use them in my paper on that topic. Answer: FALSE. Anytime you use someone else’s words or ideas, no matter what format they are in, you must cite it, even if it is something as informal as an interview with a classmate. If you have any questions about whether you can use a classmate as a source, discuss the matter with your professor.

8. When I took notes from my sources, I sometimes wrote down exact quotes, and sometimes paraphrased the sources in my notebook, but didn’t use quotation marks anywhere. Just to be safe, it’s best just to put quotation marks around everything that I use in my final research paper, even if some happen to not be actual quotes. Answer: FALSE. Quotes indicate that you have used the exact words of someone else. You cannot use quotes around paraphrased material. Your best bet is Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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to go back and review the original sources and determine what information in your notes is a direct quote, and what information is paraphrased. Then use quotation marks accordingly.

Slide 23: First Steps for Help Writing papers and avoiding plagiarism can be a really complicated process. Luckily there are many resources out there to help you with that. Consider visiting your university’s Writing Center or your professor in the class that you’re doing writing for. In addition, there are a lot of great resources online that can help you better understand how to write a paper effectively. Hopefully with this workshop and those resources available to you, you’ll continue to grow into a more successful writer.

Slide 24: Resources & Action Plan Now it’s time to complete the evaluation. Please go Published by Articulate™ Presenter

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back to the launch and click on the “Click to Complete Evaluation” button in the lower right hand corner. Each workshop session is timed and tracked and submitting the evaluation will validate workshop completion

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