Avoiding Plagiarism
in an Online Graduate Environment
Disclaimer
By
C.B. Crawford, Ph.D.
Assistant Provost for Quality Management
Fort Hays State University
600 Park Street
Hays, KS 67601
(785) 628-5950
Presented at the Association of Graduate Liberal
Studies Programs Conference,
October 2002, Chicago, IL.
Online Ed. Jennifer Sauer
Detecting Plagiarism
Intuitively "knowing" that
plagiarism has occurred and being able to prove it are
two entirely distinct
things. Often, a professor that has been reading the same assignment
semester after semester can easily recognize a plagiarized
work.
But the reality of knowing plagiarized work
is not enough evidence when a student is charged with plagiarism.
No common sense or hunch is evidence of academic dishonesty.
Instead, educators need real tools and guidelines for turning
their intuition into tangible proof of fraud.
Ryan (1998) considered
this issue and offers the following detection tools to help
the would-be investigative
educator. Look for the following:
- a change in context
- missing footnotes
- false references
Additionally, the Karrmann Library recommends
examining the level of sophistication of the writing in the
paper. Papers that are written far above the expectations for
the course should be examined more closely and perhaps investigated.
Kelley and Howard (2001) provide even more signals
that may indicate that a paper has been plagiarized. Any of
the following might raise a red flag:
- formatting that does not follow the assignment
- formatting is based on a web site (page
numbers, dates, grayed letters, tabled or framed format)
- advanced specialized language
- changing styles of writing often, including
vocabulary
- unusual sentence structure
- lack of bibliographic reference to quotations
- wrong bibliographic style used
- lack of references or incomplete references
- over-reliance on online sources
- changes in content or context of the paper
- general irrelevance of the paper to the
assignment
Most authors on plagiarism say that if an educator
notices something is unusual about the text, then it probably
needs to be examined more closely.
Other Links to this Document:
Title
Page
Introduction
Defining
Academic Plagiarism
Types
of Plagiarism
Prevention
and Management of Plagiarism
Other
Strategies
References
|
