How to Prevent Plagiarism? Model, Model, Model
In response to Inacol Standard E, which contains this indicator:
The online teacher is able to model and comply with intellectual property policies and fair use standards and reinforce their use with students.
The key indicator in Standard E applies to both online and face-to-face learning environments; teachers must model and comply with intellectual property policies and fair use standards and reinforce their use with students. This can be as simple as just providing a link for where information was found, saying something like, "This handout adaped from www.greatwebsite.edu.
It is also good for teachers to mention where they learned something because it lets our students know that we read for information...that we, too, are researchers. I say things like, "Mrs. Keeney down the hall gave me this handout" or "I found this information and readingquest.org and changed it up for this activity." Throwing in this credit to others is so quick and easy but sends powerful messages: I am a researcher, too. I learn from others. This is not my original work; I was willing to look around the Internet to find resources to help me. I give credit where credit is due.
Thanks for this article! I researched on the topic "Who Owns the Curriculum?" for my school law class and find this topic fascinating. As a former English teacher of seniors in a 1:1 environment, I know how important the topic of plagiarism and copyright are. I found that students were unclear/unpracticed at fair use and citing sources on a variety of projects/papers and needed to be retaught before each new project or paper. And then if a student plagiarized, I would just find the source and make their plagiarized text a hyperlink back to the original document and send the student his/her paper covered with these hyperlinks, really freaking them out. I even had a student say, "how did you know where I got that from?" I had another student say, "but that's not wehre I got that from," and I had to explain that either his source or my source plagiarized from the other, which is kind of funny... a good lesson for kids.
Additionally, teachers should be helping students understand that not all of what they will find on the Internet is accurate. Web 2.0 makes publishing and commenting on the web so easy (some might say too easy!). My student researchers will sometimes quote or plagiarize from a comment page. Students often just scim the page they are reading so don't realize that the site they are using isn't academic and should be avoided. Showing models of bad websites, inaccurate websites, and those websites with a biased agenda, as well as showing various comments pages, helps students discern what is valuable content and what is not.
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