A Note on Plagiarism

According to CMC's Statement of Academic Integrity:

Plagiarism means the use of the thoughts ideas words, phrases or research of another person or source as one's own without explicit acknowledgment. In keeping with this definition, all work, whether written or oral, submitted or presented by students at the College as part of course assignments or for College sponsored extracurricular activities, must be the original work of the student unless otherwise specified by the instructor.

For a more detailed explanation of plagiarism, check the Statement of Academic Integrity.

Students: Learning About Plagiarism

Various good materials are available online to help students gain a better understanding of the best practices for summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting from, and citing reference materials in your writing. In cooperation with the Department of Literature and the Teaching Resource Center, the Writng Center has worked to identify the best of these resources. If you would like to learn more about the proper use of outside sources in your writing, we suggest you examine our new learning module:

"Citation and Intellectual Property Review."

We built this module in cooperation with Prentice-Hall Publishing, as a good place to start. (This link will take you to a WebCT page. Log in with the username "citation" and the password "review" - then click on the icon to begin.)

Faculty: Detecting and Preventing Plagiarism

As a part of the current effort to encourage academic honesty on campus, the Writing Center offers several offerings to assist faculty in discouraging student plagiarism -- and to help detect it, if it does occur. During AY2003-03, through the IT fluency program, the Teaching Resource Center and the Literature Department conducted an extensive review of online tools to fight plagiarism. With generous financial support from the TRC, the Writing Center is now able to offer all faculty members unlimited access to the tools those two departments identified as the best available in the field. For access to teaching modules that you may find helpful in educating your students about proper citation, please contact Jason Stiffler, and he will provide you with the materials used in the FIT program during Spring 2003. If you would like to check any student writing to see if it contains materials plagiarized from online sources, Jason can also help you to use turnitin.com to do so.

The CMC Plagiarism Detection and Preventions Tools Survey

CMC has spent the past year conducting a study of electronic tools both to detect, and to help students avoid online plagiarism. The results of this study have recently been publicized through the EDUCAUSE National Meetings, and through the EDUCAUSE Western Regional Conference. The Writing Center has worked closely with the IT Fluency program to support this project, and is pleased to make the results of our study available for public distribution.