Re: Plagiarism

[cmcfrede@kendall.mdcc.edu (Carol McFrederick)]

Ah! The ugly issue of plagiarism!  I can share with you some of the things
I've done over the years to prevent it and I'd like to add an additional
issue to this discussion.
Prevention:
1)I try to find a limiting field from which the students can choose their
topic.  One of my favorites is to require their issue to center on this
locality, Florida and to tell them to try to adapt it to something involved
with their major or other field of interest.  If they're majoring in
biology, for example, they might explore any of the numerous ecology
problems in the Everglades or the bay.  If education, they might look at
concerns over weapons in the schools.
2) Then they are required and encouraged to use primary sources.  Everyone
is required to include at least one interview as a source.  This has
yielded some interesting papers from students who have gone back to
interview their high school teachers.  Another student did some promising
reaearch by interviewing people on racism on campus.
3)I always require that a proposal be submitted and approved by me (with my
mark of approval and annotations for the field [almost always] to be
re-focused.  They must hand this in with the final copy of their paper or I
will not accept it.
        My question concerns tutors and the issue.  This community college
wc uses a peer tutoring system and from time to time tutors have come to me
with evidence that aomeone looks as if she ia about to hand in a
plagiarized paper.  I'm wondering what other wc's policies are on this, for
I hesitate to create an image of the wc as police.

Carol McFrederick
cmcfrede@cns.kendall.mdcc.edu