Faculty Services

Discouraging Plagiarism

Syllabus Design
Assignment Design
Grading
Other Resources at IUB

Although discouraging to consider, the problem of plagiarism among students should not dissuade you from designing the course you want to teach, or using assignments you want to use. Instead, consider how best to present that course and those assignments so that students understand the importance of academic integrity to succeeding in your course.

Above all else when dealing with academic honesty with your students:

NB: This page distinguishes, as should course policies generally, between plagiarism and what the National Council of Writing Program Administrators calls “misuse of sources”: when a student “attempts (even if clumsily) to identify and credit his or her source, but . . . misuses a specific citation format or incorrectly uses quotation marks or other forms of identifying material taken from other sources.”

That is, this page approaches sloppy but well intentioned work as a writerly problem, not as an instance of a student willfully trying to defraud the institution, and focuses primarily on discouraging students’ willful plagiarism. Instructors’ making this distinction clear to students in each class also helps students understand their broad responsibilities—not only to do their own work, but also to do it carefully.

Syllabus Design

The best way to discourage plagiarism is to make clear to your students that academic integrity is important to you and will affect how you run your course.

Several steps that help:

  1. Read thoroughly The IU Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct, which gives faculty clear guidelines about procedures to follow when it has been decided a student has committed an act of academic misconduct.

    Because The IU Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct gives faculty quite a bit of latitude in imposing sanctions for academic misconduct, instructors should be familiar with all the options open to them.

  2. Check with your department head or director of undergraduate studies for your department’s policy, if it has been put in writing.

  3. Consider the following questions in forming your policy about written work:
    • have you distinguished for your students the difference between plagiarism and the misuse of sources?
    • in instances of plagiarism or misuse of sources, do you hold first-year and upper-class students to different standards (to account for a “learning curve” on the part of novice researchers)?
    • how will you distinguish between the misuse of sources and plagiarism in your grading?
    • do you distinguish between penalties for misuse of sources/plagiarism on drafts v. final versions of papers?
    • if after receiving an initial warning, a student again plagiarizes, what is your policy vis-à-vis such a repeat instance of misconduct?
    • If you're using group or paired writing assignments, how will you allot responsibility and a grade to each group member, should one (or more) of the group plagiarize part of the paper?

  4. Include a statement in your Course Policies section that defines plagiarism. Here is one sample you may use without citation:
    Plagiarism constitutes using others’ ideas, words or images without properly giving credit to those sources. If you turn in any work with your name affixed to it, I assume that work is your own and that all sources are indicated and documented in the text (with quotations and/or citations).
  5. Include a statement of your policy about plagiarism. Here is a statement you may use without citation:
    I will respond to acts of academic misconduct according to university policy concerning plagiarism; sanctions for plagiarism can include a grade of F for the assignment in question and/or for the course and must include a report to the Dean of Students Office.

  6. Be aware of University policy concerning grades: For students found to have committed an act of misconduct and who receive an F in the course as a sanction, a grade of F will be entered for that student, even where an automatic W would otherwise be used. That is, after they have been found to have plagiarized and receive an F in the course as a sanction, students may not simply withdraw from a course and receive a W.

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Assignment Design

Using Assignment Sheets

Most important for any written assignment is the assignment sheet itself. Provide students with an assignment sheet for all written work; doing so clarifies the required task, the parameters for acceptable collaboration, and criteria for evaluation.

Changing assignments frequently

Using in-class writing assignments

Short in-class writing assignments provide instructors with opportunities to:

Making your assignments specific:

Students are far less likely to be able to plagiarize a unique assignment, since sources available to them will not meet the specific requirements of the assignment.

Consider a less well known piece:

Rather than: Discuss the importance of literacy to freedom in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative.

Try: Discuss the connection between literacy and freedom in Poynter’s abolitionist tract.

Pose a more focused question:

Rather than: What artistic movements influenced the Impressionists?

Try: In what ways does this particular Impressionist painting reveal the influences of earlier movements?

Ask an question that requires application, rather than explanation of knowledge:

Rather than: Explain the basic functions of the vascular, skeletal, muscular and nervous systems.

Try: A cat jumps off the end of a table onto the floor. Describe how its vascular, muscular, skeletal and nervous systems contribute to this action.

Rather than: Write a review of The Matrix (reviews are especially common on the Web).

Try: How well does The Matrix exemplify Smith’s “nostalgic futurism” in contemporary film?

Consider a tight comparison:

Rather than: Analyze Douglass’s attitude toward white abolitionists.

Try: How does Douglass’s notion of audience change between the Narrative and his Life and Times, and how do these two texts differ as a result?

Use a “touchstone” assignment:

Ask students to connect their ideas to another aspect of the class—use a point from lecture, a quotation selected from one of your readings (try to choose a less-obvious quotation), an image, or a graph.

Rather than: Discuss how the accused/condemned were treated in Salem.

Try: Using Mary Easty’s petition, explain the condemned’s perspective of the Salem trials.

If you would like feedback or consultation about the design of specific assignments, contact the staff at the Campus Writing Program via email (joepeter@indiana.edu) or phone (855-4928).

Assigning research paper assignments

Some suggestions other faculty have found useful in discouraging plagiarism are to:

Using an honor agreement

You might consider asking your students to sign a statement of agreement concerning academic misconduct. Although not legal documents, these agreements do signal to the students your seriousness about the subject and deflate students’ counter charge that your policy concerning “what you wanted” was not made clear to them. Click here for an example of an IU faculty member’s honor agreement.

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Grading

Attributes of highly suspicious essays

Consider some of the attributes that make faculty worry a piece of writing is not the student’s own:

Establishing Grading Criteria

Although the degree of detail provided might vary widely from instructor to instructor, good practice in constructing assignment sheets means including some indication of the criteria by which the assignment will be evaluated. See an example.

Consider including a phrase that indicates that to earn a passing grade, an essay

  1. must address the assignment, OR
  2. must answer the question posed and follow instructions, OR
  3. must fulfill all parts of the assignment

Or, conversely, that papers earning a grade of F will typically

  1. fail to fully address the assignment OR
  2. fail to fulfill the requirements of the assignment.

This strategy allows you to give appropriately low grades to papers that do not fit the requirements of your assignment or seem well outside the context of your class; if such papers are also in fact plagiarized, then these students may learn that they will earn higher grades by turning in original work, even if the quality is poor or hurried.

Marking citations

Helping students

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Other Resources at IUB

This discussion focuses on faculty concerns with student's written work; most classes also include quizzes, exams, and other assignments that must also be addressed. For further resources about test, quiz, and homework design, contact Campus Instructional Consulting.

Teaching and Learning Technology Center provides a list of other www-based resources as well as consultations about using anti plagiarism software, Turnitin.com, with which IU has a contract.

For information or consultation about using Turnitin.com, contact TLTC staff via email at tltc@indiana.edu or by calling 855-7829.

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