The New Plagiarism: Seven Anticdotes to Prevent Highway Robbery in an Electronic Age (1998)

Although this is an outdated article, it still stands true to this day! I just had a case of plagiarism in my class this past month on a book report. One of my little girls copied the entire back side of the book as her own summary and signed her name at the end. I did not have to use any fancy software to catch this fault, but instead payed close attention to the word choice and sentence fluency she used in her oral presentation (which was not normal for her ability). When I confronted her on her piece, she tried to say that some of the words were her own, but eventually confessed that she didn't have enough time and just copied the back of the book so she had something to submit. Unfortunately, because of her mistake, she not only missed out on completing the assignment correctly, but she failed her book report. Hopefully a life lesson she will never have to make again. The article states that "if students cannot find the answers but must make the answers, they are less likely to pass of others' ideas as their own." This is very true, but how do we get our lower level learners to this point? So many of our students are used to a question being posed and then given the opportunity to look up the answer? This is where higher level thinking strategies come into place. If we ask higher level questions (according to Bloom's Taxonomy), our students will be required to synthesize and analyze their responses. Something that I learned from this article that I would like to take back to my class next year to help alleviate the pressure to cheat is taking down notes in a different color text, so that you can see the student's thinking and opinions next to the actual text. Observing student research during the entire research process will help catch any glitches when they happen, instead of waiting till the end process is already submitted.