Lansing Community College Library  |  Issue No. 8  |  Spring 2007

Do Your Students Understand the P Word?

Plagiarism! According to the Webster’s II New College Dictionary, to plagiarize is “to steal and use the ideas or writings of another as one’s own.” Most of us in the role of teacher understand what constitutes plagiarism, but do your students? Quite often students do not
understand the intricacies involved in proper paraphrasing or when to credit another’s work.

If you would like your students to have some additional practice in identifying and avoiding plagiarism the library web site provides links to some useful Web tutorials. The  tutorials listed below can be found on the library instruction homepage at: www.lcc.edu/library/library-instruction.htm. Click on the “Online Tutorials” link. You can also link to these tutorials from this article.

How to Recognize Plagiarism (Indiana University Bloomington)

This tutorial provides ten practice exercises for identifying plagiarism.

LINKS: Your Guide to Finding Information (Lansing Community College)

Tips for avoiding plagiarism are presented in Module 6 – Citing Sources.

You Quote It! You Note It! (Acadia University)

Teaches students the differences between
paraphrasing and directly quoting.

Understanding Plagiarism (Butler University)

Uses paraphrased examples of original text to
test students’ understanding of plagiarism.