PlagiarismWhat is plagiarism?Plagiarism occurs when the words or ideas of another person and presented as your own.
Is it serious?Plagiarism is dishonest; it is illegal, and the college takes infractions seriously. Students have been expelled from Clinton Community College for plagiarizing.
Plagiarism and online coursesStudents in online courses must be careful to avoid copying words from a website and pasting them into their documents. Much of the reading material in online courses comes from websites and it is easy to simply copy and paste information from a website into a document.
I use extremely sophisticated software which compares your answers to virtually everything that is available on the internet. This includes papers and assignments that have been submitted by other students from around the world. The software tells me which web site you took the material from, and exactly which words were copied. It also shows me the words highlighted in the original document side-by-side with your document. If your words came from something that was submitted by another student, it gives me the student name, the name of the course, the name of the teacher or professor, and the name of the school or college.
Students must do two things to avoid plagiarism. They must 1) identify any ideas or words that come from another source and 2) give the source of the information or create a link to the information (for internet sources). Suppose that a student copies the following from a source and submits it word-for-word exactly as it was found in the source. The student also listed a reference underneath the material. Muscle cells with few mitochondria don’t start consuming O2 until they are out of ATP and ADP concentration is high. The student then has some other information here. At the bottom of the page a reference is given for the sentence about muscle cells above. Mader, Sylvia S. 2004. Human Biology, 8th edition. McGraw Hill. At first, this may not look like plagiarism because a reference is listed. However, the student did not make clear that the information was not his or her own. Plagiarism could be avoided in this case by clearly identifying the words or ideas that were borrowed. This can be done by wording the information so that the reader knows what information comes from another source. According to Mader (2004), muscle cells begin consuming oxygen when the concentration of ADP is high. Mader, Sylvia S. 2004. Human Biology, 8th edition. McGraw Hill.
In the example above, the information borrowed (ideas or words) are identified and the source of the information is given. Course Policy on Using Information from Other Sources1. When citing published information, do not copy word-for word. Do not rely on the cleverness of another author to construct your sentences. Instead, you should reword the quotation in your own words. While it is legal to use direct quotations from other sources, they are not allowed in this course. You must use your own words for all material submitted. The second option shown in the example below (rewording) is the only option available for material submitted in this course. According to Mader (2004), “muscle cells with few mitochondria will not begin consuming O2 until the level of ATP drops and the ADP concentration is high.”
2. All borrowed information must be cited. Even though the words are changed, the source of the material must still be listed. In a lab report, the following would be included in the Literature Cited section: Mader, Sylvia S. 2004. Human Biology, 8th edition. McGraw Hill.
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