Educational Developer

I associate plagiarism with a lot of things. Firstly that some students simply don't know how to refer to sources in an academic way, And perhaps also lack of experience. I also associate it with deliberate cheating Trying to get credit for something that's not yours, which of course is not allowed. Plagiarism typically occurs in the students' first years, When they haven't yet learned how to use sources properly, because they haven’t been taught what to do. They tend to work the way they normally do on a computer in their everyday life: Cut and paste ... And also Web 2.0 where there isn't always just one single author behind the texts they find on the Internet. And if they don't understand that it is a completely different thing to work academically. Then maybe they will plagiarise accidentially. There is also another aspect: The students need to find their own voice. This relates to the problem of writing too closely to your sources. Using the same language, or maybe even taking on some of the same ideas – or a specific way of thinking. - And end up writing just like them. You need to keep a distance and find your own tone throughout the text. To avoid plagiarism, students need to do several things. First, find out which regulations apply at your institution. You can find this information on the Internet. Or ask your student counsellors. Then you have to reflect on what it means to write an assignment as part of an academic community. What does it actually mean to work academically, And what does it mean to be transparent, so that your readers can check your work. So that the reader can check all of the sources you have used. You have to be as transparent as possible to your reader! We can help students to avoid plagiarism, By specifically teaching them how to write academic texts and cite sources. We should also teach them exactly what an academic text is and how to communicate within the academic community. We need to specify the requirements: What does it take to make a statement reliable? This needs special attention! If you've been in the business for so long that everything seems familiar, You can forget completely that there are other ways of seeing things. We forget to explain to the students what we expect of them. I believe that this is something important that we all need to remember.