Preventing and Addressing Plagiarism in an Intercultural Class

[Coming Soon]

Why do students plagiarize? Here are some potential reasons (“Best Practices for Preventing Plagiarism”, n.d.):

• Students may not be equipped with necessary college-level writing skills.
• Students do not have the necessary resources to prevent unintentional plagiarism.
• Students’ fear of failure in the assignment/course.
• Students are required to submit only the final version of the assignment (not given opportunities to submit drafts).
• Technology manipulation (McGee, 2013). Easy access to information online allows students to copy and paste others’ work.

Some challenges faced by intercultural students (“Best Practices for Preventing Plagiarism”, n.d.):

• Some cultures consider intellectual property to be owned by the society, rather than one individual.
• Some intercultural students are used to being tested on rote memorization, rather than on critical thinking skills, which leads to the understanding that copying verbatim is right way of learning, and it shows respect to the author.
• Language challenges and barriers add difficulty to intercultural students’ attempts to use citations and references correctly.

We have put together 10 strategies to prevent and work with the issue of plagiarism in your class:

1. Use “Plagiarism Self-Assessment” to check students’ knowledge about plagiarism at the beginning of the semester.
2. Model your expectations. Students are more likely to intentionally remember and use citations and references when they observe their professors doing so. Besides ensuring your own accurate use of citations and references, you can also provide students with sample papers with specific citation styles. It is beneficial to provide international students with extra out of class time where possible to talk about how to cite and reference properly.    
3. Explain the importance of “ownership of ideas” and how it is related to “academic honesty/dishonesty”.  As Adhikari (2018) mentioned in the article:
   “If a student can’t see how ‘ideas’ can be stolen, the first thing a teacher needs to do is to illustrate cases where ideas are people’s means of living, their intellectual property and professional achievements. Similarly, if a student is yet to learn where and when people mind when someone takes their ideas without asking, teachers can illustrate cases of ethical responsibility toward others’ ideas as well” (p. 383-384). 
4. Give students the opportunity to submit draft-in progress so feedback can be provided before the final draft is submitted and graded.
5. Provide detailed and specific feedback such as a missed in-text citation, and what the students need to do differently to revise it.
6. Create an open culture of plagiarism in your class. Addressing the occurrences of plagiarism openly and directly helps to establish norms for both face-to-face and online classes.
7. Talk about how serious plagiarism is at Algonquin College to reduce misconduct. You can achieve this by guiding students through the academic policy on Plagiarism (AA)20 and ask students to submit the “Student Attestation of Academic Integrity” declaration (Appendix 1 of AA20).
8. Show students the Algonquin College resources on plagiarism prevention, which are linked below the video on the website.
   • The library offers workshops on conducting research and avoiding plagiarism.
   • The Student Learning Centre (SLC) offers coaching services that support students with their English and writing skills, including citation and references.
9. Strategies to prevent plagiarism for online assessments:
   • Algonquin College faculty can use Turnitin as a tool in Brightspace to support plagiarism prevention and detection;
   • Design online assessments to encourage original work. You can achieve this by asking students to interview people working in the field and write a reflection about the experience or inviting students to draw connections between their personal/professional experience to the assigned readings.
10. Based on the principles of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL), you can try the following strategies:
    • Allow different means for students to demonstrate their knowledge where applicable. Besides essay writing, allow students to use audio, video, and/or narrated presentations.
    • Allow sufficient time for students to learn about and consolidate their citation/reference skills by introducing the concept of plagiarism and useful tools to prevent plagiarism at the beginning of the semester.
    • Provide various ways to engage students with learning about plagiarism, the library and the Student Learning Centre provide resources in various formats and are easy for students to access (see 8.).
    • Teach students how to cite properly by using resources such as Plagiarism Tutorial.

References:

Adhikari, S. (2018). Beyond Culture: Helping International Students Avoid Plagiarism. Journal of International Students, 8(1), 375–388. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ116772&site=eds-live&scope=site

Best Practices for Preventing Plagiarism. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.webster.edu/faculty/ppp/best-practices-for-preventing-plagiarism.html

Dimitrov, N., Dawson, D. L., Olsen, K. C., & Meadows, K. N. (2014). Developing the Intercultural Competence of Graduate Students. Canadian Journal of

Higher Education, 44(3), 86-103. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1049386&site=ed-live&scope=site

McGee, P. (2013). Supporting Academic Honesty in Online Courses. Journal of Educators Online, 10(1). Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1004890&site=eds-live&scope=site