Plagiarism
What 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 courses
Students 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 Sources
1. 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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