The Two Faces of Plagiarism and How to Avoid It
Randall Rivas
Educational Psychology
Abstract
In this paper both teachers and students will find helpful advice on dealing with plagiarism. Teachers will learn about the types of teachers and a solution that Jeff Karon has come up with. You will then find a section where I, Randall Rivas, come up with my own solution to the problem. Students will learn what plagiarism is and some tips and websites to help them avoid it. Both parties will then find a list with websites to help them check for plagiarism.
The Two Faces of Plagiarism and How to Avoid It
I’m sure we have all run into plagiarism sometime in our life, whether it was intentional or not. Plagiarism is when you take someone else’s work and pass it off as your own, and whether you meant to or not, if you are caught you will be punished. But fear not! If you continue reading both teachers and students alike will find very useful information dealing with plagiarism.
In todays world there are many teacher who have an absolute death penalty when they find plagiarism and there are students who see nothing wrong with it. “The solution [towards eradicating plagiarism] should objectively strengthen both students and teachers (Karon, 2012).” Like any dishonesty in any part of human life, academic dishonesty, such as plagiarism should be handle jointly by all parties involved. With plagiarism the parties involved the majority of the times is the teacher and the student.
Parties Involved
Teachers
According to Jeff Karon there are three types of teachers when handling plagiarism. The “Draconian Consequences” teacher, the “Preventative Construction” teacher, and the “Dedicated Discussion” teacher which all have their own weaknesses and strengths (Karon, 2012). Draconian Consequences This is usually an experienced teacher who is respected by his students for being fair while still giving them enough motivation to complete their work. The strength of this is that if it is applied every time, all the time then all students will understand the consequences while still being motivated by you. The weakness is that most of the time the students will look at you as being someone who will never trust them and are out to get them, thus resulting in not all plagiarism being eradicated because of the students personal vendettas (Karon, 2012). As a current student I have had experience with this kind of teacher. This type of teacher is usually feared and doesn’t provide enough motivation. Often the students who know they are capable of producing work without plagiarism or with proper citing will do fine, but the students who are not confident or feel the need to plagiarize or don’t cite properly often do plagiarize and get caught, don’t try very hard and fail, or completely not do the assignment out of lack of confidence and fear. If you are going to be this type of teacher you need to find the line of instilling fear into the students to shy away from plagiarism while still giving them enough motivation and resources to use sources and cite properly without fear. Preventative Construction
Jeff Karon states that this type of teacher is one who studies and finds ways to make every assignment to “preclude plagiarism.” The strengths of this type of teacher is the redoing of assignments brings new life to a possibly stale subject or work. The weakness is that because of trying to weed out plagiarism the broadness of the work and course may be too narrow, and as you know you must give students the freedom to explore a subject matter (Karon, 2012) The experience I’ve had with this type is very little, I’ve had one teacher who was a form of this but more heavily relied on being a mixture of Draconian Consequences and Dedicated Discussion teacher. Dedicated Discussion
This type of teacher discusses plagiarism heavily with their students. The
