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Know

While a handful of students blatantly plagiarize, a larger percentage of students plagiarize because they do not understand the material, or they lack confidence in their writing

Many students plagiarize parts of their papers because they don’t understand how to cite a source properly, or how to summarize an idea into their own words.

Students constantly struggle to find their own voice, and teachers constantly struggle to explain to students what constitutes plagiarism and what does not.

Today, most students who decide to lift written material use basic searches on the Internet, which makes obvious plagiarism easy to recognize.

Turnitin.com as a learning tool in my classes by showing students what percentage of their papers were not cited properly; the alert acts like a wake-up call.

A student who blatantly copies material, either from the Internet of from another student, is usually attempting to pass a class with a “last ditch” effort. It goes without saying that the student will not receive credit for that class.

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Learn

Even though there has been much discussion made about student cheating recently in the press, there has been the same amount of cheating happening in the school where I teach as when I was in high school.

Since I have around 120 students, I read about a thousand student papers a year, and usually only five to 10 of those are completely plagiarized. I would wager that there was a similar level of plagiarism 15 years ago, when students did their research in libraries and lifted material from books.

While it might be easier to get away with cheating today, it is also easier for students to get caught. When I was in high school, students could copy encyclopedias and books hidden away in library corners where teachers would never look.