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In their zeal to eradicate plagiarism, academic departments often overlook many of the legal ramifications of academic dishonesty charges. Failure to be consistent in enforcing policies against plagiarism, and/or provide solid evidentiary support can lead to expensive lawsuits and negative publicity, which can ultimately impugn the credibility of the entire institution.

Although the definition of academic dishonesty is usually prominently displayed on the syllabus, homepage, and student information pages, instructions for faculty with respect to due process, appeals, and procedures for gathering evidence are often less clear.

In addition, it often benefits the institution to take a step back and to take a look at one’s own philosophies and attitudes about academic honesty. If the approach is simply detection and punishment, the institution may miss opportunities to guide and mentor students to be better scholars, writers, and researchers. Academic honesty can be an issue that encompasses learning goals and institutional vision with respect to mentoring, coaching, and success. In changing from a detection/punishment perspective, which by definition may bring about an adversarial stance, the institution has the opportunity to focus on achieving learning objectives, retention goals, and graduation rates.

That said, communication and well-planned faculty training and mentoring are keys to a successful approach to academic honesty, which avoids the disputes and confusion that may arise when policies and procedures are not clear, and attitudes and philosophies are not clearly aligned.

Academic honesty, and hence plagiarism, may involve an entire array of possibilities, ranging from buying papers written by others and passing them off as one’s own, or “blending” unattributed fragments from sources.

A review of types of plagiarism follows:

Copying and Pasting from the Internet: Services such as Turnitin.com and search engines such as Google are effective in detecting when a student has copied and pasted text which appears on the Internet. Few students will be as bold as to copy and paste an entire article and try to claim it is original writing. Most are more likely to copy and paste paragraphs or sections, and then cobble them together with transitional sentences of their own. There is usually original analysis between the chunks of copied material, but the arguments are fragmentary, and the citation is usually absent or incomplete.

“Blending” Unattributed Fragments

For some individuals, paper writing is not writing at all. It is the assembly of a huge collage of fragments, paragraphs, sections, and bibliographies from material found in printed sources and in the Internet. Usually, it is quite easy to detect this sort of plagiarism because the writing style is very disjointed. If there is an authorial voice at all, it is fairly uneven, perhaps even confusingly so. In other words, consistency is lacking. This sort of production (it is hard to call it “writing”) is usually evidence that the student feels insecure about his or her own ideas. One has to give the student credit for conducting research, but there is little or no synthesis. A way to avoid some of the issues here is to have students create an annotated bibliography, which gives them practice in putting ideas into their own words. They need to be reminded to use parenthetical citations, and to give enough information so that if a reader would like to do further research, it is possible.

Buying or Commissioning a Paper

This can be a bit difficult to detect, and the issues in academic misconduct are clear. One needs to be quite careful in assembling evidenciary support for claims, and to be able to demonstrate that this is not the individual’s own work. Sometimes the gap is clear because of the shifts in tone and voice. If a student has been posting in the discussion board area, it may be easier to detect. In this case, having the student turn in outlines, annotated bibliographies, and drafts can be helpful.

Recommended Procedures

Consistency, fairness, and freedom from prejudice are critical in establishing and maintaining protocols surrounding academic honesty.

Faculty should have a flowchart to refer to, and there should be a hotline / e-mail address for questions.

Step 1. Instructor suspects plagiarism or academic dishonesty.

Step 2. Instructor makes a note, and submits sections to Turnitin.com or Google.

Step 3. If the results are negative, the instructor should keep a mental note (perhaps even write these concerns down) and explain how or why academic dishonesty was suspected. Was the assignment followed in spirit as well as letter? Is this a recycled paper, or a paper written for another course? Are there sufficient points of contact with course content, learning objectives, readings, and learning outcomes? Do the tone, style, and usage of the English language differ from the student’s postings in discussion board threads? Save files in a separate folder.

Step 4. If the results are positive, start maintaining files. Advise the department and keep record of how the plagiarism was detected.

Step 5. Develop a policy for degrees of plagiarism. This will help insure consistency. For example, one might decide that in cases of <20% non-cited sources, then the faculty member should a) inform the student of the failure to cite sources;, and b) allow the student to submit a revision.

Step 6. Develop a policy for large-scale failure to cite sources. For example, the department or institution may decide that a major paper with >20% failure to cite sources should result in a failing grade for the assignment. There may be exceptions, which should be clearly delineated by the institution.

Step 7. Analyze the degree of academic dishonesty. Determine concrete guidelines for situations that would result in failing the entire course.

Step 8. In repeated cases of plagiarism or academic dishonesty, the instructor should refer to the department, which would then follow guidelines for determining when the entire course should be failed.

Step 9. All academic dishonesty determinations that have an impact on the student should be reviewed by an outside committee.

Because the consequences of academic dishonesty can be devastating to students and to the reputation of an institution of higher learning, it is vitally important to maintain records that provide evidenciary support.

Provide information about the nature and consequences of academic dishonesty. Post and make available the definition(s) of academic dishonesty, the consequences, appeals procedure. Make sure that contact information is included.

Provide guidelines to faculty, staff, and administration.

• How to inform a student that they have failed to cite sources.
• Procedures to follow.
• Which documents to save, and how to archive them properly.
• Student privacy issues.
• How to follow up with e-mails, and other written forms of communication.
• How to inform the department, and which documents to provide.
• How to use commercial products (Turnitin.com), search engines, for detecting uncited sources.

Keep records within the department.

• Maintain copies of correspondence, work under examination, results of Turnitin.com, results of web searches, examples of discussion board postings, etc.
• Write a summary of why academic dishonesty is expected, and the assumptions and procedures for detecting and proving it.
• Analysis of the work, conclusions, and rationale.
• Copies of notifications.
• Evidence of positive interventions (attempting to mentor student)
• Copies of documents that could be construed as threats, slander, libel, etc., to any involved party (student, faculty member, department, staff member, institution).

Clearly spell out the appeals process.

• Who initiates the appeal?
• Burden of proof (on professor? Department decides)
• Independent 3 rd party evaluation

Heading Off Plagiarism Before It Happens

Distance programs are under pressure to make sure that plagiarism is detected and punished. After all, the entire credibility of a program rests on academic honesty, particularly when students are working and submitting work at a distance, in unproctored, unmonitored environments. Although it is important to not be “all bark and no bite,” it is equally important not to bite indiscriminately and inconsistency. Due process, external reviews, faculty training, and student mentoring should be a part of any distance program, and the results should be evaluated, reviewed, and recommendations for procedural improvements must be constantly implemented.