students plagiarism in all of their assignments

How to avoid plagiarism: 10 strategies for your students

Tech Wire Asia

The News Record | Olivia Romick

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The International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) defines academic integrity as not just avoiding dishonest practices, but rather “a commitment, even in the face of adversity, to six fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage.” And while it might feel like enough to post these high-level tenants on the wall of a classroom and move forward, it’s wholly more valuable (and complicated) to provide actionable ways to avoid plagiarism and embody these values.

There are myriad ways to support students in and outside of the classroom. And when it comes to avoiding plagiarism, many might say instantly, “Just get a plagiarism checker!” However, genuine instruction and learning goes beyond that: a successful approach to learning needs to contain guidance on areas that surround accurate research and citation; adequate time management; definition of misconduct and support if misconduct ensues.

Below are ten specific strategies for instructors that specifically support the skills students need to not simply avoid plagiarism, but to authentically learn and grow.

Ensure students know the difference between academic integrity and plagiarism.
Outline and define emerging trends in academic misconduct.
Teach students how to properly cite sources in a paper.
Support students’ development of time management skills.
Emphasize the value of and way to paraphrase correctly.
Clearly outline the institution’s and course’s policy on academic misconduct and AI writing usage.
Define the steps taken after misconduct is suspected.
Explain the concept of authentic learning.
Describe how authentic learning can help students avoid plagiarism.
Consider options for a plagiarism checker and an AI detection tool.

Let’s dive into this list in more detail. In the next section, you’ll find each tip framed as a question that a student might plug into a search engine (“What’s the difference between academic integrity and plagiarism?”), followed by suggestions and resources that support the development in that topic.

What is plagiarism? What is the difference between academic integrity and plagiarism?

In the classroom, it is important to have an aligned definition of plagiarism, even if it's assumed to be common knowledge. Explicit instruction for students has a measurable impact on mitigating misconduct. So to start things off, let's define plagiarism.

To plagiarize means to “steal or pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own” and/or to “use (another's production) without crediting the source.” In fact, plagiarize (and plagiarism) comes from the Latin plagiarius “kidnapper.: An integral tenant of the Western world’s concept of academic integrity involves citing the original source of information, giving appropriate credit where credit is due.

Truth be told, many consider “plagiarism” and “academic integrity” to be synonymous, when in fact, they cover different aspects of similar ideas.

In a previous Turnitin blog post , we recognize that “while plagiarism is indeed an act of academic dishonesty and academic misconduct, it isn’t the entirety of academic integrity.” In fact, academic integrity really is the commitment to live by the values listed by the ICAI (above) and plagiarism, specifically, “is a subset of academic dishonesty, and one way to violate academic integrity.”

Students, then, need to understand what plagiarism is and isn’t, as well as their school’s policies on integrity and misconduct, so that they can approach their work with gusto and honesty. Instructors benefit from communicating their policies around academic integrity not just at the start of an academic semester, but throughout the year. In addition, it is worth talking with students about forms of plagiarism, which can be seen on Turnitin’s Plagiarism Spectrum 2.0 , covering twelve different types of unoriginal work, including traditional forms of plagiarism and emerging trends. Furthermore, instructors should explicitly list resources that students can turn to in times of need (tutors, office hours, citation guidelines, etc.) so that the temptation to plagiarize is lessened even more.

When students study or publish abroad, it’s worth noting that the concept of authorship and citation is deeply rooted in Western principles. There are significant cultural differences in plagiarism that need to be considered, so educators and students alike can uphold integrity as global citizens while also respecting the cultural norms of different learning communities.

What are emerging trends in academic misconduct?

There are a variety of trends in academic misconduct out there today. From contract cheating and electronic cheating devices, to word spinners and online test-banks, there is a vast world of shortcut options. There is also concern around AI Writing tools and how they may transform the landscape of academic integrity .

Some instructors may fear that by talking about shortcut solutions, they introduce the concept of plagiarism and thereby open a door for students. The opposite is true for many educators, however, who find that by discussing shortcut solutions openly and clearly communicating their plagiarism policies, students know what is expected of them and which recommended resources to turn to in times of need.

Additionally, there has been lots of meaningful discussion around the appropriate use of AI writing tools in education. Depending on the instructor’s or institution's policy around AI tools, it is of utmost importance for a student to have an understanding around expectations concerning AI for each and every assignment. And as instructors more readily utilize AI writing detection, it’s equally important to have a context within which to interpret any particular AI writing detection score . In particular, this infographic enumerates many of the variables that educators should consider when interpreting each student's AI writing score

A meaningful first step can be Turnitin’s eBook, “Emerging trends in academic integrity” for a complete look at trends in academic misconduct. This free, downloadable guide talks about how to identify cases of misconduct and mitigate them, as well as how to deliver remote assessments with integrity, which helps institutions and instructors alike to build a strong foundation of integrity for authentic learning.

How do I cite sources in a paper?

Instructors at every grade level and in every subject should cover correct citations. Referencing others’ work creates a strong association between one writer’s thinking and the perspective of other scholars in that field. According to the University of Washington (USA): “Scholarship is a conversation and scholars use citations not only to give credit to original creators and thinkers, but also to add strength and authority to their own work. By citing their sources, scholars are placing their work in a specific context to show where they ‘fit’ within the larger conversation.”

If students understand the value of citations and how to craft them in their papers , it can lead to confidence long-term in submitting their own writing and not that of others’, illustrating their own understandings, and developing their own voice in the academic space.

How can I develop time management skills?

Time management is essential to success, not only in academia, but in life. As early as possible, students should learn time management skills so that they can organize their work, schedule time to study or research, and balance their extracurricular and academic activities. When students plan ahead, there is less likelihood that they will choose shortcut solutions for assignments because they are confident in their own approach and the time required to research and revise.

If students are struggling with time management, interventions by tutors or teachers may be helpful prior to a larger assignment or exam. Online resources, too, can be helpful; Blair Fiander, founder of Blair’s Brainiacs, offers advice on how to keep motivated while studying remotely and tips for independent study and revision .

How do I paraphrase correctly?

Paraphrasing supports learning outcomes because it requires students to analyze, summarize, interpret, and restate others’ writing. It supports and strengthens research because it brings in other ideas without interrupting the flow of writing the way a direct quote sometimes does. However, if a student doesn’t know how to paraphrase information accurately or effectively, there is a greater chance that they will unintentionally plagiarize, or even seek alternative methods, including word spinners or AI writing tools to complete an assignment.

When students can read a body of text and then put it into their own words, not only do they avoid plagiarism, they also more deeply absorb complicated concepts and enhance their own thinking. Paraphrasing can often help students to feel more confidence about research they conduct and produce. Check out Turnitin’s Paraphrasing Resource Pack , a comprehensive set of ready-to-use resources for those seeking to enhance this valuable skill.

What is my school’s policy on academic misconduct and AI writing usage?

Just as roadways function better with clearly posted speed limit signs, so too, can students complete their best, original work when they understand expectations. In addition to the syllabus and rubric, which gives students a roadmap on what is needed to complete the assignment, students also need an understanding of the honor code and how a school approaches suspected misconduct.

When a student body receives education around academic misconduct, there is a significant decrease in cases of plagiarism. A 2020 study found that after 12 semesters of academic misconduct data, there was a 37.01% reduction in instances of detected plagiarism following explicit interventions on academic misconduct ( Perkins, et al. ).

Sharing a policy can take many forms. The University of South Australia provides students with a 12-page written Academic Integrity Policy that not only defines key terms, but also outlines levels of offense and their specific consequences. Kingston University in London offers a landing page that defines academic misconduct and the university’s procedures. Instructors, furthermore, should update their honor codes for online learning environments because with the increase of online instruction during the pandemic, many universities reported an uptick in misconduct.

Institutions, as mentioned above, also need to update their academic integrity policies to include AI and ideally, clearly outline what constitutes use and misuse within the charter.

All of these steps provide clear guidelines for students who need to know how to submit high quality assignments, as well as what happens if misconduct occurs.

What happens if I’m caught plagiarizing?

If a student’s assignment has suspected plagiarism, there are several things that may happen, depending your institution’s policies:

An escalation policy, which needs to have been communicated to the students prior to any assignments, is enacted.
Conversations between students and instructors, which could include a deep-dive into how research was conducted, how references were cited (or not cited), as well as any examples of a student’s previous work as a comparison.
Administration or academic panel involvement (if needed).
Next steps, be they a rewrite, a failed grade, expulsion, or other.

Plagiarism not only tarnishes the act of learning, but it can also affect a student’s or institution’s reputation, the quality and respectability of research, and the value of a diploma. And while it’s never a pleasant experience to go through this process, sometimes simply knowing there are serious penalties for misconduct deters students from seeking shortcut solutions.

Hamilton College Reference Librarian Julia Schult says, "Plagiarism isn't a bad thing simply because it's intellectual theft—although it is that. It's a bad thing because it takes the place of and prevents learning." As such, many instructors and institutions are opting for an alternative to the zero-tolerance approach when it comes to misconduct, in order to put learning back into the equation.

There is an increased desire for restorative justice which, unlike traditional punishment, looks “to see students not only learn from their mistakes, but to simultaneously re-establish their standing and give back to the institutional community” ( ICAI 2018 ). The University of Minnesota (USA) has provided a program entitled “Academic Integrity Matters” (AIM) for students who have engaged in scholastic dishonesty and accept responsibility for violating the Student Conduct Code. Based on restorative justice principles, this program offers an opportunity for students to attend facilitated meetings with community members to reflect on the importance of academic integrity. Participants and community members discuss and agree on an educational opportunity the student will complete in order to demonstrate understanding of academic integrity and move beyond the disciplinary space.

For instructors seeking restorative justice, there is an opportunity to turn plagiarism into a teachable moment , helping students to understand why there are safeguards in place to ensure original work. Furthermore, if students feel like they can fail safely , often risks are mitigated because they know that even if they make mistakes, they can rewrite, relearn, and rebuild trust to make it better in the future.

What is authentic learning?

Avoiding plagiarism is about prioritizing learning and its process above the end result. While explicit instruction and academic policies fortify academic integrity, it’s also important to nurture intrinsic motivation for learning. What is one way to help foster such intrinsic motivation in students? Authentic learning is one option.

Julia Hayden Galindo, Ed.D., from the Harvard Graduate School of Education , describes authentic learning as ”learning activities that are either carried out in real-world contexts, or have transfer to a real-world setting.” She goes on to say:

“Authentic learning tasks capture students’ attention and raise their motivation to learn because they touch on issues that are directly relevant to students’ present lives or future careers. The instructor’s role, in this mode of teaching, is to help students to make connections between their own ways of making sense of the material and the established cultural frameworks of the discipline” ( Stein et al., 2004 ).

Rooted in constructivist theory, authentic learning insists that actively engaging with problems and materials constitutes the best way to learn ( Mayo, 2010 ). As John Dewey said, “[E]ducation is not an affair of ‘telling’ and being told, but an active and constructive process” (Dewey, as cited in Mayo, 2010, p. 36). Stein, Issacs, & Andrews emphasize that authentic learning activities should have both personal and cultural relevance ( 2004 ). And as often as possible, instructors should merely be facilitators of learning, providing an environment for learning where students themselves lead the charge and engage with topics, wrestle with new ideas, engage in discussions with each other, and ultimately, dive into material that is meaningful to them on their own terms.

How does authentic learning help students avoid plagiarism?

At its core, authentic learning fosters intrinsic motivation. Instead of being driven by fear, by a higher grade, or even by approval of others, students instead work hard for themselves. They have an internal desire to try something new, make mistakes, acquire a skill, and increase their knowledge. And because it comes from within, they are less likely to seek shortcut solutions that would hinder or taint their genuine learning. If educators can foster in students such a desire to learn for its own merits, then even when under pressure or facing a deadline, a student will still seek to complete their own, original work.

Using examples so students know how the material can be of use. Providing meaningful reasons for learning activities.
Providing constructive feedback early and often to help students understand next steps in their learning journey, which includes positive feedback.
Giving students control over their learning. Giving them opportunities to choose their own topics or reading lists and provide a variety of assessment formats , so they have control over how they demonstrate their understanding.

As James Lang put it in his book, Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty , educators should strive to inspire students “with appeals to the intrinsic joy or beauty of the task itself.” If educators nurture an environment that feels authentic, safe, and inspiring, with clear expectations and high standards for original work, research shows that cases of misconduct are low and the caliber of learning high ( Lang, 2013 ).

How can a plagiarism checker help me?

In an academic space where students and instructors alike are seeking to avoid plagiarism and promote original thought, this question is prominent. However, it is a question that should be asked in tandem with all of the questions above, as one element of a multi-faceted approach to academic integrity. Plagiarism checkers like Turnitin Feedback Studio act as a backstop solution to academic misconduct if all of the above methods should fail.

A tool like Turnitin Feedback Studio is beneficial because it utilizes a massive database of content to determine if there are similarities between a student’s work and writing that has already been published. If instructors opt for multiple submissions , then a student can receive up to three Similarity Reports before the due date to get feedback on their writing and improve it before submitting.

Utilizing tools like Draft Coach in the writing process also upholds integrity; with Draft Coach, students can receive immediate feedback, not just on similarity, but on citations and grammar as well. From there, students can revise their writing accordingly, which not only encourages real-time learning, but also equates to real time saved by teachers grading papers on the back end.

And within Turnitin Originality, there is an AI detection feature to help educators identify when AI writing tools such as ChatGPT have been used in students’ submissions, offering insights to inform next steps.

And while choosing a plagiarism checker is helpful in a variety of ways, it is important to note that Turnitin does not detect plagiarism . Our tools, in fact, detect similarity and offer insights to support instructors and administrators making their own informed decisions about student work.

In sum: Strategies for students to avoid plagiarism

In the end, avoiding plagiarism goes beyond having a tool to check for similarity. It is a robust, holistic approach that includes foundational instruction around citations and paraphrasing; a culturally responsive curriculum that clearly defines misconduct and policies in that community; the prioritization of student wellbeing to ensure that students feel seen in the classroom .

Students, instructors, and administrators can work together to utilize these strategies and establish a culture of academic integrity where authentic learning is the goal and high-quality, original work is seen daily.

Designing Activities and Assignments to Discourage Plagiarism

Alice j. robison, bonnie k. smith, writing across the curriculum.

Plagiarism is a serious topic raised frequently when we talk about responding to student writing, and it makes sense that we should want to talk about plagiarism in the context of evaluating and responding to student writing because it is at that moment—after the fact—that we discover that plagiarism or cheating has occurred. The University has provided instructors with a series of strategies for dealing with plagiarism. Thankfully, serious plagiarizers are the exception to the rule in most of our classrooms.

But despite warnings and the threat of punishment, plagiarism does occur, and with increasing frequency. The Council of Writing Program Administrators notes that “with the advent of the Internet and easy access to almost limitless written material on every conceivable topic, suspicion of student plagiarism has begun to affect teachers at all levels, at times diverting them from the work of developing students’ writing, reading, and critical thinking abilities.” 1 So, what can writing instructors do to stop plagiarism before it happens? What strategies are available to instructors as they seek to prevent students from committing the act in the first place? Teaching our students about proper use of sources and citation methods is an important part of discouraging plagiarism, and defining, discussing, and teaching proper use of sources and citation methods is a useful tactic. Experienced instructors concur that it is important to include information on plagiarism in their syllabi, perhaps confirming class discussions with “academic honesty contracts” or institutional “honor codes.”

In addition to these explicit efforts to discourage plagiarism, instructors can also think carefully about course and assignment design. As Sally Cole and Elizabeth Kiss (2000) point out in their article, “What Can We Do About Student Cheating,” “Students are most likely to cheat when they think their assignments are pointless, and least likely to cheat when they admire and respect their teachers and are excited about what they are learning.”

Options for Preventing Plagiarism

Although we may not realize it, the basic requirements for Comm-B and Writing-Intensive courses at UW include many pedagogically sound tactics for teaching writing—activities that can help discourage plagiarism. These guidelines ask instructors to:

Develop discipline-specific writing activities that encourage students to learn and understand the discourse of a field of study
Emphasize revision as a routine process for writing
Conduct regular, one-on-one, in-depth conferences with students about their writing
Devote class time to preparing students to complete writing assignments
Implement regular, informal, ungraded writing tasks
Keep class sizes small
Ask students to provide regular feedback on their experiences with the course.

Additionally, here are some suggestions for activities that may help you and your students avoid problems, all of which are most effective at the beginning of a course:

Share the University’s definition of misconduct with your students.
Share examples of misconduct. For example, show your students an acceptable paraphrase juxtaposed with an unacceptable paraphrase.
Talk regularly with all of your students about their papers in progress and their evolving ideas for their papers. Regular dialogue with your students not only helps students improve their thinking and writing but also discourages plagiarism.
Remind your students about documenting sources. And ask them what they already know about documentation, so you can build from their existing experience.
Decide what violating the rules means in your class. If your course or department does not already bind your course to a specific academic honesty policy, make a policy, communicate that policy to your students, and stick to it.
Many instructors articulate their own or their department’s academic honesty policies in contract form and have their students sign the contracts at the beginning of the semester. Such a contract serves multiple purposes: it teaches students about their responsibilities as writers, alerts students that you care about academic honesty, discourages students from plagiarizing, and may help you if you have to deal with a plagiarism case.

The following is an example of an academic honesty contract used in my English 100 course.

Designing Assignments to Discourage Plagiarism

Beyond these best practices for teaching writing are several best practices for preventing plagiarism in the writing classroom. In a statement on plagiarism the Council on Writing Program Administrators recommends that instructors improve the design and sequence of assignments, noting that there are things we can do as instructors to design our courses so as not to invite plagiarism:

Tailor assignments carefully to the content of your course . One of the riskiest things to do is to give generic assignments not tailored to the course. Offering students concrete and specific questions that are situated in the course’s content and learning goals can discourage infinite choice while helping students to understand your expectations. If you provide students with detailed paths of inquiry that are grounded in the subject matter and class activities, you’ll discourage broad, off-topic responses.
Design assignments that require students to explore a subject in depth . Longer writing assignments that are sequenced (see section on sequencing at the front of this sourcebook)—i.e., “broken up” into smaller, incremental writing tasks—can significantly reduce the opportunity for plagiarism and allow students to think frequently and regularly about the course content and ultimately produce better papers. Activities like student peer review, summarizing sources, and short, sentence- or paragraph-length informal writing assignments as part of a longer, more formal assignment, require students to take ownership over their individual writing processes.
Ask students to keep an ongoing, consistently revised list of readings and activities that they’ve enjoyed in the course, bringing the list to conferences for further discussion.
If planning on a term project or paper, ask students to commit early to a broad topic. Then, provide students with due dates for annotated bibliographies, research questions, oral presentations, thesis statements, outlines, beginning paragraphs, etc. Students can (and should) mold their topics as they go, asking and answering questions as they complete the steps of the project.
Students often report that the one-on-one time they spend with instructors is some of the most helpful and valuable learning they experience. Encourage students to bring their ongoing research to your office hours or to the Writing Center for help discussing how to narrow a topic. Time spent in conference discussing the research a student has already performed can help the student commit to a specific research question or topic that you’ve developed together.
Develop and sequence assignment schedules for students that allow them time to explore as they work toward defined topics . Allowing space and time for students to master each challenge as they build toward a larger assignment builds confidence in students’ ability to truly learn and understand the material assigned to them. Students are much less likely to cheat if they feel confident in their abilities to master the material on their own. For example, if you regularly assign response papers in your class, think about asking students to first write summaries of the text they’ve been asked to respond to. Then, encourage them to conduct a peer review of those summaries online or outside of class. They’ll quickly find out from each other whether they’ve understood the text, and you’ll spend a lot less time grading summaries instead of critical analyses.
Coach students through each step of the research process . Let students know that you understand how difficult the writing process can be, and then guide them through it. Many experienced instructors create and distribute handouts on how to find a research question, how to create and sustain a thesis, or how to conduct library research. These guides, written by you, are a wonderful teaching tool. In fact, we’ve included some excellent examples in this sourcebook. See the section on “Coaching Students to Succeed.”
Make the research process, and technology used for it, visible . The idea here is to make research public. In other words, show students how you found and decided on the readings for the course. Offer up ideas for databases, search terms, websites, and clearinghouses that they can use in their information-gathering activities.
Develop evaluation criteria that require students to address the particular questions in your assignment so that a “borrowed” or generic paper—no matter how professional—won’t be satisfactory. Sharing your evaluation criteria will communicate to students at the start that you’re holding them accountable for answering specific questions.

Sample Assignments

Though no assignment can be absolutely plagiarism-proof, some assignments are so heavily situated in the context of a course that they truly can make plagiarism less likely. While these assignments are creatively designed, they also require creative responses—not an easy task! Most important, they are designed in such a way that the opportunity for plagiarism or cheating is virtually eliminated, therefore boosting the chances that students will go to their instructors for help (rather than the Internet or a paper file).

From Professor Virginia Sapiro’s Women’s Studies 102 course, this short, informal assignment asks students to adopt a different point of view in order to gain a critical understanding of information sources. As Martians just-arrived on Earth, students analyze current communications media over a two-week time period—an assignment so particular to time and place that it would be extremely difficult to plagiarize.

Martian Media Watch You are a Martian who has just arrived on Earth and, because you are an extremely intelligent being, you pick up a complete command of English in no time. You understand from the earthlings you encounter that the mass media of communication are used regularly on earth to keep people informed of all the important things that are happening. Pick one news medium and follow it carefully for at least two weeks. You may pick one daily newspaper to read every day, or watch television news every day (including some “news analysis” shows) or read a selection of news magazines. You may pick a limited number of news sites on the internet. What do you learn about gender from these media? What, especially, do you learn about women? In the course of your discussion, pay attention to the “quality” and intended audience of your chosen medium (for example, is this an elite, national newspaper such as the New York Times ?) Consider: is the sampling and approach to the news you found the only possible way that news source could have dealt with gender issues at that time? How would you explain why the news was structured as it was in your source(s)? Be sure to integrate your observations into the arguments and observations of the research literature on the mass media.

In a History of the American West seminar, Professor Susan Johnson asks students to write a brief review of the first four books they read together as a class, drawing from the discussion that takes place during those first few weeks of the semester. The papers that result are therefore closely tied to class discussion as students address specific questions that a generic paper won’t likely answer.

Review Essay Write a formal 3-4 page paper that examines and evaluates ideas about “the West” and “the frontier” in the first four books we’ve read collectively (Limerick, Taylor, White, and Cronon). You do not need to concentrate equally on each of these books. And you do not need to limit yourself to a literal reading of what these authors say about the actual terms “the West” and/or “the frontier” (indeed, only two of the authors engage in a wide-ranging discussion of the terms). Instead, you need to make a coherent argument about the intellectual conception of the West or the frontier that emerges from your reading of these four books. Is “the West” a meaningful concept that helps us to understand the historical situations described and analyzed in these books? Is “the frontier”? …These are among the kinds of questions you may want to answer in your paper. Obviously, you can’t answer all of them, and you may have questions other than these that you wish to raise. But your paper should pose a historical question and then answer it relying on the readings we’ve done in common so far.

Rob Emmett teaches an introductory English composition course on argument and ecocriticism. A primary goal of Emmett’s is to help students understand the ways that ecocritics “think and write about non-textual mediations of our environment” so that students can understand argument as it takes shape outside of the readings they do for the course. By sequencing the assignment into small, incremental steps and by asking students to conduct original research in a localized space (the Map Library), Emmett makes it difficult for students to fabricate their research.

Essay: Ecocriticism of Visual Arguments Find at least three maps of a single geographical area (e.g., the city limits of Chicago, the state of Nebraska, or Togo) from three different historical moments (i.e., each should be at least 50 years apart). Analyze the visual arguments made by these maps and consider how and why this representation changed over time. You will need to compare and contrast these images. Your thesis for this option should evaluate these historical changes in representation and possibly predict what a future map of this area will look like based on current trends in land-use or social structure. (For example, the map covering San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico could be redrawn in sixty years as one city-state, “Nuevo California.”) What is included and excluded from the maps at different times? Whose purposes do these exclusions or inclusions serve? Do later additions to the map represent progress? How or why? Include facsimiles of the images in your final portfolio. In addition, it is vital that you incorporate what you have learned in our study of maps and other visual representations of space, especially the arguments made in the oral debate project (forthcoming).

How does UW define plagiarism?

Plagiarism at UW falls under the umbrella of “academic misconduct.” According to chapter 14 of the University of Wisconsin System Administrative code, “Academic Misconduct Subject to Disciplinary Action; (I) Academic misconduct is an act in which a student:

seeks to claim credit for the work or efforts of another without authorization or citation;
uses unauthorized materials or fabricated data in any academic exercise;
forges or falsifies academic documents or records
intentionally impedes or damages the academic work of others;
engages in conduct aimed at making false representation of a student’s academic performance;
assists other students in any of these acts.” (UWS 14.03)

For further information about procedures and penalties imposed on students, instructors should be sure to visit the Dean of Students Office website at http://students.wisc.edu/doso/acadintegrity.html.

What do I do if I suspect a student has committed an act of academic misconduct?

The first thing you should do is carefully read the material from the Dean of Students. Then, we’d recommend you talk with experienced colleagues who’ve handled plagiarism cases before—especially directors of a course. Then, according to the University’s policies, you should set up an informal meeting with the student during which you share your concerns. But before you meet with a student, you need to have a clear goal and plan for what you want to accomplish during the course of the meeting. You should also imagine how the student might respond to your concerns; some students might get angry or cry in such a meeting, and others might quietly agree that they’ve handled the assignment inappropriately. Be prepared for various reactions.

In addition to consulting the university guidelines, you may wish to seek the advice of a colleague or your course coordinator. Additionally, you might consider having a colleague present at the initial meeting with the student. Use the informal meeting as an opportunity to explain your view of the problem. Then, be sure to listen and allow the student an opportunity to respond to your concern.

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1 “Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices.”