Title: Building Written Assignments
Course: Academic Integrity > Section: Encouraging Academic Integrity

Plagiarism is another common issue that violates academic integrity. One issue here is that often, students are unclear as to what may constitute plagiarism. Not everyone may be aware of accidental plagiarism, or that it's possible to self-plagiarize. In fact, I've known people who have gone through MA programs that never learned that detail - until they learned that lesson the hard way.

So what makes up plagiarism? Plagiarism is taking someone else's work and passing it off as one's own. That can mean an entire paper purchased via a paper mill or from an enterprising friend, or it can mean paraphrasing by changing a few words around in a sentence.

Let's look at some strategies for plagiarism-proofing your written assignments:

Strategy 1: Model the behavior you want to see from students.

When is the last time you went over the speed limit or rolled through a stop sign at an empty intersection? Or maybe at some point in your past, you downloaded a song or used an image that violated copyright. Chances are, there is some way that you've broken a rule and given yourself a pass. We all have, especially when we see no harm in violating the rule, and sometimes, this is for a good reason.

The point is not to judge here, or to point fingers. No one is perfect, and when we're approaching our students' choices, it's important to recognize that. That's why the first strategy listed here is to model the behavior you want to see from your students. That means making conscious choices in the materials you use and how you present them.

Demonstrate the use of quotations and citations within your course materials. But don't just do it; call these out as examples for students to follow when drafting their own responses.

Earlier, we touched on deinviduation and how anonymity and the perception of group norms can create an atmosphere of "everyone's doing it." As an instructor, you can unconsciously contribute to that - or you can actively work against it.

Strategy 2: Make your expectations clear.

Setting clear expectations on what you will and won't accept from students can go a long way toward helping students understand and meet the standards for academic honesty. First, include details about what plagiarism is and the different ways that someone can commit plagiarism. Even if you think these students should know better, making it explicit in each course and before the written assignment can remove any confusion (or excuses). Build your expectations into the directions and rubrics for each written assignment.

Another way to make your expectations clear: Include examples of both good and not-so-good essays, and share your feedback on the good and bad essays so the students can get a better understanding of your expectations and why these rules are important to follow.

Strategy 3: Give the student the motivation to do the assignment.

Part of making your expectations clear is also clarifying how their participation will benefit them. We've talked about setting up the social contract of teaching and building a community of trust between your students and yourself. If a student sees that they are harming themselves (and not just if they get caught), other students, and even you, then students will be less likely to do it. The flip side is also true. If a student sees a clear benefit to themselves, they're more likely to be motivated to do the assignment. By providing a clear benefit to the student, you remove one of the risk factors we talked about earlier in this module.

Strategy 4: Offer students a choice in assignment topics.

Students who can choose their own topic - or at least have the flexibility in how they relate to the topic - are going to be more intrinsically motivated to complete the assignment themselves rather than pay someone else to write the paper. And that interest means they're going to want to do the assignment with care, which can reduce the amount of accidental or mosaic plagiarism that may occur. It also means they're more likely to look more closely at the topic and integrate the knowledge and skills with what they already know, leading to deeper learning and higher-level thinking. The more they understand the knowledge, the less likely they are to simply paraphrase and regurgitate the information. For instructors, this also means that grading is going to be more interesting, and if students are all working on different topics, it means you're less likely to get students who collude on the topic. Plagiarism from one student to another is going to be far more obvious as well, than if twenty students are doing the same topic.

Strategy 5: Build up to the assignment in stages.

One of the most effective ways you can reduce plagiarism is by catching it in the early stages of a draft. By requiring students to do the assignment in stages, you not only reduce the stakes of a one-and-done assignment, you also reduce the amount of anxiety that the students may experience. It can also alleviate the fear that they are incapable of doing the work, or that they're going to let someone down.

For example, instead of one final paper, why not spread the work out over the course of a few weeks, or even the full semester? Here's a way this could play out for a 100-point assignment.

1. Have them choose a topic with at least one source. 10 points
2. Submit an outline, complete with their thesis. Give them a chance to revise their thesis with feedback. 10 points.
3. Submit a literature review or annotations of at least 2 other sources for their paper. 10 points.
4. Turn in a rough draft of the paper for peer review. 20 points. This gives you an opportunity to see if large chunks of the assignment are plagiarized as well as provide feedback so they can refine the paper.
5. Complete a peer review of another student's paper using the rubric. 10 points.
6. Turn in the final copy of the paper for grading.  40 points.

While this requires more work setting up the assignments and offering feedback, it helps students feel more confident that they're turning in a strong paper with the opportunity for you to provide feedback and guidance.

It also adds an ethical collaborative element to the assignment in their opportunity to workshop it with someone else. The National Education Association advises that collaborative learning benefits students by boosting their confidence and allowing them to develop higher-level thinking skills (2018).

Strategy 6: Encourage Meaningful Reflection

Having students reflect on what they've learned from the assignment and how that fits in to what they already knew or didn't know. This relates back to explaining the relevance of the assignment because it provides an opportunity for them to reflect on how the assignment benefits them.

Strategy 7: Get to know your students (and their writing style)

Building community, as we've mentioned earlier, reduces the deindividuation effect, but it also means that you'll have a chance to get familiar with a student's speaking and writing style, especially if you have them do in-class writing assignments. Sure, students will polish (one hopes!) a final paper, but having the rough drafts and other written assignments offers an opportunity to get to know a student's voice, writing idiosyncrasies, and patterns.

Strategy 8: Use TurnItIn

This is last on the list for a reason, and that's because it is the last line of defense. TurnItIn is a similarity checker that is integrated into Canvas so that when activated, the students' paper gets submitted to TurnItIn as well, which compares the submission to other submissions by students, websites, and other sources and generates an originality score based on what it finds.

You'll see the submission flagged in the Gradebook with green, yellow and red indicating the levels of originality (green meaning low similarity scores, red meaning high). You'll also be able to view the report through the Speedgrader to see what sources are flagged as similar.

Note that this is not a "plagiarism checker" but a similarity tool. The tool doesn't grade the paper, it merely provides you with information about what it finds. It's up to you how you use the information to grade.

To set up an assignment with TurnItIn is easy. As you are setting up your assignment in Canvas, you will see "Submission Type" under the details tab. Choose Online and then choose File Uploads.

This should activate the Plagiarism Review section below. it. There, you can set your options, including submitting the papers to a standard paper repository, and where to compare the submissions against. You can also indicate if you want to exclude anything from the similarity report, such as the bibliographic materials.

One other setting to note: If you want to compare against concurrent submissions for that assignment, you'll want to re-check it after the assignment until date closes. That's when the comparison will run against students in the same class. It's vital to keep in mind that if two students in the same class turn in the same paper, TurnItIn is not indicating which (if either) of those students plagiarized. It merely informs you that the two papers are similar enough to be flagged.