A major problem facing both professors and students is the practice of plagiarism, defined as deliberate or accidental use of ideas, research, or words of another person without fully attributing them to their original sources. This also includes creative work, such as video projects and scripts. As a student in this course, it is your responsibility to know what constitutes plagiarism. A student who plagiarizes work in this class will receive a failing grade for the course and may be subject to additional academic misconduct sanctions.
The following offers advice on a major aspect of plagiarism:
You should clearly attribute ideas that you have paraphrased to other authors, both directly in your text and by providing reference citations.
Do not try to paraphrase by changing just a few of the author’s words (that’s plagiarizing).
Paraphrasing involves substantial change in the order of words and ideas, usually to condense them. Paraphrasing, in other words, involves putting someone else’s thoughts into your own words, not just rearranging the words and ideas or combining, but shortening someone else’s sentences.
To avoid unintentionally writing a plagiaristic paraphrase, carefully mark the notes that you take on your references where you use exact, or nearly exact, words of the source.
The following guidelines are offered as additional hints on what plagiarism is:
•Every paper or report submitted for credit is accepted as the student’s own work. It may not, therefore, have been composed, wholly or partially, by another person, including another student.
•The wording of a student’s paper is taken as his or her own. Thus he or she may not submit work that has been copied, wholly or partially, from a book, article, essay, newspaper or another student’s paper or notebook, or any other written or printed source (including speeches, news reports, videotapes, audiotapes, CDs, DVDs, etc.). Direct quotes or ideas from outside sources may be used, but they must be properly cited. Thus, do not simply change a few words within a sentence from a source, put it in your paper, and drop a footnote by it without using quotation marks. Doing so represents the sentence as your own, when it is not, and this is plagiarism!
•As a student, you may incorporate in your paper ideas that have arisen from discussion or lectures when you incorporated these ideas into your own thinking. However, be careful to either cite properly the source of the ideas or cite other sources that reinforce the ideas you are using. This is particularly true of classroom discussions.
•You may, as a part of the good writing process, give your work to someone else for suggestions. However, having someone else totally correct and revise your work constitutes that person’s work, not your own, and thus constitutes plagiarism. The best advice here is to use the Teaching and Learning Center located on the lower level of the LRC. They are trained to work with you on your papers and projects without actually doing the work for you.
•You may, of course submit, a paper to be typed by another person, provided that typist has not sought to change the wording, ideas, organization, or any significant aspect of the paper in any way. If you submit such a paper, be sure to proofread carefully.
•No paper may be submitted for credit that has been or is being used to fulfill the requirements of another course, in whatever department, unless permission to coordinate work has been granted by both professors.
•Students in my courses are expected to utilize the APA stylebook, which provides guidelines for proper citation of research and critical papers. In courses with scriptwriting assignments, students are expected to follow the guidelines presented for script formatting.
•In terms of scriptwriting, you should clearly identify where your ideas originated. For example, if you were writing a training script, you might get your information from an organization’s materials, through interviews, or off websites. Though you would not cite those sources within the script itself, those sources should be included in a reference list at the end of the script (much as you would include a reference list for a research paper).
•In terms of video production, you must credit the work of others in your projects. You can do this throughout the video itself (such as a key which tells the source of the video or audio) or you might simply list the sources in the credits. This includes ANYONE who has worked with you on the project. For example, if you were producing or directing a video, you would include the names of your videographers, grips, audio personnel, lighting technicians, editors, scriptwriters, and so forth. Failure to list such help is a form of plagiarism in that you are claiming work that others did for you. Unlike a research paper, video production is usually collaborative in nature. Thus, those who help you deserve their just due.
•Finally, if you have any doubts or questions about plagiarism, talk to me. We can work out problems before you turn in a final paper, script, or project. Once you have turned it in, you are claiming the work as your own. At that point, it might be plagiarism. Don’t let that happen to you.