noffen@heraldsun.com; 419-6646
DURHAM -- Read this paragraph:
"The assignment was to write a review of a recent book on political theory. You weren't really sure what the professor wanted, so you attempted to write a summary of the book, using some sentences from the book itself. Since it was clear that the review was of just one book, you didn't use quotation marks or indicate page numbers. If you turn this paper in to the professor, is what you wrote plagiarism?"
The answer, incoming Duke University students find out during a plagiarism tutorial they are taking this summer, is yes.
The idea of the tutorial, explained Matt Serra, director of academic assessment for Trinity College at Duke, is "to let the students know plagiarism is a serious thing."
The tutorial explains "what we think plagiarism is and isn't and gives the students access to resources they can use in dealing with the issue," Serra said.
Required of all new Duke students, the tutorial has been a required rite of passage for all incoming Duke students for the past half dozen years.
With access to increasingly sophisticated technology, plagiarism -- and cheating in general -- has become a growing problem on college campuses. According to one report, more than 60 percent of undergraduates nationwide admitted recently to cheating on assignments and exams.
While plagiarism, say officials, is not a hugely significant problem at Duke, the university does face a particular problem.
"Duke's undergraduate student body is very international and what counts as plagiarism in some parts of the world doesn't count in other places," Serra explained. "So this is more of a leveling of the field and an expectation-setter for all students."
The tutorial uses some of the plagiarism cases that in fact have occurred at Duke, as illustrations and questions.
"We wanted something that served as a resource, but also engaged the student sufficiently," Serra said. "We wanted the student to deal with real-life situations."
The tutorial, which takes about 20 minutes to complete, is interactive. Students answer the questions, such as the one above, and then get to see if their answers were correct, and get an explanation why.
The tutorial also explains what appropriate scholarly procedures are, including the three common ways of "borrowing material from someone else, or or using the student's own work from past assignments and incorporating that material into the student's own writing." They are, in fact, quoting, paraphrasing and summarizing. Each assumes, the tutorial explains, "that sources are properly cited."
When Duke students complete the tutorial, they receive a congratulatory e-mail that also reminds them of the links they used and suggests they return to the tutorial and review the material as often as they need to.
If students do not take an adequate amount of time responding to the eight vignettes, they receive a message telling them that they may not have given the information the time necessary to fully understand it; they are encouraged to go back and review it once more.
The incident above, incidentally, is considered plagiarism, according to the tutorial, because "if you used the words of the book's author and didn't attribute them using quotation marks and a citation ... it doesn't matter whether the project was an informal page-long book review or a 25-page final term paper."
