Teaching students about plagiarism reduces plagiarism.

Daniel Willingham:

Most colleges have strict polices about student plagiarism, often including stringent penalties for those who violate the rules. (At the University of Virginia, where I teach, the penalty is expulsion.) Yet infractions occur. Why?

My own intuition has been that plagiarism is often due to oversight or panic. A student will fall behind and, with a deadline looming, get sloppy in the writing of a paper: a few sentences or even a paragraph makes its way into the student paper without attribution. In the rush to finish the student forgets about it, or decides it doesn't matter.

Thomas Dee and Brian Jacob had a different idea.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 20, 2012 1:20 AM
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