Support for New Academics

This is a brief “checklist”, aimed in particular at new academic staff, summarising the important things you need to address in order to deal with instances of plagiarism.

• Educate yourself on what is plagiarism.
• Familiarise yourself and follow your university regulations on plagiarism.
• Educate your students on what plagiarism is and ensure that they understand the implications of plagiarism. Ensure that they understand issues surrounding cheating, collusion (i.e. inappropriate collaboration), fraud, falsification and fabrication. The plagiarism prevention page contains links to tutorials and information created for educating students on plagiarism.
• Create assessments with requirements that make it difficult for students to plagiarise. Carroll and Appleton have devised a Good Practice Guide with some useful suggestions on how to prevent plagiarism. The plagiarism prevention page contains a summary of the good practice recommendations suggested by Carroll and Appleton.
• Inform students on what you would and would not consider as plagiarism in particular assignments.
• Use internet sources and plagiarism detection tools to detect plagiarism. The plagiarism detection page contains information on internet sources and tools that can be used for detecting plagiarism. The “Cheat” sites page lists many websites students can use to obtain free reports, purchase reports or hire people to do their work.
• Document your communications with students regarding plagiarism as these can serve as evidence in the event that cases are taken to court. The Plagiarism and the Law page contains information and useful links related to plagiarism and the law.
• Always take action when you detect plagiarism.