Educational Resources
Understanding Plagiarism Every year, some students are accused by their professor of plagiarism in their course work here at Gardner-Webb University. Plagiarism is a kind of cheating, and any kind of cheating is a violation of the University’s Honor Code. You need to understand the definition of plagiarism so that you can avoid engaging, even inadvertently, in the practice.
Plagiarism is defined as “taking another person’s ideas or work and presenting them as your own.” Basically, that means that you lift either text or ideas from a source and include them in your work as if you yourself had come up with it. Plagiarism, then, is theft. You are not taking physical property from someone, but you are taking intellectual property. Clearly, it is not appropriate to simply copy someone else’s words and pass them off as your own. But it should be just as clear that you should not copy someone’s ideas or theories, either. Now pay attention to this, because I am going to give you a little quiz on this next part:
Suppose that your instructor assigns you to write an essay about the children’s poem, “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Even though your teacher did not require you to do any research on the topic, you want to be a good, curious student, so you decide to read some article that has been written about this poem, just to get your interpretive juices flowing. Suppose that the article you read contained this statement: “In this well-known children’s nursery rhyme, the whiteness of the little lamb is symbolic of young Mary’s own innocence.” Well, that’s a cool idea, a reasonable analysis, and you would have probably even thought of it yourself if you had just spent some time thinking it over. So then when you write your essay for class, you happen to mention this notion: “Mary, the school girl, is simple and blameless, a feature that is reflected in her lamb’s snow white fleece.” If you did in fact write this sentence, then have you plagiarized? Yes, you have plagiarized. Even though you paraphrased the idea in your own words, you stole the actual thought from the article’s author and presented the insight as your own. This is intellectual dishonesty. This is how you get in trouble.
In order to prevent even inadvertent plagiarism, you must first of all understand the nature of your assignments. When your instructor asks you to write an essay or complete a project, you are responsible for making absolutely sure that every idea that you present is your own original work. On the other hand, students are often required to do research in completing their papers or projects. This type of assignment encourages you to engage in the world of scholarly ideas and the community of thinkers. If your instructor asks you to undertake some research and to include this research in your paper, then you must make absolutely sure that you have properly documented the material that you use. Your instructors should be certain that you understand when research is called for and that you know how to document that research. If you are unclear how to do it, you need to ask your professor, ask the Writing Center, or come and ask Matt Theado in the Learning Assistance Program.
There are many ways to cheat deliberately on essays and papers: you can ask another student to write your paper for you, or you can simply download a paper from the Internet. But you know that these practices are wrong. Now, you should also know that it is wrong to include words, ideas, and theories and to present them as your own. When in doubt, ask your instructor. I don’t want you to get caught up in a plagiarism case simply because you are ignorant of the definition of plagiarism. If you are caught plagiarizing, the penalties can be quite severe, ranging from a failing grade on the assignment to a failing grade for the course and even academic suspension. Be sure that you understand this message that I am delivering to you today: you cannot use ignorance of the definition of plagiarism as an excuse should you be accused of it. Your work in your courses consists either of your won original ideas, or else your work includes the words and ideas of others that you have researched and then carefully documented.