A Pedagogy to Address Plagiarism

preferable to their own ideas, these students subscribe to the notion that the essay is a crazy quilt of quotations in which the acquisition of authorities-like scraps of fabric for patchwork quilting-is the primary task. Secondary or ignored in the concepts students bring to my classes are the ideas of achieving personal mastery of information, having one's own carefully considered opinion, and analyzing where one's own position falls with respect to the positions of others. Addressing academic integrity during the first week of the term introduces this concept and the conventions used to maintain it before students begin to collect materials in ways which may result in inadvertent plagiarism. I define academic integrity to include the assumption that all work submitted, unless otherwise labeled, will have been written entirely by the student who submits it. Since my lesson plans include peer editing and collaborative composition activities, I distinguish between accepting a suggestion and silently acquiring a piece of language or an entire paper. A prominent feature of the first week of classes is a hands-on experience in which each student incorporates an aspect of a current magazine article into his or her own writing. Before I make this assignment, I demonstrate methods for introducing quotation and paraphrase into one's own writing as well as rules for punctuating quotations, documenting parenthetically and by endnotes, and citing in a list of works consulted. I also demonstrate the use of explanatory endnotes as a way of giving credit to persons who have influenced one's thinking.