Assignment: Case of the Plagiarized

Assignment: Case of the Plagiarized

To prepare for this assignment, please read Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct  and “Journalism’s Summer of Sin Marked by Plagiarism, Fabrication, Obfuscation”. Finally, review Instructor Guidance and Announcements.

Thus, in this activity, you will apply ethical considerations by relating course content to a realistic scenario.

• First, locate a scholarly article in the Ashford Library.  This source can be on any topic you choose.  You may wish to utilize recommended articles for this course, or you may instead locate an article that includes information that aligns with your own interests.
• Next, copy and paste either the abstract or one paragraph from the body of your selected article into your paper with the heading “Original Work”.
• Then, write a paragraph in which you paraphrase under the heading “Paraphrased Paragraph”.
  • Be sure to avoid the common mistakes outlined by Turnitin.
  • Apply in-text citations appropriately.
  • Remember to include a separate reference page with the full citation information for your selected article, formatted according to APA guidelines.
• Then, reflect on this topic using your own academic voice and applying in-text citations.  Relate your thoughts under the heading “Reflection”.  In your reflection (4-5 paragraphs), address the following:
• Illustrate how plagiarism, even when unattended, violates the ethical responsibility of a psychology student or professional.
  • Predict potential consequences to other persons (e.g., research participants, patients, clients, students, etc.) when this violation occurs.
  • Apply this knowledge to your own personal area of interest as identified in the Introduction Discussion.  What additional ethical concerns are or will be especially relevant to you given your aspirations?

The Ethics: The Case of the Plagiarized Paragraph Assignment

1. Must be at least two to three double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
2. Must include a separate title page (APA style) that includes the following:
   1. A header
   2. Title of paper
   3. Student’s name
   4. Course name and number
   5. Instructor’s name
   6. Date submitted
3. Must begin with an introductory paragraph that has a succinct thesis statement.
4. Must utilize academic voice.
5. Must paraphrase material, avoiding direct quotes.
   1. For more information about how to synthesize your writing, please visit the Ashford Writing Center.
6. Must address the topic with critical thought.
7. Must end with a conclusion that reaffirms the thesis.
8. Must use, at minimum, the APA Code of Ethics and the chosen article as sources.  Additional scholarly sources are encouraged.  Be sure tointegrate your research smoothly rather than simply inserting it.
   1. The Scholarly, Peer Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types.  If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor.  Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment. Ethics: The Case of the Plagiarized Paragraph Assignment
9. Must document all sources in APA style as outlined here and here
10. Must include a separate reference page that is formatted according to APA style.
11. Must be submitted to Grammarly for review and correction prior to submitting. Ethics: The Case of the Plagiarized Paragraph Assignment

Education Improves Plagiarism Detection by Biology Undergraduates

Abstract

Numerous self-reported rates of past cheating behaviors by students, including plagiarism, hover around 50% (Hale 1987, Franklyn-Stokes and Newstead 1995, McCabe et al. 2001). On one hand, plagiarism may be a premeditated act of deception, whereby students knowingly present the words or ideas of others’ as their own (Howard 1995, Yeo 2007). Many institutions have incorporated penalties and honor codes to combat or prevent such actions; accordingly, honor codes have been shown to lower the incidence of cheating, yet they do not eliminate it (McCabe et al. 2001). Despite these measures, some students rationalize this misconduct because their perceived alternative—failure—seems worse (Park 2003, Power 2009). On the other hand, some students are unaware that their actions, or absence of actions, may constitute plagiarism (Howard 1995, Park 2003).

McCabe and colleagues (2001) found that the incidence of cheating on written work was roughly identical to rates 30 years prior; however, students defined plagiarism far more loosely in 1993 than they did in 1963. For example, many students did not recognize that proper citation must accompany good paraphrasing or quoting to adequately avoid plagiarism (e.g., Wilhoit 1994, Franklyn-Stokes and Newstead 1995, Roig 1997, Rennie and Crosby 2001, Dawson MM and Overfield 2006, Yeo 2007, Power 2009). Despite the prevalence of plagiarism due to poor citation skills, this topic is often sidestepped in science curriculum. Typically, instructors warn students of plagiarism during the first week of class (Power 2009), but they provide no further instruction. In Nuss (1984), over half of the surveyed college instructors never or minimally discussed their policies on academic integrity in the classroom. Previous work (Roig 1999, Landau et al. 2002, Schuetze 2004, Belter and du Pré 2009), however, demonstrated that education can reduce unintentional plagiarism.

Student plagiarism is indisputably a cross-discipline issue. With the present study, however, I hoped to identify the source of inadvertent plagiarism in the biological sciences and to investigate how science educators can reduce it. The bulk of research on student plagiarism is derived from the social sciences (e.g., Ashworth et al. 1997, Roig 1997, Elander et al. 2010). In a notably smaller body of literature, these issues have been investigated in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, and much of that literature focuses largely on students in health fields (e.g., Julliard 1994, Gaberson 1997, Rennie and Crosby 2001). In the natural sciences, most plagiarism research is either qualitative (Willmott and Harrison 2003) or quantifies student perceptions and not their performance (Craig et al. 2010, Freeman and Lynd-Balta 2010; but see Soto et al. 2004, Dawson MM and Overfield 2006). The present study, therefore, fills a significant gap in the science education literature: It combines qualitative assessments of students’ understanding of plagiarism with controlled analyses of the factors contributing to the lack of that understanding.

Specifically, my main goals were to determine how successfully biology students can identify plagiarism; whether plagiarism training improves students’ ability to identify plagiarism; whether readability of the material (i.e., sentence structure, word length, and scientific terminology) affects students’ ability to recognize plagiarism; and how varying the severity of plagiarism influences students’ ability to discern plagiarized material from properly quoted, paraphrased, and attributed material.