Introduction: Plagiarism and Its Discontents

Abstract

FOR THE PAST 2 years, I have been plagued by plagiarism: a master's thesis that was largely assembled from information on various websites, a paper submitted for publication to a professional journal that had sections lifted from articles by a well-known educator in the field, and-the capper-a project draft from my ethics class that was copied from an article that I had written on the topic! This was simply too much; I was angry, disappointed, and offended.Most of us are aware of the alarming statistics on student cheating: According to cheating guru Donald McCabe, now retired from Rutgers University, cheating is on the rise, and business students are leading the charge (McCabe, Treviño, & Butterfield, 2001). Perhaps more disconcerting, however, is the tendency of student cheaters to continue that behavior in their professional lives; according to engineering professor Trevor Harding, "recent research among professional disciplines . . . has revealed a correlation between engagement in unethical behavior in college and engagement in unethical behavior in graduate school and/ or professional practice" (Harding, Finelli, & Carpenter, 2006, para. 4).As educators, we have a moral obligation to confront the problem head-on, and this issue's authors do just that, offering a variety of tips to help prevent and manage plagiarism in the classroom. Dorothy Jones, Norfolk State University, provides an overview of selected literature about plagiarism and provides data from her own survey, which is in accordance with national trends. Judith Spain and Marcel Robles, Eastern Kentucky University, describe their university's efforts to develop an honor code to support academic integrity on campus.

Profiling Potential Plagiarizers: A Mastery Learning Instructional Technique to Enhance Competency

“…Student plagiarism has long been an issue for academic institutions, and advances in technology and information access have heightened concern about the number of opportunities for students to plagiarize (Jones, 2011). High-profile instances dominate the news cycle, and academics are increasingly “angry, disappointed, and offended” by egregious incidents (Dyrud, 2011, p. 138). Faced with the practical problem of student plagiarism, we turned to the literature for guidance.…”