What happens if you copy someones coursework

Most commonly, students get in trouble by writing words that stay too close to the original for too long with no signal but a reference to indicate the source. Here are three tips to avoid those problems:. Don't stop thinking. Understand your source well enough to explain its meaning in your own words.

Never paraphrase by copying someone else's words into your paper and then changing them around. Keep paraphrase as short as possible. If your paraphrase goes over a sentence or two, you've probably stopped writing your own words. Signal your source in the text , not just with a reference. If you are in a conversation and think someone else's words are important enough to repeat, you ordinarily explain who said it.

Similarly, if a source is important enough to paraphrase, it is important enough to mention in your text, not just in a footnote.

What are the most common kinds of plagiarism? At OU there are three common kinds of plagiarism: whole-paper, cut- and-paste, and cut-and-paste with references. Whole-paper plagiarism. In this form of plagiarism, all or most of the student's paper is lifted from another student or a published source, for example the Internet, a book, or a print article. It is especially bad to buy a paper from any source that offers ready-made term papers. Students who have engaged in this form of plagiarism in the past have been expelled from the University.

Cut-and-paste plagiarism. In this form of plagiarism, parts of a paper ranging from phrases and sentences to entire paragraphs are taken from the Internet or somewhere else and incorporated into the student's paper with no signal that they are not the student's own expression. Cut-and-paste plagiarism with references. In this form of plagiarism, words or ideas in a paper are included from another source, a reference to the source is included, but there is no quotation signal. Again, the problem is that a reference indicates only that the accompanying text is somehow derived from or related to the cited source.

A reference alone does not show that the text is a direct quotation from that source. Thus a reference alone. A direct quotation with a reference but without quotation marks is plagiarism. What are the penalties for plagiarism? At OU, acts of plagiarism can receive institutional penalties ranging from a letter of reprimand to required coursework to expulsion.

All academic misconduct offenses also receive grade penalties determined by the instructor. Grade penalties are not restricted to the value of the assignment and may be up to an F in the course. Juniors and seniors who plagiarize any significant portion of a paper should expect at least a suspension for a spring or fall semester. Under the right circumstances even freshmen and sophomores may also receive suspensions or even be expelled for plagiarism.

The test in an academic misconduct case is whether the student knew or should have known that his or her actions amounted to misconduct. Whether or not you learned them in high school, whether or not you took freshman English, whether or not you ever heard a teacher mention them, as an OU student you are expected to know the basic rules of academic integrity. If those basic rules get broken, you are guilty of academic misconduct. Another frequently-heard excuse is that the student included material from another source and then either "just forgot to add the references" or else put them in but "accidentally turned in the wrong draft.

Cut-and-paste papers usually contain lots of directly-quoted material that substitutes for the student's own writing, appears without. In such cases, the quoted text substitutes for the student's own writing.

Merely "adding the footnotes" never cures plagiarism if words have been directly quoted. Curing the plagiarism with footnotes and quotation marks often reveals that the student did a lot of copying but very little actual thinking or writing. Really curing plagiarism means starting from the beginning: thinking and writing first, quoting and signaling as appropriate. Stringing together words downloaded or copied from elsewhere has nothing to do with true writing and is never, ever a good way.

What will you do? Annul all the works? What if you know for certain who was the original author? This would depend on context, in my opinion. Given you know the identity of both the original author and the plagiarist, consider:.

Did the original author facilitate the plagiarism, or was the code plagiarised without the original author's knowledge? Can you tell? Clearly, if the original author was the victim of someone peeking over their shoulder, or just blatantly copying code files, then they should not be punished. But if they gave help to others despite being told that this is inappropriate , then they are equally guilty of misconduct.

It's easy for me to write this, but in practice determining whether the plagiarism was with or without consent is more difficult. I would be inclined to give the benefit of the doubt if there is any chance that one party did not intentionaly cheat. I would be keen to avoid punishing someone who might not have done anything wrong, but some others might not give the benefit of the doubt. It's certainly not easy to tell what exactly has gone on when two very similar works are handed in, but if you can rule out any copying without the author's awareness with certainty , then you must assume that the author facilitated cheating.

If you haven't made clear what the difference is between helping and cheating, then you can't really punish anyone fairly —if you don't clearly lay out your expectations, then you can't enforce strict rules. I have a somewhat different suggestion. Make every infraction an opportunity for learning, not a punishment scenario. They get into "situations" and make dumb decisions. It is in the nature of growing up. You can't severely punish young people for making young people mistakes.

And any punishment that doesn't stress learning is counterproductive. I've written elsewhere on this site that if the young weren't risk takers then the human race would still be in the trees and just prey animals.

The young put themselves at risk so that the baboons didn't feast on the infants and old ones. Live with it. It is part of our nature, mediated by intelligence for the most part, but still there. That doesn't mean you can't put a scare into an offender as a lion would do. But your primary job as a teacher is to teach the students the lessons that they need, not just facts or technical skills. Repeated infractions and overall disdain for the rules or their fellow students is a different matter requiring more formal measures.

So do infractions that hurt other people in some way. Let me give a personal anecdote. When in college a fellow student and I committed a somewhat different sort of infraction. The faculty were of several minds with some simply dismissing it as "kids!

There were meetings and a committee that called us to account. After we suitably and honestly abased ourselves we were let go with an informal probation. It was very enlightening as well as embarrassing. My co-perpetrator graduated at the top of our class and I wasn't terribly far behind. So it worked out. No creatures, human or otherwise, were harmed by our little escapade, so it was a simpler case.

And I must have grown up wanting to emulate the way I was treated. But the punishment for academic dishonesty should involve something that assures that the lesson of the assignment is learned as well as learning why the rules are important. Sometimes doing a similar assignment and writing an essay on honesty or whatever is appropriate.

It took me a while, but I learned over the course of my career that the main job is to teach students, not to judge them. As outlined in my syllabus, both the contributor and the receiver have committed an integrity violation, and both will be punished. For me to feel that this is fair for everyone, I make sure to be very clear of the rules early in the course. I have a section in my syllabus that directly addresses "helping" other students. I have a list of actions that constitute integrity violations.

But I also have a list of actions that are permissible in attempting to help other students. This has proven useful for the stronger student that truly does want to help their struggling colleague. It also gives the stronger partner a reference that they can show their struggling partner when they feel they are being pressured to help too much.

When I have instances of a student using another student's code, I will go back to the syllabus and cite the specific actions that were violated. The "supplier" may think that the punishment outlined in the syllabus is too harsh, but I rarely have a student now who denies that they violated a stated rule. And the punishment was known before the offense took place. This is all assuming that you know one student was the supplier for another.

I only pursue this if I have a extremely high level of confidence that this happened. Usually with submitted programming assignments, there are enough artifacts in the digital file white spacing, identical inconsistencies, etc. We have only a few dozen students and one Administrator, so it is a small problem and gets dealt with quickly. Usually, if someone is getting excessive help from other students or is copying things, they end up not being able to do this coursework and we can redirect them to another program.

There is another way to approach this sort of problem, but it requires that you have the authority or power to modify the basic structure of the course. I actually prefer to structure a course in such a way that this sort of problem can't arise.

To do this requires that you encourage or even require students to work together, either in pairs or in larger teams. Work is submitted by the team.

A naive approach to this won't work, of course. A weaker proposal is to let students help one another pretty freely, but require that all collaborators be named in any submission. A subtle form of this is to let students collaborate, but not share code.

However, you need a strong and well written Code of Conduct for this to work. The issue, as I implied in my earlier answer to this question, is that learning must take place. Some problems given to students have a crux point and seeing it allows the student to have an A Ha moment that can be very powerful. The Dutch National Flag exercise has such a crux with a key insight that can broaden the education of any student.

It is a shame to deny this moment to any student, which is one of the reasons we often require our students to work alone. And students often panic in the face of deadlines. When I was much younger and teaching mathematics, I really believed that students should work strictly alone so that they could have such insights.

I believed that, even though, at that time it was becoming increasingly common for working mathematicians to work in groups rather than alone.

In fact, one of the reasons that I left math for CS is that I was teaching at a place at which there was no opportunity for local collaboration and the synergy it brings. This was before the internet of course but we had left stone tools behind, thankfully.

There is a dilemma here, of course. We want each student to learn. We need to permit them to advance. Insight is good and aids this. The power of reading: The effect of different reading methods on the vocabulary of multilingual children.

Radboud University. Text Reference Merkus, Title of Database. Date Month Year of Access. Accessed October Text Reference Merkus, page. Format Last-name, First-name.

Citation bibliography Merkus, Julia. Reference Merkus, Can you plagiarize yourself? When do you need to cite yourself? Does Turnitin check self-plagiarism? What happens if you plagiarize? Is this article helpful? Tegan George Tegan is an American based in Amsterdam, with master's degrees in political science and education administration. While she is definitely a political scientist at heart, her experience working at universities led to a passion for making social science topics more approachable and exciting to students.

A well-designed natural experiment is her favorite type of research, but she also loves qualitative methods of all varieties. Other students also liked. Types of plagiarism and how to recognize them Common types of plagiarism include copying or paraphrasing sources without citation, patchwork plagiarism, and self-plagiarism. How to avoid plagiarism When you use words, ideas, or information from a source, you need to properly credit the author.

Cooperation or collusion? Collusion Cooperation Planning a response together; copying a plan for an individual assessment. Analysing the assessment question together. Paraphrasing someone else's assignment and submitting it as your own. Practising paraphrasing skills together and sharing tips. Relying on some group members to do all the work. Sharing work evenly among group members. Getting someone else to do your assessment task.

Getting help from a Peer Learning Adviser or tutor Remember, you are guilty of collusion when you are copying someone else's work, or letting someone else copy your work.

What should you do? Your friend tells you she wants to read your assessment to see if she is on the right track: don't let her read your assessment do suggest you talk about the assessment topic together One of your group is still not contributing even though you have made a work plan together and talked about the problem before: don't do the work for him do let your tutor or lecturer know you are having trouble and discuss the options Your mates know you always get good marks and they rely on you for help.

If you don't they'll think you don't care about them: don't give them the answers do let them know you are worried about all of you getting penalised for collusion, and offer to help them learn the material by studying together. What happens if I collude with someone on an assessment task? Are they in trouble?

Sally Tomorrow her assignment is due, and one of her classmates has asked for help.