Deterrence Tips
1. Add serious anti-plagiarism warnings to your syllabus
Saying, "please do not plagiarize," comes across to most students as, "blah, blah, blah." If you want students to pay attention, make your verbiage engaging and explicit.
2. Tell students how you detect plagiarism
Some papers contain plagiarized material still formatted in its original font, but most faculty discover plagiarism when some paragraphs (or sections) of a paper use "professional-grade" grammar and vocabulary, in contrast to the rest of the paper that has writing more typical of a (smart) undergraduate. Telling students that you can, indeed, detect such transitions is telling them that, yes indeed, you are looking for plagiarism as you read. There are some good hints at, http://www.plagiarized.com/deadgive.html. (Please note that the online sites such as "Schoolsucks.com" sell papers that are written by students, so the "transition" method will fail.)
3. Tell students you are going to use plagiarism-detection software
Students weighing the pros and cons of plagiarizing will be swayed toward honesty if you state that you are in the habit of using detection software. Even if you only occasionally use it, the mere possibility is often enough to change the mood in your course. If you require electronic submission of papers (in PDF format or in Word format), you can follow through on this promise much more easily. Even "saying" you will use detection software has been shown to be far, far more effective than telling them, "don't plagiarize." Here's a great study, if you need convincing: http://www.apsanet.org/PS/dec01/braumoeller.cfm.
4. Tell students you will send plagiarizers to CJC
Some plagiarizers imagine that the worst-case scenario, if they are caught, is that the professor will fail them in the course. Being taken to the CJC to receive the exact same fate is substantially more momentous, and thus a greater deterrent. Note that faculty guidelines require faculty to send cases to the CJC, so telling them about these guidelines should not be a stretch!
5. Include a link to "CJC" rulings on your Blackboard sites
To drive home the "penalty" for plagiarizers, include a link to CJC rulings. Currently, however, there is no centralized site for these rulings, so the best you can do is include a tailored Google search.
6. Read "amusing" plagiarism instances
If you collect papers containing humorous plagiarism, reading them to the class highlights how plagiarizers very often don't understand the material. Explain the correlation between "low critical reading skills" and "propensity to use somebody else's words." Reading these instances demonstrates your views on what good writing is.
7. Include a plagiarism exercise in your course
Some ideas: (1) administer a plagiarism-awareness quiz, (2) play them a "plagiarism in the news" clip from National Public Radio or show trailer for "Secret Window," followed by a discussion, (3) discuss famous plagiarizers (Michael Bolton, Martin Luther King, Alex Haley, Senator Joseph Biden, historian Stephen Ambrose, NYT reporter Jayson Blair, etc.), (4) show them "source" and "plagiarized" examples using Powerpoint or overhead transparencies, (5) have them work in groups to complete a "plagiarism worksheet," complete with questions about why it is dishonest and lazy, and what might be typical attributes of a plagiarized paper, (6) work plagiarism into your lectures (for example, in an evolution course you might mention that phylogeny reconstruction programs have been used to identify plagiarism based on spelling errors).
8. Give your class 10 minutes to read a plagiarizer's essay on plagiarism
This essay is from a plagiarizer (part of the CJC's sanction stipulated that the student would complete this task). Although the student was eventually caught plagiarizing again, the essay is nicely written and will probably generate a good class discussion.
9. Have your students submit their papers to Turnitin.com
If you want students to teach themselves about plagiarism, a very effective trick (pioneered at Auburn University) is to require that students submit their drafts to a plagiarism-detection service. Then ask them to hand in the results along with the draft. Students get the point.
10. Use Stanford's amusing "honesty" cartoons
The Office of Judicial Affairs at Stanford University came up with a series of posters to combat rising apathy toward honesty. If you post these on your door, students waiting for you just might read some of them.
plagiarism-front.jpg, plagiarism-back.jpg
webplagiarism-front.jpg, webplagiarism-back.jpg
Poster_undergrad.jpg
unpermitted-aid-front.jpg, unpermitted-aid-back.jpg
PhD_Verbatim-front.jpg, PhD_Verbatim-back.jpg
PhD_Dual-Submission-back.jpg, PhD_Dual-Submission-front.jpg
Grad/PhD_unpermitted-aid-front.jpg, Grad/PhD_unpermitted-aid-back.jpg
Grad/Poster_PhDgrad.jpg
11. Send plagiarizers to the CJC
An effective way to reduce plagiarism in your courses is to become famously intolerant of it. If you are known as being crabby about proper attribution, students will alter their risk exposure and do the work without resorting to cheating. Or the cheaters will simply avoid your course altogether.