
What you can do to help
There are several things you can do to help students understand about plagiarism and to give them the skills to avoid falling foul of accidental plagiarism. There are also tools available within the University to help detect plagiarism (for example TURNITIN on GCULearn).
Students have problems because:
- the explosion in the amount of information available means that it is more accessible but harder to manage
- students do not know how to be discerning about the information they retrieve or how to recognise quality sources
- they do not know how to evaluate and analyse information
- they have no real understanding of the ethical issues surrounding information and their responsibility to the way they handle information
Ask the Subject Librarians about online or fact-to-face training sessions which will be used to teach the students skills that can help solve these problems. Subject librarians are always able to help teach your students these skills.