Plagiarism: The Crime of Intellectual Kidnapping: An Interactive Information Competence Tutorial at San Jose State University Pamela A. Jackson Reference/Instruction Librarian San Jose State University Library

Abstract This interactive, online tutorial teaches students about plagiarism, paraphrasing, and citing sources. It includes a pre-quiz, assessing what students already know, and graded quiz at the end, testing students’ understanding of plagiarism and their ability to avoid it.

Benefits of Using Online Tutorials Students learn information competence skills at their own pace, outside of physical classrooms and traditional class time. Students gain a common foundation of knowledge before the library instruction session. Librarians can make more of the one-hour, one- shot library instruction session.

Library’s Role in Plagiarism Instruction Why should the library teach students about plagiarism? Demonstrates the library’s commitment to important campus issues, such as academic integrity. Campus communities frequently look to librarians to provide this instruction. ACRL’s Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education call for student demonstration in the legal and ethical use of information.

Collaboration with Classroom Faculty "Last spring, in order to address the issue of plagiarism, we submitted course assignments to turnitin.com and were astounded to discover that between sixty-three to seventy-five percent of our students plagiarized. This tutorial has contributed significantly to help meet the formidable challenge of plagiarism." --Debra Caires-Mullens, Coordinator of CS100w and June Sheldon, CS100w Instructor

Campus Commitment to Academic Integrity “As a university, we need to help our students to really understand what it means to have academic integrity and why it is important to have it. We need to continue to find ways to help students understand what cheating and plagiarism are and why it is wrong to engage in such practices.” --Annette Nellen, Chair, Academic Senate San José State University

The Accidental Plagiarist Students are frequently guilty of “accidental plagiarism” Not Citing Sources Lack understanding of how to properly paraphrase original passages

The Creation Process: Plagiarism: The Crime of Intellectual Kidnapping

Tutorial Highlights Pre-Test and Graded Quiz Plagiarism Definitions and Examples Academic Dishonesty Policies Plagiarism Detection Services Paraphrasing Importance of Citing Sources Citation Styles

Five Person Team One Librarian responsible for overall direction of the tutorial, and creating the content and quiz. One Information Literacy Competence Specialist responsible for oversight of the programming and graphics team; collaborates with librarian on overall direction. One Programmer responsible for HTML, PHP, and back-end quiz databases and queries. Two Graphic Artists/Designers responsible for the artwork, Flash animations, and overall look of the tutorial.

Timeline: 2002 June 2002: Idea sparked through a conversation between classroom faculty and the Librarian. Fall 2002: Librarian began researching available online plagiarism resources. While there were many valuable websites, we did not find tutorials that measure student learning.

Timeline: 2003 Spring 2003: Librarian began writing the content and creating the quiz. Late Spring 2003/Summer 2003: Content and quiz completed. Programmer and Graphic Artists begin illustrating, and creating the back-end quiz database and registration page. Late Summer 2003: Tutorial is tested in various web browsers for glitches and ADA compliance. Fall 2003: Tutorial is launched one week before the fall semester begins. Late Fall 2003: Graphic Artist begins work on an animated Flash version.

Timeline: 2004 Spring 2004: Librarian begins writing a new quiz that better adheres to test writing standards. Team decides to make the tutorial available as a free download via an Open Publication License as soon as the Flash version and new quizzes are completed and tested. Summer 2004: Animated Flash version is launched. Fall 2004: New quiz is launched. The tutorial is almost ready for Open Publication release.

Quizzes and Queries Students register to take a tutorial. Quiz scores are automatically ed to the student upon completion. Results are stored in a local database. Queries allow us to see quiz scores by class, student, semester (includes class averages and scores by question).

Quiz Results Show that Students: Recognize blatant examples of plagiarism. Know what to include in a citation and what types of resources need to be cited. Understand academic dishonesty issues and school policy.

Quiz Results Show that Students: Have difficulty reading an original passage and identifying what is wrong with a paraphrase. Have difficulty understanding that paraphrasing is NOT merely a rewriting of the original passage but involves synthesizing the original passage and writing it in their own words.

Revising the Quiz Initial quiz was active from Fall 2003 to Summer 2004 New quiz launched in Fall 2004  Better adheres to multiple choice test writing standards.  Includes questions that ask students to practice their paraphrasing skills.

Contribution to Student Learning Library is able to provide classroom faculty with data about their students’ knowledge. Librarians can use data to guide what they teach during their in-person instruction session. First year of quiz results show that students have difficulty with paraphrasing. New quiz gives students more practice paraphrasing.

Open Publication Positive response and requests to use the tutorial from high schools, community colleges and universities in Canada and the U.S. Open Publication License is based on other libraries’ OPL for tutorials (TILT and NetTrail). Programmer and Web Team are deciding what files and formats to make available for download. Programmer is creating a brief registration page to collect data on who downloads our tutorial.

Link to SJSU Tutorials: