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FACULTY RESOURCES


Faculty members should help students understand why academic honesty is important, what constitutes academic dishonesty, and how incidents of academic dishonesty will be dealt with in the classroom.  All syllabi should provide guidance to students on these issues. 

A number of resources are available to assist faculty in preparing syllabi, in designing assignments, and in helping students to understand what constitutes academic honesty and dishonesty.  A sampling of resources is provided below (remember that some of these resources may refer specifically to programs or procedures at that institution):

Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA (Council of Writing Program Administrators) Statement on Best Practices http://www.wpacouncil.org/positions/WPAplagiarism.pdf This organization provides a clear definition of plagiarism as well as discusses reasons behind academic dishonesty and offers suggestions for how to talk about academic honesty and how to design assignments that may lessen incidences of plagiarism. 

Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers by Robert Harris—from Virtual Salt http://www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm This source provides information on how to discuss matters of academic honesty effectively with students as well as offers strategies to design assignments and to detect plagiarism.

Deterring Plagiarism: Some Strategies—from the University of Toronto http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/plagiarism.html This source offers some helpful strategies to deter and detect plagiarism as well as links to additional sources.

Integrity: Academic and Political—A Letter to My Students, by Bill Taylor, Professor of Political Science, Oakton Community College—from the Center for Academic Integrity http://www.academicintegrity.org/pdf/Letter_To_My_Students.pdf Professor Taylor provides extremely helpful lists of expectations for both faculty and students about academic integrity in class preparation, in the classroom, on tests and written assignments, and in grading.

The New Plagiarism: Seven Antidotes to Prevent Highway Robbery in an Electronic Age by Jamie McKenzie http://fno.org/may98/cov98may.html This article presents some specific ways to design assignments and to discuss them with students in order to avoid plagiarism.

Plagiarism Proofing a Course—From Lehigh University http://www.lehigh.edu/library/infolit/faculty/plagiarismproofing.html This short guide focuses on ways to discuss plagiarism with students and to design assignments.

Preventing Academic Dishonesty from Tools for Teaching by Barbara Gross Davis http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/prevent.html This selection from Davis' book provides a number of helpful hints on how to define, detect, and prevent instances of academic dishonesty.