#University of Derby Blog » Feed University of Derby Blog » Comments Feed University of Derby Blog » How can universities help students avoid plagiarism? Comments Feed alternate alternate [tr?id=263182877367236&ev=PageView&noscript=1] -- -- + Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) Home > Blog > How can universities help students avoid plagiarism? How can universities help students avoid plagiarism? James Elander -- -- Student Life How can universities help students avoid plagiarism? -- Be it in music or writing, plagiarism – “stealing other’s ideas” – is a complicated and yet serious offence. So how can universities help students improve their writing and avoid it? Professor James Elander, Head of -- -- Psychological Research, gives his top tips. Plagiarism happens so quickly and easily in these days of ‘cut and paste’, multiple deadlines and pressure to produce excellent work. -- -- Universities, therefore, need active strategies to help students learn not to plagiarise, and one approach focuses on improving their ‘authorial identity’ – a concept I have developed with Derby PhD student Kevin Cheung, which centres on how writers see themselves as -- -- students to understand the values of integrity and transparency associated with academic writing and to write assignments without plagiarising. My interest in this area began when I sat in on a first-year induction -- -- My interest in this area began when I sat in on a first-year induction session about plagiarism. I asked myself, what is the opposite of plagiarism? Surely the answer to that is authorship and, if authorship is the desired outcome, what are the behavioural or psychological characteristics needed for students to achieve that? -- -- To qualify genuinely as the authors of their written work, students must understand the role of an author, and must be able to identify with that role. This protects them from accidental plagiarism, which often happens when students produce written work without being really in the role of an author. This reflection was the starting point for -- -- in the role of an author. This reflection was the starting point for several projects with different groups of colleagues to help students not to plagiarise. Supervised by myself and Ed Stupple in the Department of Psychology at -- -- with lecturers were used to get insights into what university lecturers think about authorial identity, and how we can get them more involved in helping students write better and avoid plagiarism. These showed that changing identity, or how one sees oneself, is -- -- When students were asked afterwards about these workshops, 86% agreed they helped them understand how to avoid plagiarism and 66% agreed they helped them write better psychology assignments. The workshops led to significant improvements including increased confidence in writing, -- -- helped them write better psychology assignments. The workshops led to significant improvements including increased confidence in writing, understanding of authorship and knowledge to avoid plagiarism. The changes were greatest for year one students, supporting the common -- -- It’s important that universities spend time speaking to their students about what plagiarism means and the impact it can have. However, rather than focus on the negative consequences, opening up focus groups, like -- than focus on the negative consequences, opening up focus groups, like we did, and discussing how to write assignments without plagiarising, is of much better value. -- -- We hope this research will help to guide future efforts to help students improve their writing and avoid plagiarism, and also give us a simple tool to measure how students’ change through taking part in those efforts. -- -- those efforts. Top tips to avoid plagiarism Here are some general tips to help students avoid accidental -- -- Here are some general tips to help students avoid accidental plagiarism. Some of these are related to the early stages of work on a written assignment: * Think about what your own position (opinion) is before you start -- -- * Put yourself in the role of the author. How to use quotations without plagiarising * Think about what point you are making with the quote; -- -- * #Derby * #higher education * #plagiarism * #Press * #psychology