Plagiarism and Academic Integrity at UC Merced

ORIGINAL TEXT:

Colleges and their IA programs need to have strong policies in place to cover student usage of virtual labs, network access, and for how to handle academic misconduct. These policies must be enforced consistently to minimize legal repercussions but schools need to be prepared and willing to deal with student lawsuits over academic discipline (Livermore, p. 69).

Livermore, J. A. (2009, November). Incorporating academic integrity into an online Information Assurance program. Business Education Innovation Journal, 1(2), 68-73.

INCORRECT PARAPHRASE:

Universities and the IA departments should have really good procedures to cover use of labs and networks, and handle bad behavior. These politices must be enforced to keep the university from getting sued.

ORIGINAL TEXT:

Colleges and their IA programs need to have strong policies in place to cover student usage of virtual labs, network access, and for how to handle academic misconduct. These policies must be enforced consistently to minimize legal repercussions but schools need to be prepared and willing to deal with student lawsuits over academic discipline (Livermore, p. 69).

Livermore, J. A. (2009, November). Incorporating academic integrity into an online Information Assurance program. Business Education Innovation Journal, 1(2), 68-73.

CORRECT PARAPHRASE:

Even the existence of rigorous policies that define the appropriate use of university resources and consequences for misuse will not prevent legal challenges from students seeking to avoid the enforcement of those policies (Livermore, p. 70).

• Superficial changes to vocabulary
  • "Colleges and their IA programs" to "Universities and their IA departments"
  • "strong policies" to "really good policies"
     
• Possible inaccuracies in paraphrasing
  • A university program is not necessarily a department
  • "Labs and networks"
    • The original text was about virtual labs, not actual physical spaces
    • The original text dealt with network ACCESS, not networks in general
       
• Lack of clarity in the paraphrase
  • "Academic misconduct" is a specific form of conduct. "Bad behavior" might mean anything from hacking or cheating (forms of academic dishonesty) to eating and drinking in the labs, or using lab computers to watch porn
     
• No citation!

• First, identify the concept or idea you want to convey. In this case, you want to restate the fact that students have brought lawsuits against IA programs that have sanctioned them for academic misconduct.
   
• Then, create a paraphrase of that concept. It should correctly convey the information in the original statement, but do so with substantially different words.
   
• The paraphrase must include a citation to the original source of the information.
   
• BEWARE THE CHONK!
  • "Chunking" - whole phrases copied from the original text, with a few words in between
  • Example:
    "Colleges and their IA programs should write some strong policies so that they're protected from bad student usage of virtual labs."

"Patchwriting" is inadequate paraphrasing

• "Copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structure, or plugging in one-for-one synonym-substitutes."
  Howard, R. M. (1992, Jan 1). A plagiarism pentimento. Journal of Teaching Writing, 11(2), 233-245.
   
• "Patchwriting happens when you rephrase a portion of source material, but your language remains too close to the vocabulary and/or sentence structure of the original text. All patchwriting is a kind of paraphrase, but successful paraphrase is not patchwritten."
  Sweetland Center for Writing, University of Michigan (2014). Beyond plagiarism: Best practices for the responsible use of sources.
  https://www.beyondplagiarism.sweetland.lsa.umich.edu/