Cheating & Plagiarism

• Resources for Instructors
• Resources to Share with Students
• Anti-Plagiarism Services
• Other Resources

Resources for Instructors

• Vanderbilt's Honor System
  
  All Vanderbilt students (undergraduate, graduate, and professional) are governed by the Vanderbilt Honor System. The above link leads to the section in the Faculty Manual on the honor system. Note that all undergraduate students are required to complete a self-administered online quiz testing their knowledge of the Honor System.
  
  The honor system is administered by the Undergraduate Honor Council, the Graduate Honor Council, and honor councils at each of the Vanderbilt professional schools, including the Law School Honor Council and the Owen Graduate School Honor Council.

• Faculty Guide to the Honor System
  
  This page from the Undergraduate Honor Council provides information on the history and operation of the Vanderbilt Honor System as well as information on faculty responsibilities and sample syllabus statements.

• Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers
  
  In this essay written for teachers, Robert Harris provides anti-plagiarism strategies of awareness, prevention, and detection as well as links to a few other useful resources.

• The Plagiarism Handbook
  
  Harris has also written a book, The Plagiarism Handbook (Pyrczak Publishing, 2001), in which he provides further strategies for dealing with plagiarism, including ways to question students about their work without directly accusing them of plagiarism. This book is available at the Vanderbilt Library; see its ACORN entry for details.

Resources to Share with Students

• Student Handbook: The Honor System
  
  The online version of the student handbook provides information about the Vanderbilt Honor System from the student's perspective, including definitions and examples of plagiarism. See also the Undergraduate Honor Council's page of information for students. Students are expected to be familiar with this information.

• Getting Started with Your Research
  
  This Vanderbilt Library web site provides advice and tips for undergraduates doing library research. Particularly relevant to cheating and plagiarism are their pages on citing sources and avoiding plagiarism.

• Vanderbilt Writing Studio
  
  The Vanderbilt Writing Studio provides a writing consultation service to Vanderbilt undergraduates, and their consultants are trained to address questions of plagiarism.

• Writing with Sources
  
  Harvard University's Expository Writing Program publishes a guide to writing with sources for its undergraduate students. The guide is available online and provides information on using, misuing, and citing sources in research papers. This would be a useful resource to share with students.

Anti-Plagiarism Services

• Vanderbilt has recently added a plagiarism prevention service known as SafeAssign to OAK, the Blackboard course management system. Contact your college or school's OAK support provider for more information about using this software. Instructors can also use search engines such as Google to see if a student's writing was plagiarized from an online source.

• An interview with Michelle Sulikowski about using plagiarism detection technologies

In January 2008, a CFT podcast episode featured an interview with Michelle Sulikowski, Senior Lecturer in Chemistry and Director of Education at the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology. In this 17-minute podcast, Michelle describes her use of SafeAssign, a software tool that can detect unoriginal content in student papers. Michelle used SafeAssign in a first-year writing course on chemical biology in which students wrote papers about chemical and biological topics of their choosing. She used SafeAssign to teach her students about plagiarism and the writing process in the natural sciences.

Other Resources

• Student Plagiarism: How to Maintain Academic Integrity

In this article Ludy Goodson from Georgia Southern University explores some of the issues around the use of Plagiarism Detection Technologies. Note that a Vanderbilt VUNet ID and password are required to access this article.

• Student Plagiarism: Are Teachers Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem?
  
  In this article, Chris M. Anson of North Carolina State University, writes about teachers' responsibilities in preventing plagiarism. Note that a Vanderbilt VUNet ID and password are required to access this article.

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