Rinnelle Lee-Piggott CUTL 5106

In my department, it is often left to the librarian to communicate the expectations of the

university on plagiarism to our students. In addition to this, the UWI’s plagiarism policy is

posted on our various myelearning course shells. While these are important and possibly

effective efforts towards helping students avoid plagiarism, the problem with these two

efforts is that there is no guarantee that students would become appraised of maintaining

academic integrity in their university lives. I say this because, the library session is done as

part of the orientation to our new students on a Friday afternoon, the second day of

orientation, and usually, most students do not attend. Additionally, students often do not

read the plagiarism policy posted online unless they have been charged with academic

misconduct.

As Bill Taylor, I feel that integrity is “… an essential part of any true educational experience”

that would prepare one for their role professionally. The spirit of valuing ‘own work’ and

acknowledging the work of others are great virtues to practice in a learning environment.

It stands to reason that if one lacks integrity in their preparation to become a professional

then he/she would most likely lack integrity in their professional lives and dealings.

Integrity is a “character that we need to nurture” (Taylor, n.d., p. 1) for functioning in every

area of our lives. And because I prepare future and practicing school leaders, I am even

more passionate about integrity and what we call in the educational leadership literature

(e.g. Brown & Trevino, 2006; Patton, 2008) ‘ethical and moral leadership’. School leaders

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must demonstrate integrity in their leadership and management of schools, particularly in

their interactions with school members and their protection of students. Therefore, I take

my responsibility to inform students about plagiarism seriously. Additionally, my spiritual

beliefs will not entertain otherwise.

I may not take the approach that Bill Taylor took in writing a letter to students at the start

of a course or programme, however, because I believe one university policy should be

sufficient for adherence and promotion by all staff rather than divergence by staff that may

cause confusion to students. Additionally, while there are very sound principles and

operating standards with the letter, it still leaves students in the dark concerning writing

and producing work and research output that eschews plagiarism. Students need to be

deliberately directed to the forms of plagiarism and academic misconduct as well as the

levels of misconduct. They need to also be made aware of the ways in which to avoid

plagiarism and, should they be tempted not to adhere, that there exists very sophisticated

plagiarism detection software (e.g. Turnitin) and more accessible strategies, such as typing

in phrases not normally used by a student into Google (Talab, 2004).

Many times students are not aware that they may have produced a piece of work that point

to plagiarism. With adequate knowledge, many can be encouraged to hold to the highest

standards with respect to academic conduct and integrity. Apart from posting the

university’s policy on my myelearing course shells, I have in times past arranged for our

department’s librarian to sensitize students on plagiarism and avoiding it during one of my

teaching sessions so that students can benefit. When the need arises, I also sit with

students and point out the incidences of poor crediting or copying of another’s work within

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their own work. I show them how I detected it, either with or without the use of Turnitin,

which is subscribed to by UWI. I show them how to accurately credit their sources of

information, pictures, etc. and I set an example to follow within my own work, be it

multimedia resources or journal articles.

Now, such occurrences at the School of Education are irregular. This is because the nature

of our assessments are generally authentic, which require for instance context-specific

work, student creations or practicums. In this way and according to Harris (2001, cited in

Talab (2004), the assignments themselves prevent plagiarism by students.

References

Brown, M. E. & Trevino, L. K. (2006). Ethical leadership: A review and future directions. The

Leadership Quarterly, 17, 595–616.

Patton, M. C. (2008). Principles for Principals: Using the Realms of Meaning to Practice

Ethical Leadership – National Recommendations. National Forum of Applied

Educational Research Journal, 21 (3), 1-8.

Talab, R. (2004). Copyright and You, A student online plagiarism guide: Detection and

prevention resources (and Copyright Implications!). Tech Trends: Linking Research

and Practice to Improve Learning, 46 (6), 15-18.

Taylor, B. (n.d.). Academic integrity: A Letter to my students. Retrieved from:

http://www.oakton.edu/user/4/pboisver/NewFaculty/LetterTaylor.htm