Ask OASISFaculty Voices: What Causes and Can Prevent Plagiarism? Insufficient Understanding
Visual: Video opens to the opening title with the video series title, Faculty Voices: Walden Talks Writing, then the title, “What causes and can prevent plagiarism? Insufficient Understanding”
Visual: The screen changes to show each speaker talking to the camera in their home offices. Each person’s name and college is listed as they speak.
Audio:
Dr. Kim Critchlow, College of Management and Technology: Some of the main reasons that I have experienced that students have shared with me about why they plagiarize. One is, is knowledge, the lack thereof. They don't really understand what is plagiarism, and if they don't understand what it is, then they certainly don't understand how to prevent it from happening. And then also, they don't understand the severity of that act that behavior of plagiarizing, so there's the knowledge piece.
Dr. Gregory Campbell, College of Social and Behavioral Science: In my experience at Walden University as a core faculty member and even as I student at Walden, sometimes people do things simply because they don't know. And one of the best things that I found at Walden, and I teach in the School of Public Policy, I generally teach the foundation course which is the first course, and I try to educate the students on, what is academic integrity? What is plagiarism? And so that they clearly understand that any information that's not your original thoughts, whether it's paraphrase or quoted, needs to give credit to the original author. And oftentimes I find that that surprises students. Also, another thing that I, I’ve found that surprises students is when they, they find that they have to cite themselves if they've turned in work in previous courses or previous papers or maybe a master's thesis, and now they're in a PhD program, and that even they have to cite themselves. So sometimes you don't know what you don't know, however when it is brought to your attention and you are enlightened and there is now awareness of a particular issue, now you have to live accordingly. That's where academic integrity comes into play, where you know the right thing to do. Now the question is, will you do it even when no one else is watching?
Visual: The video ends with the closing title with the video series title, Faculty Voices: Walden Talks Writing and the Writing Center’s e-mail address: writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu.