In the previous lesson, you learned about ethical issues and challenges that IDT professionals may face. You have passed the ethics module (congratulations!) and you have also written about two ethical dilemmas that you have encountered or may encounter in the future. In the ethics module and when describing IDT dilemmas, you may have read and written about plagiarism
In this lesson, you will learn how to avoid plagiarism by citing your sources correctly. In order to be able to write good papers in this program and in order to design and develop good instructional materials in the future, it is important that you understand what plagiarism is and how you can avoid it. It is also important that you know how to avoid plagiarism so you will not violate Virginia Tech’s Graduate Honor Code.
One of the key elements of avoiding plagiarism is that you cite your sources correctly. There are many different citation styles that are used to avoid plagiarism. In the field of education (and social sciences in general), APA style is often used. This is also what we use in the ITMA program. You may have noticed this already as you read a small section of APA’s Ethical and Legal Standards in Publishing in the previous lesson.
In order to avoid plagiarism, you will therefore learn about proper APA citations, look at many (non)-examples of plagiarism, and you will practice whether you can recognize plagiarism. After learning and practicing your skills, you will put all your knowledge to the test in order to get your “Recognizing Plagiarism Certificate.”
To avoid plagiarism, you will first need to learn how to cite your sources according to APA style. You will therefore learn how to cite sources in the body of your paper as well as in your reference list. You will also learn how you can solve some common challenges when citing your sources. For example, how do you cite a source without a known author or year of publication? How do you cite a website or journal article? You will learn it all in this PowerPoint! You can use this PowerPoint as a quick reference throughout this course and the ITMA program.
In the PowerPoint, you learned how to cite sources that you paraphrase and how to cite sources that you quote word-by-word. Indiana University Bloomington (IUB, 2014) discusses two main types of plagiarism that relate to these two types of citations: word-for-word plagiarism and paraphrasing plagiarism. In order to understand what word-for-word or paraphrasing plagiarism looks like, IUB (2014) provides a set of examples you may want to look at so you will be able to avoid these types of plagiarism in the future. You may also want to go over the tutorials that they provide. These tutorials include a few practice tests for you to take.
You have now learned how to cite your sources and you have seen examples of word-for-word and paraphrasing plagiarism. Before you will take your certification test in Assignment 3, you will probably want to practice whether you can indeed recognize plagiarism. If you have not already practiced your skills when going through the tutorials, please do so! Indiana University Bloomington has also developed a series of separate practice tests that you can take to make sure you are prepared for the final test in which you will recognize different types of plagiarism. You can find these practice sessions and tests by following this link. You will probably want to make sure you can pass at least a couple tests before taking the final test.
Description
Please take the “Recognizing Plagiarism Test” by following this link. Make sure you choose the right test level by indicating that you have already completed a Bachelor’s degree and that this is an assignment or requirement by your teacher or school. When you have successfully passed the test (you need to answer at least 9 out of 10 questions correctly in order to pass), take a screenshot of your certificate and paste it in a Word Document. You will receive your certificate by email. Please use your Virginia Tech email address as you take the quiz, and in your screenshot include your IP# and Unique Test ID, so your instructor can check whether your certificate is valid.
Submitting Your Assignment
This assignment should be prepared using Microsoft Word. At the top of your document you should have the lesson name, and underneath that should be your name, email address, and the date. Below, paste your screenshot. When you save the document as a file on your computer, make sure the file is named “Assignment3”. After you have saved your file, go to the student interface and submit your assignment for grading. Click here if you need additional information regarding submission of your assignment.
Grading Criteria
Points: 10