Plagiarism Education: Teaching Students to Use Information Ethically

The engineering profession has always valued ethical behavior. However, it seems that unethical behavior is more and more prevalent in our classes. The rising incidence of plagiarism is and should be a concern to educators not only to ensure academic integrity, but because of the implications for our profession. The ethical use of engineering information is important for our students to learn. There are two ways to combat plagiarism: detection and education. Programs like Turnitin and SafeAssignment make plagiarism much easier to detect. The fear of detection stops many would-be offenders before they start, but it has its limitations. Education strives to teach the student what plagiarism is and why it is wrong. There is a strong belief that one of the main causes of plagiarism is a lack of understanding. Often students don’t understand what plagiarism is and how they can avoid it. This paper focuses on the effects education can have to reduce plagiarism. Furthermore, the paper discusses a series of short videos which the author created to help teach students to ethically use engineering information. They are designed to be inserted into a class’s BlackBoard site. In addition to plagiarism, these videos summarize copyright law.