You start reading your students paper and soon realize that it's probably plagiarised. Often you can feel it even without searching the net. This is in case your university or school does not provide anti-plagiarism software institutionally. I am very curious to find out if it does.

In western countries, checking the students papers for plagiarism is done automatically with the help of TurnItin software upon their submission. Plagiarism is one of the first topics that receives attention in the discussions of skills for academic writing because students are assessed in written form. Cases of plagiarism are quite rare, so rare that in my class today the professor referred to the case from two years ago as the last one so far.

What happens in case TurnItin detects plagiarism in some paper? Well, dealing with this situation is a rather complicated business. First, a pannel of professors including the head of school, the professors teaching the student, and a representative of another faculty gathers to find out whether the student admits or not that s/he has plagiarised. If s/he does and this is the first offense, then s/he can resubmit the paper for a passing grade of 50%. If s/he does not admit it, then the case can go to the University level where it will be decided how to deal with the situation.

I am inviting you to have a look at some of the resources the University of Leeds provides for its students and taechers to learn about plagiarism, to acquire skills necessary to avoid it and make sure there is no plagiarism in some work you have written or have to grade: http://www.lts.leeds.ac.uk/plagiarism/index.php

Why am I concerned about plagiarism? One of the reasons is that I teach academic writing classes where plagiarism is quite an issue back home. I am sure that it is necessary for both teachers and students to know what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it. Universities should adopt such policies against plagiarism as to make virtually impossible. Plagiarism was one of the first questions we discussed in the Academic Skills classes, not on one occasion we were reminded about the importance to stick to academic integrity, and we also had some practice in summarising and paraphrasing to become better at skills that are essential to the ability to write about something you read about in your own words in your work as well as referencing to become familiar with the conventions the university uses in this regard. These are difficult to master but essential for being able to function successfully in today's environment.

I am inviting you to share your opinions about this issue in my blog and share some of your practices concerning it that you belive are working.

It must not be tolerated, must it?