Tutorial 1 : A Quick and Easy Way to Avoid Plagiarism

A national survey published in Education Week found that 54% of students admitted to plagiarizing from the internet; 74% of students admitted that at least once during the past school year they had engaged in "serious" cheating; and 47% of students believe their teachers sometimes choose to ignore students who are cheating. “Facts about plagiarism” Plagiarism.org. Accessed January 29, 2011 http://www.plagiarism.org/plag_facts.html

As viewed above plagiarism is a fairly large problem within our education system. Sometimes we might unknowingly plagiarize and sometimes we might deliberately plagiarize. Either way plagiarism results in a direct violation of academic integrity. Academic integrity violations are something that we as citizens of the academic world do not want on our record or on our conscious.

Academic integrity violations such as plagiarism can result in punishment. These punishments have varied depending upon situation. I’ve read about students being given an “F” on the assignment all the way to the student being expelled from the Academic institution. In the working world plagiarism can be combatted with punishments such as fines, potential misdemeanor or felony charges and up to 1 year in jail, all dependent upon the state and severity of the offense.

With this being said there are ways to protect ourselves and make sure that we don’t violate our integrity and don’t run into these problems. There are a few great sites that help us not only learn about plagiarism, but help us combat it amongst our own compilation of work. A few great website’s that have tons of information and facts / tips regarding plagiarism are http://www.plagiarism.org/index.html , http://www.turnitin.com/static/index.php , http://www.ithenticate.com/ , http://www.writecheck.com/static/home.html, and one that all of us as undergraduates should be interested in http://www.turnitinadmissions.com/index.html , which articulates and helps pinpoint plagiarism in application essays for graduate and undergraduate programs.

I will now teach how to access and effectively use the website http://www.duplichecker.com/ a quick free plagiarism checker that can be utilized in a matter of minutes.

A few things you will need.

1.      A computer with internet capability

2.      An electronic copy of your document, preferably in word document format.

3.      The ability to copy and paste.

v  Step #1: Open you computers web browser.

v  Step #2: In the address bar enter the web address http://www.duplichecker.com/

v  Step #3: Hit the “Enter” key

v  Step #4: After hitting the enter key you should have been directed to the http://www.duplichecker.com/ home page.

v  Step #5: After being directed to the Dupli Checker homepage scroll down to the “Please Enter Your Text Below and Search” Text Box

v  Step #6: using the copy function on your keyboard or mouse copy your document and paste it in the text box, OR you can use the browse button to locate your document on your computer and upload it into the text box that way.

v  Step#7: After the text is uploaded OR pasted in the text box hit the search button at the bottom of the page directly under the Yahoo add. After hitting this button the Dupli Checker will return your document to you with any potential plagiarism threats. From there you can decide to alter your document however you wish to.

That is the easiest, cheapest, quickest and one of the most effective ways to make sure your not committing an act of plagiarism. I hope this information will help anyone and everyone in there quest for education and knowledge.

Above: Dupli Checker homepage