Intern’s Corner: Only You Can Prevent Plagiarism II
As promised, here is the sequel to the Only You Can Prevent Plagiarism I, where I will take the rest of the tutorials offered by the Excelsior Online Writing Lab covering Summarizing & Plagiarism, Note-Taking & Plagiarism, and Paraphrasing & Plagiarism.
So, let’s dive right in!
Summarizing & Plagiarism
The slide tutorial Summarizing & Plagiarism dives right into an important rule to remember when summarizing a source, which is always to cite that source even when putting the information you gathered into your own words because to do otherwise is considered plagiarism. The tutorial goes on to provide more slides regarding summarizing in the form of tips and examples.
(Screenshot of Summarizing & Plagiarism tutorial’s first slide)
Note-Taking & Plagiarism
Another slide tutorial offered by the OWL is Note-Taking & Plagiarism. This tutorial provides tips on how to take notes while conducting research.
(Graphic of note-taking tips to avoiding plagiarism)
Paraphrasing & Plagiarism
The final tutorial is Paraphrasing & Plagiarism. This tutorial provides an example of what an original text looks like and compares it to a paraphrased example. They should be similar in size.
Try It Out
The OWL provides another Try It Out with this one taking original text and providing a student’s attempted paraphrase. You are asked to test your knowledge and decide whether the paraphrased version is acceptable.
(Screenshot of slid four of Try It Out: Paraphrasing & Plagiarism)
Final thoughts
Plagiarism is severe and nerve-racking for students and instructors. One’s reputation could be at stake if suspected of plagiarism, even if it were unintentional. That is why the OWL is helpful in this area. The OWL provides tutorials and examples of what to look out for, as well as how to take proper precautions to help the reader avoid plagiarism and write a properly-cited and original paper.
Note: This blog post marks my last entry as the Spring 2019 intern at Hoot. It has been such a pleasure, and I sincerely hope that what the team and I put together for you here has helped in some way. Best of luck to you in all that you do. Remember, being a life-long learner is worth every effort and the OWL is here to help in those efforts.
Ginger Hamblin is an intern for the Excelsior University Online Writing Lab. She has been a student of Excelsior University for almost two years and is pursuing her Bachelor of Science – Liberal Arts in Professional and Technical Writing. She is a writing enthusiast, painter, wife, and mother of three boys.