Beyond Plagiarism

When academia treats plagiarism as a right-or-wrong issue, university students are expected to already understand how to avoid this act of academic dishonesty. However, source use is filled with complexities, and student plagiarism is often connected to student struggles with the subtleties of academic writing. Scholarly work that involves incorporation of sources is, in fact, a complex network of processes. Beyond Plagiarism offers a pedagogical approach to plagiarism that is intended to help instructors, administrators, and advisors address plagiarism and mentor students’ understanding of these processes and their development as academic writers and scholars.

Starting with an overview of the complexities underlying plagiarism and source use, the book offers practical tools that teachers can integrate in their classes. These tools include examples of modifications to syllabi; integrating processes into assignment design, classroom support, and feedback and grading; meta-texts to guide student reflection on their use of sources; explanations of why source use is important in academic writing; guiding students through learning how to read for writing, analyze genres to better understand expectations, and practice paraphrasing, summarizing, and quoting in their own assignments; approaching AI tools strategically; and modeling successful strategies for each step of the scholarly process. By taking a pedagogical approach, expert members of the academic community can help students understand how academic writing builds on and incorporates sources, provide support for students to learn to do these things through a process approach, and respond to situations of plagiarism with nuance, compassion, and a growth mindset.