Another way to discourage plagiarism is by remaining aware of student progress through the course of an assignment. Several strategies can help you do this.

• Create a Schedule for Completing Sections of the Essay: faced with a long research project, students may procrastinate...and thus be tempted to plagiarize out of desperation.

You can avoid this syndrome by scheduling parts of the project. For example, the schedule below lists due dates for different stages of an assignment:

Feb. 22:    term paper thesis statement due

Feb. 29:    tentative bibliography of sources due

Mar. 5:     abstract due

Mar. 15:    lit review due

Mar. 26:    full first draft due

Apr. 7:      works cited/reference list due

Apr. 14:    final draft due

This encourages students to work consistently through the project. Reviewing these areas can also help you identify small issues in student work before they evolve into major problems.

Also, class activities can be targeted to help with common problems. For example, groups can review works cited lists for accuracy, or students can help one another with proofreading.

• Arrange Individual Conferences: setting aside formal conference time or simply making yourself available to students can be an effective way to check progress and motivate writers. During these meetings, have students explain their focus and research--this can help you address potential problems before the paper is finished.

• Require Progress Reports: require writers to assess their own progress (formally or informally) as part of the assignment. For example:

Mid-Semester Report--for each of the following areas, describe your progress in a short paragraph:

• Quality of Your Research
• Depth of Literature Review
• Drafting of the Essay
• Overall Progress on the Assignment

 

• Require An Annotated Bibliography of Sources: Require students to complete annotations of their sources. This discourages plagiarism and provides practice in analysis, summary, and evaluation of a text's usefulness.

• Consider Presentations: make students responsible for presenting their research and ideas to the class.

• Collect Portfolios: require students to maintain all evidence of their written work--including notes, drafts, and research--in a portfolio. Writers can be evaluated on the strength of their final work and the completeness of the portfolio.