- taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own
- a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work
To avoid plagiarising this I'm happy to admit that it was copied from www.hyperdictionary.com and the only way in which it's my work is that I entered the word as a search term into Google. Unfortunately a number of students seem to think that copying from Google deserves the same credit as pains-taking research...
Today I'm not particularly proud to say we severely damaged the degree prospects of a student over a plagiarised essay -- admittedly it was worth 50% of a whole module so we were (technically) right to do-so, but University rules allow for one penalty and only one penalty for the lowest-level of plagiarism: 0% for that piece of work (and that's the minimum penalty.) Two students were interviewed separately, both admitted the offence. The first's essay was 100% plagiarised off the web and completely unreferenced. The second was 90% plagiarised and fully referenced. Both receive zero for the piece of work. Unfortunately the second student was finishing his degree by taking just two modules ... he's now likely to fail one of them which puts his degree classification in serious jeopardy ...
I feel very sorry for the student as the University rules are black and white whereas this situation was clearly not as clear-cut: Student #1 is mid-way through his third year and can still recover his grades; student #2 has no opportunity to recover. Admittedly it was very stupid to submit a piece of work where 90% of the text was copy/pasted from web pages, especially in the final module of his final year, and the University rules are known to the students (this one was involved in a module with me last year where I made it very clear what happens to plagiarists.) However I feel it would have been fair to offer the student a second chance (this was a 1st offence ... sort-of.)
So if you're a student at the University where I work then beware! I loathe plagiarism and am determined to seek it out in assignments I'm asked to mark ... even when it costs me time, sleep and (this time) adds a little tarnish to my soul.
Moral: Don't be tempted to submit plagiarised work for credit. (And if you're unsure what constitutes plagiarism then ask someone! Your lecturer will be delighted to tell you ... probably at great length & you may have difficulty shutting him/her up, it depends on the time of year and how recently he/she has had to mark a piece of plagiarised work!)
