Rejecting the criminal narrative: Designing a plagiarism avoidance tutorial

Abstract

Librarians are often asked to create instructional experiences and/or learning objects to teach students to avoid plagiarizing. Creating an effective tutorial not only requires following good instruction design principles but also understanding why and when students plagiarize and how to address students effectively about plagiarism. This article explains how one university library created a tutorial informed by current research regarding plagiarism and negative discourse surrounding plagiarism and plagiarists. This tutorial avoided criminal and accusatory narratives; addressed why students might plagiarize either intentionally or unintentionally; and was built within a course management system so that it could be used in multiple courses.

Keywords:

• Plagiarism
• plagiarism narrative
• online tutorial
• course management system
• ADDIE
• backward design
• Blackboard
• instructional design

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

References

Notes

1 The author would like to express her gratitude to Jessica McMillen, WVU Libraries’ Head of Web and Digital Services. So much of this project’s technical details would not have been possible without her generous help and assistance.

2 Due to recent re-organization, the Office is currently staffed by the Office Head and the Instructional Design Assistant.