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=Teaching staff are provided with support resources (including training, guidelines and examples) on guiding student use of information to avoid plagiarism and misuse of intellectual property. =

Evidence
Plagiarism is very prevalent in universities. Hart & Friesner (2004) survey several studies that report that somewhere between 50-90% of students have engaged in some questionable academic activity. However, the reasons for plagiarizing that students cite differ from staff assumptions. Students tend to want a better grade, or plagiarize because of time pressure. There is some suggestion that students have not properly learned or internalized the appropriate rules for citation and referencing. Documentation clearly stating what is required in order to avoid plagiarizing and what is expected for good grades would seem necessary.

A code of conduct policy should address cheating and plagiarism (Waterhouse & Rogers 2004). Explicit guidance and support should be provided to staff and students with policies and examples on intellectual property aspects, particularly copyright and plagiarism.

There are two general ways to combat plagiarism, the first is to ensure that the appropriate warnings and penalties are in place in the institutional procedures and student documentation. The second is to ‘fight technology with technology’ (Hart & Friesner 2004) and invest in cheating detection systems (see the next practice below). These authors provide some guidelines for instructing students about plagiarism issues and for preventing its occurrence.

Explicit guidance and support should be provided to staff and students with policies and examples on intellectual property aspects, particularly copyright and plagiarism.

Teaching staff are provided with templates, examples, training and support in using the range of information resources available to support student learning.

Resources
Milne & White (2005) collect together twenty-three sets of e-learning quality guidelines from an array of geographical regions. Such guidelines, or something like them, should be part of the support offered to staff by their organizations. Staff need guidelines, and examples of good practice. The University of Toronto has guidelines for students on how not to plagiarize: http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/using-sources/how-not-to-plagiarize

Carroll’s (2002) guide to plagiarism prevention contains tutorial material which can be used to indicate to students the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable practice. http://www.plagiarismadvice.org/ provides a wealth of information and papers directed at learning institutions in order to combat plagiarism.

Intellectual property and its fair use is summarized in the e-learning context by Waterhouse & Rogers (2004). They note that copyright law, fair use guidelines and associated Acts are ‘not infrequently misunderstood by students and sometimes by e-learning instructors’ (p.8).

A code of conduct policy should address cheating and plagiarism (Waterhouse & Rogers 2004).

Explicit guidance and support should be provided to staff and students with policies and examples on intellectual property aspects, particularly copyright and plagiarism.