Plagiarism

Interesting article today on plagiarism in the Chronicle for Higher Education.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/plagiarism-an-administrator%e2%80%99s-perspective/31775?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en    While plagiarism has been inherent in many students' collegiate lives, there are many ways of discouraging it in your class. One of the main guidelines is to create more authentic assignments, quizzes, and tests that cannot be easily copied or compromised. By using deeper order thinking skills such as synthesis, students must know the materials (as opposed to filling in multiple-choice questions) in order to succeed in the course.

I really liked one of the suggestions- "Do not assume that students have learned to cite sources as you wish in previous writing courses or in high school."  It has been my experience that most students really have no idea what is or what is not plagiarism.  Give them some assistance by explaining it in class with examples, do some role-playing games and give them a handout for future use.  Though you will probably see students reverting to plagiarism under stressful times (i.e. the paper is due in 2 hours), most will albeid by the rules if they are educated to do so.