MAKE EXPECTATIONS OR REQUIREMENTS PART OF THE

ASSIGNMENT
Practice: Require students to use a set number or specific variety of sources
for their projects, including print resources.
Rationale: Print resources are harder for a student to copy and paste from.
Also, finding or implementing specific sources will help ensure students
avoid using pre-written papers. Similarly, a submitted paper that doesn’t
meet the correct requirements would warrant closer inspection.
Practice: Require the inclusion of class-specific texts or sources, such as a
chapter or article over a specific concept or theory.
Rationale: Requiring students to use faculty-chosen sources will make it
harder for students to find material to copy, making it both less profitable to
plagiarize and easier to detect if they do.
Practice: Require specific objectives or criteria that need to be met aside
from or beyond source materials.
Rationale: The more open/broad an assignment, the more susceptible it is
to being plagiarized. While it may not be practical to assign specific topics,
faculty can incorporate requirements that make it difficult for students to
find pre-made assignments that meet those objectives. Consider requiring
specific sections, headings, or objectives that must be addressed through the
discussion.

Suggested learning activities

These learning activities will help accustom your students to correct referencing
practice, and reinforce its importance in academic work.

 Ask students to keep a reflective journal that includes a record of some of

the sources they have referred to in their assignments, with annotations to
indicate what they have learned from these sources.
 In class, ask students to discuss a completed assignment in groups,
without looking at the written text of their assignment.
 In class, circulate examples of student submissions that include examples
of plagiarism or poor referencing. Ask students to identify errors and
discuss how they may have come about, and how to rectify them.