Credo

After semesters of trying to explain why “plagiarism is wrong” to my students, I pondered the subject and wrote the following explanation to share with them:
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About plagiarism…

We live in a point-and-click world. With a few clicks of the mouse, it’s possible to find almost any information and to move it easily into our own “My Documents.” While access to information keeps us up to date on current events and allows us ease in research, keep in mind that one of the primary goals of education is encouraging people to think for themselves.

Some of our goals can be stated as:
The reasons plagiarism is unacceptable can be argued as:

The student should be encountering skilled writers.
A student who reads online study guides and summaries reads the words of another student, not the literature.

The students should be working through the text of high level (literary) writers.
The student who searches for answers written by others is reading mid to low level writing, not literature.

The student should be exchanging his own ideas and practicing discussion.
The student who posts something captured online has learned to search by topic, capture the first or second essay he finds. He is not practicing debate or discussion.

The student should be writing his own ideas and conclusions.
Cutting and pasting text may develop skills in searching by topic or mouse dexterity, but not in thinking.

Plagiarism is when you use of any of these (or variations of) that have been produced by someone else and submit as your own words:
Sentence or phrase, paragraph, or complete paper
Idea
Conclusion
Drawing
Thesis statement

Before you submit material:
Spend your time reading and thinking about what you have read.

Use Safe Submit (or other plagiarism checks available through other sources). If your response is rated above 40% correlation, it is likely to be considered plagiarism.

Papers, and discussion responses are checked for plagiarism. If your work results in an online/in book match or a very close similarity, you will receive a 0 for that assignment.
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Some of them read the advice. Most of them follow it. Some of them ignore it and continue to submit copied material. Maybe I should set out the rules about plagiarism through an iPod format using music lyrics (aka poetry).