Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Punitive! - Re-Thinking Plagiarism in Information Literacy Instruction

Too often, students feel that they are being accused of plagiarism before they have even started their first research assignment! Approaches to discussions of academic honesty (or dishonesty) frequently emphasize negative consequences over making the right choices from the start and do not take into consideration students’ understanding of the research process. At our own university, the majority of referrals to the Dean of Students regarding classroom behaviors were related to plagiarism. At Austin Peay State University, librarians involved in information literacy instruction wanted to address this issue, but in a positive manner. Panel attendees will learn how librarians completely updated our required web-based anti-plagiarism tutorial by gleaning feedback from students, staff, classroom instructors, student support services, and the administration. The final product is a fun, informative, and engaging video with features that work with students’ different learning styles and that is customized for our campus community. After viewing the video, our students complete an accompanying 10-question quiz over the most significant content. Embedding this module (which includes a link to the video, transcripts, and quiz questions) on our website and in our course management software allows for assessment opportunities --- students get immediate feedback, scores are easily accessible in instructors’ gradebooks, while librarians can access data that informs our one-shot library research sessions. Although we are at a public institution of higher education, our approach and content could easily be modified and implemented for the K-12 setting. This panel discussion will also include a brief interactive segment for attendees