Online Learning: Fighting Plagiarism - Educating the Home Schooled Student in Honesty
A growing problem in academic arenas today is the fact that many students are still submitting papers that are plagiarized. Every student should be taught that plagiarism is not tolerated, even the home schooled student. Just because the student is in a home schooling environment, it does not mean that plagiarism is acceptable. In fact, if a home schooled student is being readied for a college environment, learning how one can avoid plagiarism is essential to college success. Universities will not tolerate plagiarism and the student can fail the courses they take or, worse, a student can be expelled. Therefore, any parent home schooling their child must teach their home schooler about plagiarism and how it can be properly avoided.
First, home schooling parents need to learn how to spot plagiarism in their home schooled child's paper. Does the subject of the paper exceed your home schooled child's current knowledge? Is there vocabulary present in your home schooled child's work that seems far above their current level of understanding? This could be a sign that part or all of the paper is plagiarized. Home schooling parents can use the Internet and the various search engines to look up specific strings of text to determine if the home schooler has used someone else's work without citing it. Other sure-fire signals that a paper has been plagiarized by a home schooler include citations that seem vague, as if they are made up. A complete lack of citations should give parents a heads up: it is possible that your home schooler is plagiarizing.
Whether work is paraphrased or quoted, the home schooler will need to learn how to cite works properly. There are thousands of websites offering citation advice and many universities, in an effort to put an end to plagiarism, are providing information about proper citations. Any home schooler that intends to attend college will need to know how to cite works both in Modern Language Association format and American Psychological Association Format respectively. Typically, all English papers and papers associated with the arts use the MLA Format for citations, while all sciences typically rely on the APA format for citations. Finally, there are also many books that focus on proper citation and paper format that can be purchased from the local bookstore or on the Internet.
As the parent home schooling your child, it is your responsibility to teach your child about plagiarism and how to successfully avoid it. Use every resource available to you as plagiarism is frowned upon in the college setting and the consequences for plagiarism can be hefty. In the end, a home schooler needs to respect the hard work and research conducted by others. Learning how to properly cite other people's work is a step in the right direction in terms of respect.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling parent, author, children's rights advocate, and Founder and C.E.O. of Learning by Grace, Inc. She and her husband of almost 3 decades reside with their 8 children in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Rothschild co-founded Learning By Grace, Inc. because "our current system of education has broken its promise..." Learning By Grace, Inc. delivers Internet-based multimedia education to PreK-12 children in the United States and throughout the world.
Rothschild has authored a number of books about education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Home Education News Blog contains feature stories on alternatives in education.
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