Avoiding Plagiarism and Demystifying Collusion

Do you actually know what plagiarism is? Or how to avoid it. What about collusion and collaboration, do you know the fine line that separates the two?  Not many students do, so I shall demystify all these concepts and provide you strong guidance on how to make the work you submit, your own.

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Transcript

 Welcome to the Psychology Podcast with Dr. Paul. Edgy by name and by nature. The Psychology Podcast will provide you with a competitive edge from education through to registration. Dr. Paul supports your transformation into becoming a psychologist, counsellor or allied mental health practitioner. Now here's Dr. Paul. Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. 

My name is Dr. Paul and I'm here to help you on your journey through whatever mental health program you're currently enrolled in, whether you're in HSC psychology or you're going through university at an undergraduate level or postgraduate level or even into a PhD or a master's program. I'm here to give you all the tips and tricks to get you through. That's right edgy by name and edgy by nature. The psychology podcast gives you that competitive edge. And in this particular episode we're going to be talking about something that is quite often frowned upon. It is a taboo. 

Sometimes people don't know how to talk about it or how to approach it or even know what it means. So let's make sure that we demystify That's right, this entire episode is about plagiarism and avoiding it. And so I'm going to give you some definitions as to what it actually is. And I'm going to give you some tips and tricks to avoid plagiarism. I'm also going to clear up what collusion and what collaboration actually mean, what the differences are, and how simple it is to actually rationalize it in your head so so that you do not overstep the mark into collusion, but you continue to get as much collaboration as you possibly can. Because of course, learning doesn't happen by itself. You need to interact with materials, whether they be resource materials or whether they be materials that you're provided through videos or other media. And of course, your biggest asset is the people you're studying with. 

So in your cohorts, in your groups, in your study groups that you form, and I strongly suggest you do form study groups, you can collaborate. You can understand how assignments are meant to be directed, how they might, are meant to be approached in terms of responding to them, what they actually mean, clarifying terms, finding out exactly what it is that you're required to do, and sometimes it's not just that the other person is smarter than you and knows how to do it in a better way. It's quite often the case that it's just about confidence. You having the confidence to be able to do the assignment and those peers around you experiencing the same thing that you're experiencing as you go through that particular program, they give you that support, that handrail, that scaffold that you can have to be able to propel you through. So let's have a look at plagiarism. 

One of the most difficult things for people to actually understand is to understand the nature of plagiarism and what it actually means and it's not that complicated. It really just comes down to a couple of key concepts and in particular one very important one and the concept of plagiarism is simply defined as using the words, ideas, concepts or novel contribution that that person has made to the body of knowledge and then passing it off as if it was your own. That's it. The words or ideas passing them off as if they are your own. That is the definition of plagiarism. Plagiarism is a type of intellectual theft. So you need to understand that if somebody proposes a theory or proposes an idea and it's not correctly referenced, paraphrased or directly quoted, you are committing intellectual theft. And so it really comes back down to a really simple concept, I'll say it again, it is not using the words or ideas of other people and passing them off as your own. And it can take many, many forms. So first of all, there's deliberate cheating. This is intentional cheating. Things like directly copying text out, putting it into your assignment, copying it from somebody else's assignment, putting it into your submission and then submitting it through the portal. It also includes contract cheating. So going and commissioning a report that you might pay anywhere between 20 or 30 Australian dollars all the way up to 100 Australian dollars to get somebody to write that work is actually a form of intellectual theft. You have committed to using somebody else's ideas or words and try to pass them off as your own. And so these are really the core tenets of plagiarism from an intentional perspective. There is accidental consequences for plagiarism and that is when you do copy the text from somewhere else you do intently cite it but instead of actually paraphrasing it and saying it in your own words you just change a few words in the paragraph and you don't put quotation marks around it and you don't put if you're using APA formatting you don't put a page number next to it then you are also in breach of plagiarism. So because you are still using the words or the ideas of another person and passing them off as your own. 

Consequently whenever you use words or ideas from other people in your work, you must acknowledge where they came from or create them for yourself. Some people are going to turn around and say, "But hang on, if I think about the most simple things that have occurred in life and these things are generally understood to be universal truths, can I not use those and not have to cite?" Yes you can. If something is common knowledge universally and does not necessarily have one owner but our culture has devised it or society has devised it or it is something that's a universal truth that everybody including your mother or your little baby brother or sister will know or older brother and sister I should say would know then you can put that through. For example La Nina is a weather event is a global truth. You do not need to cite someone who first came up with the word La Nina. Your winter is cold. You do not need to cite that. There is no citation for it. These are universal truths. 

So, understanding that if you use the words or ideas of another person and pass them off as your own, you are committing intellectual theft and therefore you have committed plagiarism. Now that you know what plagiarism is, let's look at how we avoid plagiarism. Let's look at how we create a situation where we can authentically work on our submissions and make sure that they are ours and not committing plagiarism or academic theft. The first one really comes back into this concept or idea of reflexive or reflective writing. Those two words are interchangeable. When you start reading a passage, really try and get a deep understanding of what the content is really saying. It's also really important that you start to document your own ideas about what you're reading. It's really good to actually ask a question before you start reading a research paper, for example. If your assignment is on compare and contrast the benefits of telehealth technology on mental health interventions for say anxiety and depression, then you would really want to understand the questions that you need to ask about what are the key things I'm looking for here in asking those questions. You then can write those ideas down. Those ideas are yours. Those ideas are things that you've garnered from reading that assignment. And so these note-taking practice elements that you bring to your study then can help you avoid plagiarism by writing in a reflexive way what you've learned about something. 

The other important skill that's really essential when you're reading through notes and you're now looking at passages of information from all different media, video media, journal articles, papers you've read online, etc. is to make sure that you have developed a skill of summarizing and paraphrasing. Paraphrasing is the taking of somebody else's words, rephrasing it in your own words to essentially capture the same essence of meaning but it's applied to the way that you're actually doing your assessment. And the distinguishing difference here is you are interpreting this at the same time as rephrasing what somebody else has said. You would still need to cite the author. You paraphrase the work from. You cannot just directly paraphrase and say they're my own words because the idea was somebody else's. And again, remember the definition words or ideas of another person that you then try and pass off as your own is plagiarism. 

So don't do that. Summarizing is really important. If you make bullet points, they're in your own words, you can articulate what's in a paragraph or section of the report. You then paraphrase that by writing full sentences and you put that into your assignment. That will then, at least with the references, in text references and end of reference list references, you will be in a much better position to avoid plagiarism. Remember that writing takes a lot of practice. You might have to do a first draft, a second draft, you might need to do a third draft. You need to really get organised and start to understand that redrafting your work then starts to hone and it ultimately changes what has been written. If you paraphrase from an author and then you cite that and then you integrate that with additional work that you do in other drafts, it ultimately changes again and is another step removed from plagiarism where you're taking the direct words of somebody else. 

One thing that's really interesting is the phenomena that I found as an educator, is that a lot of people who tend not to be able to express themselves in writing can actually express themselves through conversation and verbally very well. And one of the big distinctions that I see is people that are vocalizers of concepts that are very good at talking because talking, they have this air of confidence and their thoughts come to them more easily than typing tend to be able to say things better than what they can write when they put a submission together. And so I have found that people in this particular vein who record themselves, who read a paragraph, record themselves into their phone, play that back and effectively write word for word what they've actually said, then put your reference in, they will be able to translate effectively the better writing because they've vocalized it and the ideas in the synthesis. And if you pretend you're talking to somebody or just jump on Zoom and talk about a concept with a friend. Record that Zoom, bring it back. Remember you still need to reference if it's somebody else's work. But the bits that are yours, they are your intellectual property. So when you submit an assignment, or whether you submit a thesis, these things stay with you. 

Another important one is to make sure that you have enough time to do all of this. People get very pressured into getting submissions hitting hard deadlines. If you're doing four subjects in a year as a full course load, or if you're doing two and you're working, you have got a significant amount of power that needs to be put into the drafting process, the paraphrasing process, the summary process. You may have to vocalise and record it and type your work out. You may need to re-edit that again. And of course, you need to put your references together and make sure your intex references and your citation references at the very end in the reference list all mean that you are not committing plagiarism. So time management is important. One of the significant predictors in the research for plagiarism is a reduction in time or lack of planning for time to get a submission in and people start to take shortcuts. Maybe not intentionally, some do because they They get so desperate. If you've got something that interferes with your capacity to be able to do work in a genuine sense, go and seek an expression to get an extension for that particular assignment. Make sure you tell somebody student services or student support or support services that can advocate on your behalf because something has significantly hindered you and you cannot get it in. sure that you get the extension. And so as to conclude, let's have a deeper look at paraphrasing, summarizing and quotations, because this is certainly an important aspect that people do get caught up on and they don't actually know what these three things mean. 

So paraphrasing first does not match the source that you're citing from word for word. It involves putting the passage or the source into your own words. Changes the words and the paraphrasing of the passage, but it retains and fully communicates the original meaning, concept or idea that the author put forward. And so therefore it must have an attribution of a citation or a original source so that you can actually say where this idea came from. Summarizing, it also doesn't match the source word for word. However, it puts main ideas into your own words and includes other points that you might want to make that might actually bridge a gap, skew it towards being something that might be creating an argument, or joins multiple ideas together. And these ideas give a broad overview of what's actually happening in the original text and again it must be cited and you must provide that attribution back to the original author or authors. 

Quotations they do match word for word. They are a really brief segment of text and they appear within quotation marks. They must be cited and you must have a page number next to it for most referencing styles. Here's a tip. Don't go and copy a 50 or 100 word quotation, put it in a paragraph and say, "That's my paragraph for my 1500 word essay," or even a 10,000 word thesis, because the whole point of quotes, and the only time you put them into a thesis, is when you cannot say what the concept or idea or meaning of the original text is trying to convey into other words you then can cite it. I'll say that again. Don't use quotes that you can change the words for and say in another way. Only use direct quotes when you cannot say the concept, idea or meaning of that particular passage of writing in another way then you use a direct quotation. It's vitally important. 

The smaller the quotation the better And the less quotations in your work shows the sophistication beyond just direct quotation, copying out an attribution, and so you are likely to get higher marks for paraphrasing and summarizing and creating an argument in accordance with the requirements of your particular essay or topic or assessment or submission. And you will be in a very, very much better place to not only avoid plagiarism but also put your ideas onto a piece of paper and score those higher marks that you all deserve. So there you go, there's our brief look at plagiarism. Lastly, we're just going to follow through. 

There's one last comment about collusion and collaboration. It's the one thing I get emailed from by hundreds of students in the programs I work and the question is tell me what the definition is between collusion and what the definition is of collaboration and what's the difference between them. Okay collaboration is when you work with somebody else you can share ideas you can learn you can bounce off each other you can try and figure out what Assignments say you can talk about direction you can talk about which sources you're gonna cite you can go and even share papers Between each other and say I found this and contribute to a pool of knowledge that you and your study group are comparing but you must hand in your own work You must write your own work You must not copy somebody else's work when you do a section, even a line of text that you've shared between each other or a way that you're going to approach the Simon and Then you both submit it and it's identical. That is collusion 

You have colluded with each other to submit a piece of work and in fact It's plagiarism from the person that first gave you that work To the second person who copied that work and submitted it. So you're actually in breach of plagiarism You're stealing somebody else's work and ideas and concepts and you're also in breach of collusion. And so the two cannot work together. They must be separate. Please collaborate all you like. Just submit your own work. Follow the rules of plagiarism avoidance that we've talked about in this podcast episode. Submit your own work and you will be on your pathway to getting the grades that you deserve in your program. I hope you enjoyed this special episode on plagiarism.

 I look forward to catching you up to next time. Please make sure you subscribe, hit the like button on whatever platform that we're actually promoting this particular episode and I'll speak to you very soon. This is Dr Paul signing off on the Psychology Podcast. (upbeat music)