Lab 11: Plagiarism and Academic Writing

PSY 203: Lab 11.

The primary website for this course is https://faculty.bard.edu/~jdainerbest/psy-203

These are all of the instructions for Lab 11. The list of labs is here.

This website contains R lab code for labs in Bard College’s Fall 2020 for Statistics for Psychology, taught by Prof. Justin Dainer-Best.

Objectives

This is not a lab that runs in R. For this lab, you’ll be discussing what it means to care about academic writing, and how academic integrity works. We’ll spend some time defining plagiarism and different types thereof. We’ll also talk about why it is important to cite sources properly, the difference between paraphrasing and summarizing, and what it means to cite primary vs. secondary sources.

This lab is discussion-based, meaning that you cannot complete it on your own.

Want to know more about APA style, academic writing, and/or plagiarism? I recommend referencing Purdue’s Online Writing Lab, and the APA Style guide. Getting a copy of the style manual is not a bad idea. (If you do, be sure to get the most recent one.)

You should also read the summary of the Harvard Guide to Using Sources on Brightspace.

Definitions

Below are a few of the terms we’ll discuss today:

• Verbatim plagiarism: Using someone’s words exactly, without citing them
• Self-plagiarism: Using your own previously-submitted work as though it were original
• Mosaic plagiarism (aka patchwork plagiarism or patchwriting): keeping the main text while changing only occasional words
• Over-reliance on secondary sources: Using someone else’s summary of a primary work instead of your own

If you miss the lab, be sure to review the resources described above—and be in touch.