PLAGIARISM DECLARATION

Hi Folks

At a recent BCB departmental meeting (May 2006) it was agreed that all students will need to sign an undertaking that their assignments have not been plagiarised and are correctly referenced. At an earlier meeting in 2006 the department agreed to using the CSE/CBE style for all referencing in student assignments. It was also recommended that all electronic courses also carry such a declaration. To this end you will note that a plagiarism declaration has been added to the right hand side of the Weblog ensuring compliance and understanding of the issues of plagiarism and correct citation, quotation and referencing.

It is important that you understand these issues and to this end Gwen and Nick have put a lot of effort in helping your identify and not to commit plagiarism while undertaking the Biodiversity course. I trust that this message is now fairly comprehensively understood, nevertheless you may submit certain assignments to Nick who has agreed to check them as per the revised schedule put up by Gwen in an earlier posting on the Biodiversity Blog (See http://bcb705.blogspot.com/2006/05/correction-editing-times.html )

How to avoid plagiarism?

• Make your own notes when revising material and keep a record of all the references you have consulted.
• Organise your notes into a mind map of the assignment.
• Use your notes and mind map to prepared the final assignment.
• Get a classmate to look through your assignment before submitting, for both plagiarism and proper referencing.
• For submitting on the Weblog and when preparing Power Point presentations, I would recommend using a number in brackets after the text. The number should be hyperlinked to the article if it is available electronically available. The numbers must be organized in ascending order and placed within square brackets [1].
• Do a few checks of phrases of five words or more using a Google Search
• Finally quickly read through your more important references to check that you subconsciously have not slipped in a near verbatim phrase.
  
  

Some important references to Plagiarism on the NISL Weblogs that you have participated in

PLAGIARISM: OFFICIAL RULING AND DEFINITION - SENATE UWC

http://bcb703.blogspot.com/2006/04/plagiarism-official-ruling-and.html


DEFINING PLAGIARISM

http://bcb703.blogspot.com/2006/03/defining-plagiarism.html


STANDARDISED PENALTIES FOR THE SCIENCE FACULTY

http://bcb703.blogspot.com/2006/03/standardised-penalties-for-science.html


THE HUNT IS ON FOR PLAGIARISM

http://bcb705.blogspot.com/2006/05/hunt-is-on-for-plagiarism.html


BIODIVERSITY TAUGHT THROUGH THE WEBLOG

http://bcb705.blogspot.com/2006/04/biodiversity-taught-through-weblog.html


EXTENSIONS, TESTS AND PLAGIARISM

http://bcb705.blogspot.com/2006/05/extensions-tests-and-plagiarism.html


Plagiarism and Referencing: Hopefully the last word

http://bcb705.blogspot.com/2006/05/plagiarism-and-referencing-hopefully.html


Cheers

Rich, Gwen and Nick

Team: National Information Society Learnerships - Ecological Informatics
Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology
University of the Western Cape
Private Bag X17
Bellville 7535

Phone 27 + 21 + 959 3940
Fax 27 + 21 + 959 1237