How can you make use of this wealth of information and still guard against plagiarism?

Question

The information age has made it easier to find information and also easier to plagiarize.

Answer 1

I taught a college level communications course last spring, and one thing I realized is that students really do believe that plagiarism is impossible to detect, since the internet is so ... HUGE.
Nothing further from the truth. I didn't have a problem spotting plagiarism from the web. You just have to know what you're looking for. For example, if a student's writing goes from lousy grammar and tons of spelling mistakes in one assignment, to flawless prose in the next, something might be up. I would usually pick a sentence that looked "fishy", type it into google, and sure enough, almost always I would be able to track down the source.
What some people don't get about plagiarism is that it's not just about the words; it's about the ideas. In citing, we give credit to the author for his/her ideas, not just the words. This is why some people neglect to cite when they paraphrase, since they believe that if you change the words, you're fine. Guess again, you'r not fine; you still have to cite.
I think that by simply acknowledging that you use sources, and that the thoughts in your paper are not your original ideas, you are avoiding plagiarism. As for how easy it is to plagiarize, well, that's debatable. Of course, if you have 150 students, some stuff might fall through the cracks, but it's still take seriously. Aside from that, there are services available like turnitin.com, which is used at many universities to spot plagiarism, especially from paper mills. turnitin.com might not be perfect, but it's a tool, and we use it.

Answer 2

Cite your sources! As long as you attribute anything that was not your own idea to the orignal person who had the idea, you should be pretty safe. One of my professors told us that if we got any more than three words in a row from a source we needed to cite it as such. However she noted that 3 words like "What in the," "Here is the," or any other words that are commonly strung together don't necessarily need cited.

Answer 3

Cite your sources correctly. Also, if you paraphrase anything, you need to cite where you got the original idea from.
If you're careful, you'll be fine!
:)

Answer 4

Read the stuff and put it in your own words.