5. Plagiarism

This concept is so probably the one thing people in third level education hate the most, referencing and all that jazz.  For use out there that don't know what plagiarism is it is defined as "the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work, as by not crediting the author" (dictionary.com).  Right there what I just done is called referencing.  If I did not reference that quote it would be classed as plagiarism. 


When I first came to ITB we were giving welcomes packs and handouts about the college.  One handout we were given was about plagiarism, they stressed this concept as a really big offence.  I was a little bit taken aback about this, I done a PLC last year and I knew the whole referencing thing and was okay with it, I didn't realise it was such a big thing in college though.


To make sure people don't plagiarise, your assignments go through an online thing called Turn it in.  This had me real nervous! I was like 'what if I don't reference it properly and they think I plagiarised it?', so it is a bit nerve wrecking but if you make a mistake you make a mistake.


So here is a link to give you a run down on plagiarism and how to avoid doing it by accident.  Hopefully use can understand it, took me a while to do so, but come on it's not rocket science people :)