Plagiarism

With the advent of the online technologies and the exponential growth of the World Wide Web comes increased access to information. Unfortunately, this access also can create additional opportunities for cheating and plagiarism. This week, you will post a blog entry concerning your insights on the topic and methods for detecting and preventing cheating and plagiarism in the online learning environment.

To prepare for this assignment, view the video program "Plagiarism and Cheating" and read the article "Plagiarism by Adult Learners Online: A Case Study in Detection and Remediation." In these resources, you will be presented with numerous strategies for detecting and preventing plagiarism in online learning. Although it presents additional challenges and responsibilities for online instructors and trainers, applying specific design, facilitation, and assessment considerations will relieve many of these concerns. Consider the following:

Aside from Turnitin, another software that is useful is called Dustball. This site allows for uploading and copy and pasting information to the site and provides information as to what statements or sentences have been taken word for word and find it the information has been stolen without proper citation. 

Creating questions that require the students to use their own personal experiences and integrate them with the subjects topic as answers can help students provide unique answers.  Create assessments that will encourage students to want to use texts properly in order to retrieve answers to the subject matter at hand. Instead of taking information from the book word for word, I would try to allow them to use statements as references, as long as they have the name of the author and the text name at the end of the paper or answers at hand. I would provide a lot of leeway in regards to the format and not be very rigorous in regards to whether it is in APA or MLA format.

By understanding what different forms of plagiarism are being used by students and providing various ways to avoid them to students as a guide when writing answers or papers. Other types of consideration that should be taken are students experience in working with plagiarism and correct referencing, whether they understand the different formats for citing information depending on the type of paper they are writing and understanding what type of paper you are requesting the students to write. This last part is important because a reflection paper does not necessarily have to include references but even though it can make the paper stronger, reviewing papers over and over again can cause a facilitator to become confused and grade papers incorrectly for a student without remembering what type of paper they are requesting.

Impact of Technology and Media

 Technology and media provide the skeletal structure and backbone for online learning environments. In working with building an online learning environment, I have learned that there are many components that can go together in various setups to make the learning experience interactive and intriguing for the students at hand. Technology advances at a quick rate, so keeping up with the trends that are used in social networking formats can also be used in an educational setting online so that there will be familiarity and a greater sense of comfort for students. Multimedia can reach students with different cultures and learning styles. From audio to video to pdf files to other formats used, multimedia provides options for students to approach the lessons at hand and understand the main idea of the subject through different contexts.

The most important consideration for an instructor should be in implementing their presence. "The teaching presence provides the framework for guiding learning and setting out the goals and expectations for the course learning experiences." Before understanding what technology should be used for the course the instructor should understand that they are the main tool to provide the education to the students. It should come from their own skills, understanding and confidence in being able to instruct the material at hand.  

One technological tool I find most appealing is blackboard and Twitter. Though I am not a hardcore "tweeter" (?) I feel that this tool can make a strong impact in the field of instructional design because of its ability to provide an excess amount of information to an unlimited amount of people. The format of using 140 characters or less can provide the students with a quick summary of the subject matter and hand and through the use of shorter website links such as TinyURL or Bitly, this provides opportunity for sharing information in a quicker format without having to take extra time out for searching or typing long URL's. Blackboard has piqued my interest since going to school through Walden University because of its simple format. Being that I have had prior experience with Moodle, I enjoy Blackboard because of the interface and the different options I have to communicating among peers while keeping all my information in one location without getting lost.

Boettcher, J. V., & Conrad, R. (2010). The Online Teaching Survival Guide: Simple and practical pedagogical tips. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.