Understanding Plagiarism

This video covered the many ways in which students can plagiarize and go against academic rules. There are two different types of plagiarism which are intentional and unintentional plagiarism. Intentional plagiarism is when the person decides to purposely use another person’s idea or words without correctly citing them.
This includes having another person write a paper and having the person who is plagiarizing take the credit for the piece of writing or even stealing or buying an essay that has already been written by someone else and using it as their own. Intentional plagiarism can be directly using words by pasting or copying from another person’s work or slightly switching words to get the same idea and even using a paper that was written for another class and turning it in for another class.
Unintentional plagiarism is different from intentional plagiarism where the student does not have enough knowledge about how to properly cite from their research and uses sources that are not correctly or cited at all. Students who unintentionally plagiarize do not have the fundamental skills of paraphrasing and citing, and therefore do not typically know they are cheating. Students also may have poor research skills and take notes that uses the same words and ideas and combine them into their writing and cheat unintentionally.

This video was a good source that helped to remind me about the ways I could intentionally or unintentionally plagiarize and what steps I could take to avoid it. I now know that I should verify that my basic writing skills are up to date, that I am using websites and articles that are trustworthy so I can cite my work correctly, and that I know the different writing formats so that I can write properly for my instructors desired format.
Not only did this video help review the basic knowledge I have about plagiarism but I also learned that plagiarism includes using work you have already written for another class for a different one which is something I should have already known. This video was helpful for refreshing and learning different aspects on plagiarism and how to avoid it.