The School of Nursing and Midwifery has organised a workshop on plagiarism for its postgraduate students.
Purpose
The workshop was to help the students understand the concept and also endeavor to avoid plagiarism in their writings. This has become necessary because the University was putting in place mechanisms to detect plagiarized work by students.
Opening Remarks
Giving the opening remark, the Dean of the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Dr. (Mrs.)听Dorcas Obiri-Yeboah stated that 鈥渢here is a lot of confusion amongst students and some faculties as to what constitute plagiarism. So sometimes, you will find out that a student will not really think that what he/she did was plagiarism and yet, in reality, it was completely plagiarism鈥�.
Dr. (Mrs.) Obiri-Yeboah encouraged the students to take the workshop serious in order to help them avoid plagiarizing other people鈥檚 work.
Tips to Avoid Plagiarism
Speaking on the topic, 鈥淧lagiarism- A How NOT to鈥�, a Principal Research Officer at the Directorate of Research Innovation and Consultancy (DRIC), Mr. Isaac Nketsiah, led the students through what constituted plagiarism, the types of plagiarism and how to avoid it.
Taking the students through some of the tips to help them avoid plagiarism, Mr. Nketsiah noted that, 鈥淥ne has to understand the difference between quoting, summarising and paraphrasing.鈥� He advised them to refrain from copying more than three or more words in a row from a source without using quotation marks. He further told them to map out their arguments and then quote sources to support to them-鈥淓xplain the author鈥檚 idea in the context of the paper, compare and contrast the views of other authors, and adding one鈥檚 own critique.鈥� He said these tips amongst others would help them to eliminate plagiarism.
UCC鈥檚 Plagiarism Policy
Mr. Nketsiah also enlightened the students on UCC鈥檚 Plagiarism Policy. He stated that, 鈥渢he University wants to hold dear its integrity, so you can鈥檛 just produce a plagiarized work in the University. If you plagiarize from 20 to 49%, you will be required to revise your paper and remove all plagiarized portions in your work鈥�; he said students whose work contained 50% to 59% plagiarism would be asked to change their topic and those with 70% or more, would be dismissed and banned from pursuing any programme in the University for five years鈥�
He called on students to seek assistance from their supervisors in order to produce works that were devoid of plagiarised information.
The students were also taken through some practical sessions听during the workshop .
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