Is plagiarism a problem at St. Clair College?

Jennifer Carmack, a dental assisting student at St. Clair College, works on an assignment at the college Feb. 21. (Photo by/Taylor Desjardins)

By Taylor Desjardins

Colleges in Ontario are utilizing strategies and programs to help control plagiarism and St. Clair College is one of those schools.

Waseem Habash, the associate vice president of academic operations for St. Clair College, said www.turnitin.com, which is a website that can test the originality of someone’s written work by monitoring the assignment line by line to see if it had been copied from a website or someone else’s work, has worked well to stop students from plagiarizing.

“It has helped tremendously, in terms of reducing the number of students that are plagiarizing,” said Habash.

Habash also said educating students on the issue will help as well. “Just explaining to students what plagiarism is,” said Habash.

Jennifer Carmack, a dental assisting student at St. Clair College, feels plagiarism is a pointless way to complete your work.

“I feel that is it unnecessary for people to plagiarize. It shows a lack of understanding of the material if they are not able to put it into their own words,” said Carmack.

Carmack said her professors take plagiarism seriously and remind them frequently.

“They threaten us a lot, they claim to take it seriously and have programs to monitor the use of plagiarism,” said Carmack.

Habash said around 12 students were caught plagiarizing this year and it is because of www.turnitin.com they were able to catch it.

“It is 100 per cent affective,” said Habash. “It can come back line by line with what could have been plagiarized.”

Patricia France, senior vice president of college operations for St. Clair College, said there is a video they show students to keep them aware of plagiarism.

“We have an academic integrity video that we show the students at the beginning of semester,” said France.

France also said St. Clair College has recently created a “depository” that will now store academic and nonacademic misconduct incidents.

“This depository will now hopefully allow us to not only track the specific number of incidents, type of incidents and also track repeat offenders, if any,” said France.

According to St. Clair College’s website, all members of the college community have a stake in ensuring teaching and learning takes place in an environment based on mutual trust and respect. Academic misconduct or cheating is a violation which can result in serious consequences whether it is done intentionally or unintentionally.