What would be a good response to a student that committed plagiarism on an assignment?

Answer 1

Depending on the grade, either make them totally re-do the assignment, or deny the points for the copied part. Younger students are less likely to understand that what they did was wrong, so you should give them a chance to do the work over for a grade. Older students need to see that plagiarism is wrong and will not earn them any points - I always told mine that I gave the points to the person who wrote that material, but not to the one who copied it! You should be careful to make a difference between the behavior and the student - plagiarism is wrong, but the student isn't a bad person for trying it. It was a mistake, and they should be made to see that they can correct it and learn how to summarize and write things into their own words.

Answer 2

Plagiarism should not be tolerated by educators or the general public. However a statement as simple as the one I just made could be claimed to have been plagiarised even though I had no intent to write something that has been written before.

I think the definition should be changed to assume that the author intended to steal the idea, not the words. But then you run into the problem of how exact do the words have to be to prove plagiarism?

I say maybe we have to have an exact amount of words copied exactly in a specific language to constitute plagiarism. Maybe 20?

Does anyone want to add to this? I know this is not an easy subject, but especially on a site like this, it should be addressed.