Online Literacy Quiz

There were a lot of plagiarism cases last quarter (one in my class in fact), so the HumCore directors asked us to give you guys this exercise.

In a nutshell:

1) ask me if you feel that you have wandered into a gray area

2) It's better to cite things
-especially if they provide specific information or ideas that you use
-especially if they make original interpretive claims

3) Some sources are better than others
-if they're more recent
-if they're more reputable
-if they're more pertinent to what you're arguing/writing

All the questions are kind of tricky on purpose to make you think through the situations. It would probably be hard to get each one right on the first try, but do go through the answer key when you finish.

The one that I feel I should clarify is #12. They're not saying that properly citing a student paper from the internet constitutes plagiarism. How could proper citation be plagiarism? What they're saying is, it would be better for you to consult other resources, because this is a resource that's particularly hard for freshmen to use properly.