As access to documents on the World Wide Web has grown, the issue of plagiarism and the enforcement of the consequences for academic dishonesty have become important concerns for writing teachers and teachers who use writing in their courses.
Plagiarism means "to use and pass off (the ideas or writings of another) as one's own; to appropriate for use as one's own passages or ideas from (another); or to put forth as original to oneself the ideas or words of another" Dictionary.com.
Beyond that, "plagiarism, a form of intellectual dishonesty, involves unintentionally using someone else's work without properly acknowledging where the ideas came from (the most common form of plagiarism) or intentionally copying someone else's work and passing it off as your own (the most serious form of plagiarism) (Palmquist, 2003, The Bedford Researcher, pp. 173-174)".
This guide can help you deal with the concept of plagiarism before it becomes an issue in your classroom as well as deal with enforcing its consequences if the situation should occur.