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.) Dorcas Obiri-Yeboah stated that “there 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”.

Dr. (Mrs.) Obiri-Yeboah encouraged the students to take the workshop serious in order to help them avoid plagiarizing other people’s work.

Tips to Avoid Plagiarism

Speaking on the topic, “Plagiarism- A How NOT to”, 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, “One has to understand the difference between quoting, summarising and paraphrasing.” 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-“Explain the author’s idea in the context of the paper, compare and contrast the views of other authors, and adding one’s own critique.” He said these tips amongst others would help them to eliminate plagiarism.

UCC’s Plagiarism Policy

Mr. Nketsiah also enlightened the students on UCC’s Plagiarism Policy. He stated that, “the University wants to hold dear its integrity, so you can’t 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”; 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”

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 during the workshop .