How to Recognize Plagiarism:
Tutorials and Tests

Resources

To help you pass a Certification Test

Links to external websites for further help

  • Quiz: What Is Plagiarism at Indiana University? 10 questions with immediate feedback which progressively identify salient criteria for identifying plagiarism
  • YouTube Video (18 min.): Professor Anthony Pym provides additional examples and tips for how to pass one of the difficult Certification Tests. Dr. Pym refers to inverted commas, which are the same as quotation marks to which we refer in our tutorials. The examples he provides were drawn from our legacy tutorial (2002-2014).
  • Booth, W. C., Colomb, G. G., Williams, J. M., Bizup, J., & FitzGerald, W. T. (2016). The craft of research (4th. Ed.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
  • Online Writing Lab: Purdue University (OWL)
  • Plagiarism.org: understanding plagiarism, citing sources, ...
  • Writing Tutorial Services: tutoring and writing guides at Indiana University Bloomington
  • APA Style: American Psychological Association

Can I use AI to get help in passing a Certification Test?

Yes, but ...

You should be wary because current AI chatbots themselves are prone to plagiarize because of how they were created. Normally, they are trained on massive amounts of text written by humans. When chatbots generate text in conversations with humans, they are combining predictable sequences of words on which they were trained (Wolfram, 2023; Marcus, 2024; Marcus & Davis, 2020; Frick, 2024). If the text generated by a chatbot does not acknowledge its sources by using quotation marks when needed, providing proper and appropriately placed citations, and by listing accurate bibliographic references, then this is plagiarism.

Can I use AI chabots for advice on how to pass an IU Certification Test?

If you ask Google Gemini, "How can I pass the Indiana University plagiarism test?", the response from Gemini can be helpful because it paraphrases content from this website on how to recognize plagiarism. However, chatbots such as Gemini and ChatGPT nonetheless will sometimes make mistakes. These chatbot errors are referred to as 'hallucinations' or 'confabulations' by AI experts (Marcus, 2024). These mistakes could mislead and confuse you if you do not recognize those chatbot errors.

Better yet, you can try the online instruction with practice tests and feedback available on this website. The instruction and example scenarios provided on this website were developed and thoroughly checked for accuracy by human beings who do understand the IU criteria and how to apply them correctly.

Finally, in multiple research studies during the last 7 years, we have consistently found that students are 3 to 5 times more likely to pass a Certification Test when they have tried the instruction and practice with feedback or have studied patterns of plagiarism associated with their mistakes on a test, or both--when compared to students who used none of these learning resources. These results are based on observations of learning journeys of more than a million adult students worldwide who have used our website (Frick et al., 2022).

References

Frick, T. W. (2024). Are We Dupes? Limitations of AI Systems: What Should Educators Do with Them? TechTrends, 68(1), 14-26.

Frick, T. W., Myers, R. D., Dagli, C. & Barrett, A. F. (2022). Innovative learning analytics for evaluating instruction: A big data roadmap for effective online learning. Routledge Focus.

Marcus, G. (2024). Taming Silicon Valley: How we can ensure that AI works for us (Kindle). The MIT Press.

Marcus, G., & Davis, E. (2020). Rebooting AI: Building artificial intelligence we can trust (Kindle). Pantheon Books.

Wolfram, S. (2023, Feb. 14). What is ChatGPT doing ... and why does it work? https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/