Creating Writing Assignments that Encourage Fair Use and Citation Ethics
The Second-Level Writing Handbook // Creating and Implementing Effective Writing Assignments // Responding to Student Writing // In-Class Writing Activities // Peer Response // Preventing Plagiarism // OSU Resources.
Thinking About Writing Pedagogy:
- Reflect on your own expectations, those of your discipline, and how different assignments require different expectations.
- Think about the role of writing in your course and in the learning process.
- Stay in touch with your students by scheduling individual conferences to discuss their research and writing process as well as their topic.
- Emphasize the writing process by offering a variety of progressive step assignments such as outlines, annotated bibliographies, research proposals, thesis statements, and rough drafts.
- Give students the opportunity to explore their own writing processes and to adopt a variety of progressive step procedures that fit their needs.
- Encourage a sense of ownership and responsibility by providing opportunities for students to negotiate their writing processes and/or create their own evaluation criteria.
- Model fair and ethical writing by providing sample essays for review and revision.
- Model the collaborative nature of writing and scholarship by requiring drafts that are reviewed by you and their peers.
Preparing Students:
- Spend time talking about the value of using secondary sources, the history of intellectual property, and the importance of creating their own voices as writers.
- Ask students to think about writing as a recursive process that includes the following 3 activities
- pre-writing (brainstorming, outlining, researching)
- writing (drafting and revising)
- post-writing (editing and proofreading)
- Ask them to discuss their own positive, negative, and in-between writing experiences.
- As a class, share writing process strategies from brainstorming to research to drafting.
- Discuss the differences between quoting, paraphrasing, and summaries of others' work.
- Make sure the students are aware of the University plagiarism policy.
Creating Writing Assignments:
- Give specific instructions and evaluation criteria and communicate the different citation expectations based on the assignment criteria.
- Change course assignments regularly.
- Vary assignment audience and purpose.
- Limit choices to a list of topics that you provide.
- Use unique assignment formats such as newspaper articles, PowerPoint presentations and/or debate issue briefs.
- Create assignments that capture students' attention and interests.
- Require up-to-date resources.
- Use local issues as topics.
- Require documentation of their research process through research journaling and/or research process mapping.
- Require an oral presentation of the finished assignment.
- Use shorter informal writing assignments early in the term as an opportunity to become familiar with each student's writing style and voice.
- Create cumulative assignments that build on each other. For example, a shorter problem statement essay can be used to build toward a longer argumentative essay that advocates a particular policy or solution to the problem.
- Ask students to reflect personally on the topic or on their research/writing process.
Responding to and Evaluating Student Writing:
- Provide evaluation criteria for each assignment.
- Make sure students know that you read their papers by offering constructive and thorough feedback.
- Give students the opportunity to revise their work and turn in for another grade evaluation.
- Incorporate peer evaluation and review to communicate the importance of sharing their writing.
- Discuss how you will handle academic dishonesty.
Giving Advice to Student Writers:
- Know the University's rules and definitions of fair use and plagiarism.
- Request that your teachers discuss citing secondary sources, citation ethics, and what their expectations are.
- Select a documentation style that fits the disciplinary standards and become familiar with the style.
- Copy all bibliographic information when doing research.
- Separate your ideas from others by using quotation marks, brackets, or underlining when you are taking notes.
- Try writing the 1st draft or part of the draft using no notes.
- Ask questions and seek advice.
- Seek other readers; ask your classmates, a writing tutor or an advisor to read and respond to your work.
- Think about writing as a recursive process that includes the following 3 activities
- pre-writing (brainstorming, outlining, researching)
- writing (drafting and revising)
- post-writing (editing and proofreading)
