Plagiarism: An Opportunity for Empathetic Teaching

As instructors of introductory composition and general education courses, we are well-acquainted with the threat of plagiarism. In graduate school, our teaching practicums devoted hours to the student “temptation for plagiarism,” and every semester, instructors receive the same emails reminding us of our institution’s plagiarism policies. Despite this constant influx of information, we are consistently surprised by the number of unintentional plagiarism incidents that occur in our classrooms: