APA Formatting/Citation And Plagiarism

Students enter the university with different levels of understanding and skills in incorporating outside sources of content or information into their assignments, along with uncertainty about how to cite and format. NLU uses the current edition of the American Psychological Association manual for citations and formatting. It is important to not automatically associate a lack of understanding of citing sources with plagiarism. In fact, most cases of what we perceive as plagiarism are just that—a lack of understanding or proper previous preparation around citing sources, paraphrasing, and/or attributing the work of others appropriately. 

As you encounter these issues with your students, please follow these important steps to mitigate the issue and provide this valuable information to our students:

1. Provide written feedback on the assignment describing the types of corrections that need to be made and connecting them to appropriate resources. Student APA resources can be found at https://www.nl.edu/library/helpresearchguides/.
2. Reach out to the student to discuss their understanding of proper attribution—and consider giving the student an opportunity to resubmit an improved version in their own words with proper use of APA (according to your late penalties that may apply). Open a case in Retain for “APA Citation Issue” if the work is not revised accordingly. This alert will be used for internal tracking purposes only.
3. If the issue(s) continues or a student outright plagiarizes an assignment, grade the item with a “0” and reach out to the student to explain why this is happening. Offer to Zoom with the student to show them how they can continue to learn the valuable skill of proper attribution and to reinforce the beauty of their original work. Please inform them that future instances may result in a “0” for the course and is a violation of the Academic Dishonesty policy found in the. Student Guidebook At this time, open a case in Retain for “Academic Honesty/Plagiarism Incident." An academic administrator will receive the alert and follow up on the incident with the faculty and students.