Abstract:

In a world dominated by the digital paradigm, the ethical use of information is one of the Information Literacy (IL) skills which is important for the survival of individuals of the 21st century in various contexts, such as the professional. Also in academia, the widespread absence of this skill in students represents a complex problem, resulting in something undesirable: plagiarism.

Many authors have reflected and published on the subject, which has been the focus of our attention in the context of higher education. We are of the opinion that preventing plagiarism, before it happens, should be better than having to fight it, once detected, with punitive measures. However, in addition to the imperative need for training, we argue that this must be precocious and take place before entering higher education.

This research starts from a real problem that the researcher has as a teacher of higher education, and that corresponds to the question: How to avoid plagiarism, as a trainer?

Thus, a review of the literature on the subject is made and an empirical study is presented. It took place in a portuguese secondary school, with 10th graders, describing the way in which a IL training project took place, which involved the referred students, their Philosophy teachers, the School librarian and the researcher, in the role of teacher librarian.

One of the main objectives of this pedagogical experience conceived and implemented by us in the school library was to provide the students with skills that would help them to do, in a correct way, the academic work requested by the teachers.

In order to reach this objective, the methodology we adopted was to provide a theoretical and practical training whose contents were: copyright, plagiarism and norms for the ethical use of information. To complement this information, we organized a conference on the theme "To plagiarize or not to plagiarize ... this is the question" given by a lawyer who addressed in a pedagogical way the issue of plagiarism and associated issues that will be described in this paper.

The technique of collecting data to know the target audience and structure the training session, so as to better match the needs of the students, was a questionnaire given to a sample of students before that session. Another questionnaire was applied in the practical part of the session, in the form of worksheet, a strategy that allowed to evaluate the knowledge learned by the students in the first theoretical part of the session.

The results of the evaluation of the worksheet were quite good, which allows to conclude that teaching to avoid plagiarism has positive practical effects.

In addition, it was concluded that collaborative work involving students, teachers, librarians, information law specialists and school boards in a formal context is critical to sensitize and train students to use information properly and ethically and not to commit plagiarism. This collaborative dynamic is essential to overcome the absence or insufficient formal training on the subject in academic curricula at various levels of education.

We believe that, in order to combat the scourge of plagiarism, there is no single solution but the adoption of several pedagogical strategies that lead to the training and awareness of those who are in a learning situation and that must deal ethically with information in various formats, with different objectives and publics.

Keywords:

Plagiarism, ethics, students, trainers, formal training, collaborative work.