Plagiarism is a very important concept in academic life. It causes stress for many and can have serious consequences.
But, this mini-module will help you to understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it.
Some types of plagiarism are more serious than others. At one end of the scale there is deliberate cheating; at the other, there are accidental mistakes.
Whether big or small, there are basically two types of plagiarism:
Serious cases of copying, for example, would be buying an essay, or copying an essay,
A bad case of not giving the source would be if you use someone else's work (e.g. ideas, research, texts) and pretend it is your own - that's plagiarism because you deliberately didn't give the source. A less serious case would be if you write an essay and you include a short summary of an article but you forget to give the reference.
