CALS holds academic honesty paramount for paralegal education. Students must learn to use citations when incorporating ideas and words from others and write with direct intent. To help students and faculty identify areas of improvement, CALS has partnered with a powerful plagiarism detection tool called Copyleaks. This tool will be available on submitted work through Canvas LMS beginning February 2023.

Copyleaks will provide a similarity score to instructors and, if released, students, which will show how similar the written content is to a variety of sources including the Internet and work previously submitted to Copyleaks. Instructions on how students can access reports can be found in Copyleak’s Help Center. If there are issues identified, instructors can provide a report to the student for review.

The intent of this software is to help students grow in their writing. However, it is also important to ensure students abide by CALS’ Honor Code, which states “All work submitted must be the student’s own work product. Homework and in-class assignments are not group projects unless otherwise stated. Course content, including syllabi, PowerPoint presentations, notes, quizzes, discussion questions, assignments, etc. may not be posted to any websites without administrative approval.” As such, Copyleaks reports may be used to support referrals for Honor Code Violations.

Students who have questions about plagiarism can contact their instructor. Additional resources to avoid plagiarism include: Copyleaks, GCFGlobal, and Owl Purdue.

Center for Advanced Legal Studies [CALS]