These are a few tips to minimize plagiarism that have been shared in earlier ePortfolio development programs that have been run at the College.

• Create assignments that are not easily plagiarized:
• Scaffold projects throughout the term whereby students regularly submit pieces of the project to faculty, receive faculty feedback and then incorporate those changes into the next step of the assignment;

• Have students produce reflective writing or writing to learn activities – students share their thinking about what they’re doing and have done to move them forward and realize what they’ve learned.  This fosters meta-cognitive skills and writing skills;

• Consider current events as a basis for assignments.  Have students incorporate sources, topics, and ideas from current events.   This will minimize students ability to plagiarize work from prior terms.

• Use the privacy settings to limit access to broader audiences:
• For work products to be shared on the ePortfolio as part of a course, students can set up their ePortfolios at the beginning of the term as private and grant individual users, such as faculty members, viewing rights to the ePortfolios.  Throughout the term, faculty discuss with students issues of intellectual property, fair use, what is appropriate in a digital environment, and thinking about audience beyond their professors and classmates.  When the professors (and students) are ready, students can modify their settings to allow all John Jay Digication users (requires password-protection to access the sites) to view the portfolios, or make the portfolios fully public.