Learn And Play

There may be no more serious issue for a student than facing an academic conduct hearing because of plagiarism. This certainly is not part of the expected college experience for students or parents. Faculty, however, often struggle with creating approaches that focus on why and how academic writing and the associated documenting guidelines enhance a student’s ability to communicate their thoughts and ideas.

Rather than focusing first on the negative impacts of not implementing citation guidelines, Moore (2019) confirms students with limited experiences in research writing at the college level will often make mistakes in documentation and attribution. She suggests four strategies to detect writing issues, avoid academic conduct issues, and help improve the student’s ability to avoid recurring mistakes by using “plagiarize-proof” assignments that: 1) evaluate your expectations for student research literacy, 2) include unique or individualized elements into assignments, 3) require an annotated bibliography before the assignment due

If your goal is to help students learn about one another and connect with students they may not usually talk to, then the New Friends Bingo icebreaker may be a good choice for you!

New Friends Bingo allows students to interact with one another while playing a modified version of Bingo. Using a Bingo table, details about potential student characteristics are recorded in each square. You might choose to record simple information about students like “has brown hair” or “owns a cat”; or you might have some fun and create more unique details that might help make some meaningful connections like “loves comics” or “speaks a language other than English or Spanish .”Students are then asked to roam around the classroom, introduce themselves to each other, and then attempt to find a detail that matches the person they are speaking to. If a student finds a friend with a detail