Digital Story Rubric

I decided to create a digital story about plagiarism (an important issue in any discipline, but especially important in my area of teaching where writing and researching are essential parts of the assessment and learning processes). Students have a general idea of what plagiarism is, but they do not understand all that is encompasses. One idea in particular, that of plagiarizing yourself, was foreign and frustrating to my students. Furthermore, students did not appreciate or understand the consequences of plagiarism and why it is important that they submit their own work. I want my students to understand that I ask them to write and research subjects so that I can assess what they know and how they feel about the material - not what someone else knows or how someone else feels.

I wrote a script using two of my best students (who would never dream of plagiarizing) as characters and myself as the narrator. After I wrote the script the students and I recorded video of each action segment of the story, using a digital camera. For the narrative portions of the story I recorded my voice using garage band. I imported the video clips, voice recordings, and images into iMovie and created my digital story. I used powerpoint to create a title and citation page as well.

I really enjoyed doing this assignment - as did my volunteer students. My colleagues enjoyed my plagiarism story so much (as they had been having plagiarism issues in their class) that they requested copies of the story to show in their class and during teacher inservice training days.

Click to view my Digital Story Rubric