There are many good ways to prevent plagiarism

1. Teach your students how to paraphrase and how to quote and cite sources.

2. Ask your students to submit copies of research notes.

3. Require oral report in addition to paper.

4. Check the working bibliography early in the assignment.

It would be much better if you ask your students to create accounts at this website www.turnitin.com. Once they have accounts, ask them to submit their work to this website where it can carefully checked for plagiarism. Turnitin is one of the most widely distributed educational applications in the world, Turnitin is used by more than 10,000 institutions in 135 countries to manage the submission, tracking and evaluation of student papers online. It also offers a plagiarism detection service. You only ask your students to attach the similarity index report, which is given by turnitin, with their original work. In this case, you will force them to learn how to paraphrase and cite sources.

I believe most universities have a reporting system so the job is not on you but the specifically assigned member for this job. I have heard of horror stories in the past so the moment you find a student like that--or one who cheats on the test--you have to call that office; they come and take the student and from that point on you are under surveillance for security because some students go crazy. I had 2 students I had to call these special services for in my experience. 

There are many good ways to prevent plagiarism

1. Teach your students how to paraphrase and how to quote and cite sources.

2. Ask your students to submit copies of research notes.

3. Require oral report in addition to paper.

4. Check the working bibliography early in the assignment.

It would be much better if you ask your students to create accounts at this website www.turnitin.com. Once they have accounts, ask them to submit their work to this website where it can carefully checked for plagiarism. Turnitin is one of the most widely distributed educational applications in the world, Turnitin is used by more than 10,000 institutions in 135 countries to manage the submission, tracking and evaluation of student papers online. It also offers a plagiarism detection service. You only ask your students to attach the similarity index report, which is given by turnitin, with their original work. In this case, you will force them to learn how to paraphrase and cite sources.

Give them writing assignments that are not conducive to plagiarizing.  :-)

Plagiarism is not always a meaning of 'copy+paste'.  Sometimes, people struggle for catchy sentences, or for a sentence that seems more technical showing expertise.  A simple sentence is, of course, enough to convey the message, but not always catchy.  Best part to deal is to ask students to do assignments in workplace itself.

I believe all team mates bear equal responsibility as we are held personally responsible for any plagiarism. To avoid plagiarism, you may let students understand what plagiarism is.

The teacher should restate the subject to them a couple of times, and warn them about the consequences of any plagiarism. I used to ask students to give me the data itself and the statistical analysis of data when they deliver the final project.

I`m agree with Dr. Mohammad Hamad Al-khresheh, but my current problem is that most of my students don´t understand how to paraphrase. It's incredible but it`s true...

In my case, I make them sign a letter in in which they state that they had properly cited the ideas and opinions of other authors and, also, they understand that the responsibility for the research is common as well as the grade they will obtain. Is not a perfect method, of course, but It has helped me to reduce plagiarism in my course.

I believe that teachers should be consistent in their evaluating criteria. There is no objective reason to fail a team because of a failure in logic or inappropriate application of a model or algebraic errors and, at the same time, not fail it for plagiarism. The team should understand that, exactly as they should make sure that there are no errors in their group paper, they should make sure that there is no plagiarism there. In this sense, plagiarism is the same mistake as other mistakes, but it simply leads to more serious consequences (automatic failure). This is the responsibility of the team to make sure their deliverable is free of mistakes, and they should decide themselves how exactly they will ensure that.

Students should obviously understand why exactly plagiarism is wrong. As correctly noted in one of the comments, students far too frequently look for catchy phrases. The logical question then is, why don't they format them as quotes? It's okay to take a catchy sentence from somewhere, but it should be formatted properly.

I believe that students should be taught and trained how to avoid plagiarism. Ideally, that should be the part of their Research Methods course. That's where they will learn not only to apply different data gathering and analysis methods, but also ways to study literature, write literature reviews, formulate their own ideas and present findings. If this course is done properly, students won't say that they don't know how to paraphrase.

Returning to group deliverables, the teacher might give students access to free software that checks for plagiarism. If students are recommended to check their work for plagiarism using that software prior to submitting it, they will have no excuse if the teacher finds plagiarism later. They might use it, or they might not use it, but at least they will know that this software exists and does its job. This would also increase their level of responsibility.

When completing my masters I would make sure that people understood that all the references had to be included and we made it a habit to read everything that group members submitted - and held them to the quality we expected because our school had a fairly strict plagiarism policy as well.  One wiley old prof actually had us note who had done which sections of the work in a group assignment so that he could the evaluate us separately and not as a group. 

Group work is tricky - by the second year I was fortunate enough to realize who were the "workers" and who were the "coat-tail riders" and tried to avoid the latter.  As a course facilitator for a local college, I can usually tell when people are using "cut and paste" without proper referencing and try to address it with the student.

Unless you clearly and directly put the onus on the team to ensure adequate referencing in a group assignment or ask them to delineate the contributions, then you may have a fight on your hands to sanction all the team members - and in fairness, it should be the culprit and not well-meaning group members.....  tough question with no equitable answer for the innocent by-standers caught up in it.

"What methods to you use to prevent team plagiarism? "

"How do you discipline team mates who did not actively plagiarize but rather trusted the plagiarizer? "

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I use TURNITIN software to submit the students' assignments, and check for any plagiarised work.

 With group/team work, we ask students to write their names against their contribution in the report, and make it clear which section belongs to which student. Also, we ask them to peer assess each other for their contribution in the team work.

Finally, we ask them to submit their work in TURNITIN and check for any plagiarised work, before they submit the final report to the tutors.

What I do is to use Blackboard--a widely used online teaching tool for checking students' plagiarism. The students are instructed to submit their work through SafeAssign, it will give me a matching rate and  highlight the  resources of those suspicious contents.

I also create a discussion board forum for students to discuss the topic before they submit the written report. Typically,  based what they posted on the forum and what they comment on others, I can get a general picture of how each student contributes to the research project. Moreover, I will ask them to present their work and answer my questions in class. 

Dear All,

I hope general rules on the honest use of resources and references have been published and presented at each university. The second step is to control assignments and diploma works. I teach entomology and reading the submitted text I can easily recognise the plagiarism even according to the style. In case of copied internet resources one can quickly find the original mainly in English paragraphs. The third step is the sanctions against plagiarism. I know some higher education institutes where – unfortunately - a certain level of plagiarism is accepted. As Francine put it – normally – no tolerance to plagiarism have to be allowed. Control of plagiarism may be very difficult at institutions where students prepare a lot of assignments.

As to Inigos comment on responsibility of students to their work, in Hungary, there is a page in the diploma work with an official declaration that the submitted work was prepared honestly by the student who sign it.

By the way, this is a repeated thread on how to prevent plagiarism among students.

Dear Andras, the question was on how to prevent cheating among teams and  how to deal with the rest of the team, honest team mates who are penalized by one bad student who did cheat.

Dear Francine,

Thanks for your answer. This is a too complicated situation. Everybody should be responsible for his/her own work. During control of assignments the teacher recognises or should recognise the plagiarised part and sanction should be applied to the plagiarizer. The honest contribution can be assessed. I remark the methodology of control and the way of sanction are not influenced either in this situation, the identification of the plagiarizer needs some extra concentration.

I do agree with all comments and recommendations above. In my country, lots and lots of students copy and paste for most academic assignments. To me, one way to prevent plagiarism is to find out why they commit plagiarism. A lot of students do not know how to avoid it. Yes, they know the rules, but to avoid it needs training. The teacher should work closely with the team and help them overcome this problem. Do not expect that they can do it or it is their job.

Why plagiarism occurs?

1. Poor appreciation of ones own ability.

2. Availability of  material in the internet

3. Peer demonstration effect

4. Fear of missing the grades

5. Time constraint

6. Not understanding the value of self thinking, questioning and solving of the problem.

To identify plagiarism

1. Use the soft wares that are available

2. Conduct follow up viva or ask them to present before other students with serious questioning sessions

3. Watch for the difference in the language used in different paragraphs

4. Very authoritative analysis expressed is a red signal

5. Large volumes of data is something to be probed

Some Solution to the problem

Probably some solution can be found in the following Carrot and Stick approach. 

1. In the beginning of the semester itself, make the students understand the value of giving shape to ones talent in words and deeds

2. Tell them how plagiarized  assignments are penalized heavily or asked to repeat

3. Encourage the students to represent their ideas in their own words rather than borrowed ones. 

4. Give grades liberally for the assignments written with originality

5. Heavily plagiarized assignment writers be called separately and advised about

the futility of the whole exercise and how it would affect them in real life 

6. Do not hesitate to give lower grades for plagiarized assignment

7. In case of mass plagiarism, ask them to repeat and repeat until they fall in line

8. Give shorter assignments and encourage them to come out with their own solutions in a concise and clear manner

9. Ask them to specify the sources

10. CHANGE THE MENTALITY!

First , have a plagiarism policy a priori. Specify in course handout itself the repercussions of plagiarism (no tolerance).

It is a team project.. so rewards and reprimand go together, that is what real teams do. Social costs would be high for the individual plagiarizing any content that leads to the entire team suffering.

However,  one may penalize based on the extent of plagiarism. so if a single individual plagiarized some content of a team project / assignment , the penalty should be in proportion to the amount / severity of the plagiarism, applicable to all.

This is a very important question and common. especially with presence of technology.We need to teach the student the honesty of research and risk of plagiarism. Teaching the students praraphrasing as Mohammed Hamed said is so important in addition to accurate referencing and using special softwares that can detect plagiarism easily

The root question is why are you using a team assignment in the first place? Is it to teach them work to work effectively in a team or save yourself marking time? Be honest. If its truly about functioning as a team, the students must receive proper orientation and training on how to effectively work on an academic team. If they have already received this O & T then it is a TEAM assignment so each of the members must receive some sort of penalty even if they aren't responsible for the plagiarized section. Lack of a penalty for all members negates the emphasis of 'team' and it really is only a individual assignment submitted by a group of students. A good reference is "Turning Student Groups into Effective Teams" by Oakley, Felder, Brent, and Elhajj found at http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Papers/Oakley-paper(JSCL).pdf