Complete the activity below to help you understand the difference between acceptable use of research materials and plagiarism.
Begin by reading the source material on the left below. Then, read each of the sample uses of that material and decide whether each one is
A) Acceptable use: correctly used and cited, or
B) Plagiarism: missing some element to correctly document the source material.
If you need a little help during the quiz you may use the "Help" button at the top of the screen to refresh your memory about plagiarism and acceptable use.
Source Material (Read this first)
taken from page 327 of Farah, Mounir A., and Andrea Berens Karls. World History: The Human Experience. New York: Glencoe, 1999.
The Plague
The Black Death -- known today as the bubonic plague -- was the worst medieval epidemic. It began in China and spread across Asia. Trading ships carried the disease west to the Mediterranean and to Europe. During the worst phase of the plague -- between AD 1348 and AD 1350 -- nearly 25 million Europeans died. Not until the early 1900s were rats carrying bacteria-infected fleas identified as the carriers of the plague.
The plague brought terror to many medieval Europeans, who saw it as God's punishment. As deaths increased, production declined, and prices and wages rose. To cut costs, many landowners switched from farming to sheep raising (which required less labor) and drove villagers off the land. Merchants in town laid off workers and demanded laws to limit wages. These set backs, as well as the fear of plague, sparked peasant and worker uprisings. It would take at least a century for western Europe to recover.
Today, plague occasionally occurs in developing areas of Asia, Africa, and South America. Knowledge of disease prevention and the development of vaccines, however, have largely isolated plague outbreaks and reduced their devastating impact on societies.