Effective Writing Center (EWC) @ UMUC
http://www.umuc.edu/writingcenter/

The Effective Writing Center (EWC) offers all UMUC School of Undergraduate Studies students and faculty a variety of online services and resources, including tutoring for student papers available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Students coming to the EWC can submit their papers for any assignment to our database for review and feedback from an experienced and trained writing advisor, or they can send writing-related questions to the EWC e-mail inbox. The EWC mission is to help students improve their writing by addressing higher-order, global issues in our feedback on student papers.

Students can also participate in self-study activities, in which they learn about aspects of research and writing, and can practice what they learn. In addition, the EWC provides resources and links to a wealth of information on such topics as prewriting, writing, and revising; grammar, punctuation, and mechanics; research planning and implementation; academic integrity and documentation; English as a Second Language; and scientific and technological writing. Drawing on the knowledge and resources of EWC staff and advisors, the EWC provides an ever-expanding collection of writing-related guides, software, software reviews, curriculum guides, writers' references, and information on specific research- and writing-related topics for use by students and faculty.

Faculty can use the EWC to locate instructional resources, including rubrics for assessing student writing; strategies and methods for helping students avoid plagiarizing; and models and tips for designing effective writing assignments in diverse disciplines across the curriculum. The EWC also provides information on faculty development workshops and individual consultations offered by the Effective Writing Program (EWP).

Information and Library Services (ILS) @ UMUC
http://www.umuc.edu/library/

Information and Library Services (ILS) provides UMUC students and faculty with all the resources of a traditional library and more. ILS is committed to providing quality resources, services, and instruction independent of time and place. From the library Web page, students and faculty can access: more than 125 databases containing full-text journal articles, reference works, and other materials, print resources in the libraries of the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions, e-journals, and a growing collection of e-books. To help students and faculty learn to use these resources effectively and efficiently, ILS offers 24-hour e-mail, chat, and phone reference assistance.

To help students become proficient researchers and master the skills they need for coursework and lifelong learning, UMUC offers two required information literacy courses, LIBS 150 for undergraduates and UCSP 610 for graduate students. Both courses have instruction and exercises on the proper use of documentation to avoid plagiarism. Beyond these basic courses ILS librarians provide customized library instruction, both face-to-face and online, to promote advanced information literacy skills. ILS also provides a free Web Tycho course, the Peck Virtual Library Classroom, for which all students and faculty can register, with links to research and citation exercises and tutorials. From the ILS Web page students can access links to many different instructional resources, including an audiovisual virtual tour of the ILS Web page, subject guides to help them select appropriate research resources, a guide to evaluating resources, and tutorials on the research process, business and legal research, and APA and MLA citation style.

The Faculty section of the ILS Web page provides UMUC faculty with a wealth of resources for their teaching. By clicking on Resources for Faculty, faculty will access a convenient table with summaries of the library's most popular services for teaching and live links to these services. Among these services faculty will find guides to rules for copyright in the classroom and for helping their students avoid plagiarism. There is also a link to information literacy standards and information on designing lessons to promote information literacy and prevent plagiarism. Faculty can access information on electronic reserved readings and customized library instruction with forms to request these services. Finally, there is instruction on using and accessing Turnitin.com, UMUC's plagiarism detection service. ILS offers LIBS 150 for undergraduate faculty and UCSP 610 for graduate faculty, a two-week module in CTLA 210, the required online faculty training course, and several CTLA development workshops, including one on APA and MLA citation style. In these courses faculty learn about ILS resources and services, copyright, and preventing and detecting plagiarism.

Center for Intellectual Property (CIP) @ UMUC
http://www.umuc.edu/cip/

Sponsored by the University of Maryland University College, the Center for Intellectual Property provides education, resources, and research on copyright and academic integrity to support the higher education community. First and foremost, it is dedicated to providing the UMUC community with tools to ensure a superior learning environment for its diversity of students and delivery methods.

Notable among the CIP's resources on academic integrity is the Virtual Academic Integrity Laboratory (VAIL) portal. The CIP has developed this resource for the higher education community as an online laboratory that facilitates learning, research, discussion, and innovation regarding academic integrity issues that arise in the 21st century classroom. VAIL consists of several projects that provide comprehensive resources and tools for encouraging and promoting academic integrity at colleges and universities. These tools and resources include the assessment of plagiarism detection tools, instruction on preventing and detecting plagiarism, and documentation on the best policies and practices that promote academic integrity. Faculty, administrators, and students are encouraged to use VAIL resources and share their experiences and ideas with one another. Simply put, VAIL seeks to bridge the gap between the concept of academic integrity and its application and enforcement in the digital age.

VAIL has been funded by the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.