PlagiarismWhose fault is it?

Phil Davies

FAT

Plagiarism in Education

• Plagiarism in education is not a student problem, it is one that is created by academia.

• Whose fault is it?

• Often the institution and staff within that institution

Exercise Time limit of five minutes

• Write three – four sentences in order to answer the following question.

• What is Φ in the context of art, physiology and architecture?

Handout

• Use the information from within the handout to write three – four sentences in order to answer the following question

• What is Φ in the context of art, physiology and architecture?

Assessment

• Place your name on the top of your answer paper.

• Pass it to someone else in the room.• Mark the answer out of 10 and provide a

sentence to support your mark.• Now mark out of 10 with regard to referencing• Pass back to owner.• Read out your answer, marks given and

comment • How many passed?• How many should be sent to the infringements

committee for plagiarism?

Placing the lecturer in a student’s position

• Time constraints

• Pressure

• Dyslexia and associated specific needs .. Extra time

• On a scale of 1-5 (1 is lowest), what penalty (if submitted as a student coursework) should be given for having plagiarised the previous example?

Need to develop an acceptable university structure to deal with

plagiarism• Inclusion of academics & students• Problem of SCALE of offence

• Database of offences• Database of student history with respect to past plagiarism activity

(university wide)

• Finding out WHY they plagiarised and what WE could have done to have supported them and prevented the NEED to plagiarise

• Staff using personal judgement .. ill advised

Is electronic detection of plagiarism a reality?

• Time consuming for lecturers to source information

• Use Google etc., but shouldn’t we be spending our (lecturer) time producing a qualitative mark that maps to the essay content, arguments, examples, quality, etc.

• Used JISC Plagiarism Detection Service for a few years

Plagiarism 1

In the past, to plagiarise another person’s work was a time-consuming and risky process. It involved re-writing text, which had quite possibly been read already by other researchers in the field or your supervisor, by hand. Today, with the number of electronic journals published in the UK alone predicted to quadruple to 193,000 by 2005, plus the increase in printed materials and the proliferation of web-based resources, the ability to copy the work of others undetected has become far easier to achieve. Even the UK Government has fallen prey to the web’s easy access to information over the infamous Iraq dossier ("Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction"). Many detractors claim that the ´45 minute deployment´ claim contained in the dossier came from an outdated student thesis, and that segments of the dossier were plagiarised.

Taken from >http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/faculties/art/information_studies/Imri/Jiscpas/site/adv_academicprac.asp

When Tuesday 19th October, 2004

Plagiarism 2

• Who actually wrote this?

• Academic Plagiarismby Rebecca Marsh, Head of Editorial, and Jenny Pickles, New Business Development Manager, at Emerald Group Publishing Limited

• i.e. just linking it to the web site you found it is not enough

Plagiarism 3

• Did Rebecca Marsh & Jenny Pickles know these facts?• Cite work at point of information usage

• Academic Plagiarismby Rebecca Marsh, Head of Editorial, and Jenny Pickles, New Business Development Manager, at Emerald Group Publishing Limited

In the past, to plagiarise another person’s work was a time-consuming and risky process. It involved re-writing text, which had quite possibly been read already by other researchers in the field or your supervisor, by hand. Today, with the number of electronic journals published in the UK alone predicted to quadruple to 193,000 by 2005 [1], plus the increase in printed materials and the proliferation of web-based resources, the ability to copy the work of others undetected has become far easier to achieve. Even the UK Government has fallen prey to the web’s easy access to information over the infamous Iraq dossier ("Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction"). Many detractors claim that the ´45 minute deployment´ claim contained in the dossier came from an outdated student thesis, and that segments of the dossier were plagiarised[2].

[1] Finlayson, C. (2003), “News from member libraries: The British Library”, SCONUL, Newsletter 30, Winter, p.64.[2] BBC News online (http://www.bbc.co.uk)

Plagiarism 4

• If we wanted to check out their sources (did they plagiarise!)

• http://www.bbc.co.uk

• Is this any use to us?• Try to find it!!• Want to know more

about it!!

´45 minute deployment´ claim in News

• Go to the news page• It’s not there!!

• There is a search box

• Copy text into the box

Definition for students

Taking the ideas or copying someone else’s work and

presenting it as if it were your own?

Detection ServiceJISC PDS

• Staff member has a user profile– www.submit.ac.uk

• Create a Class with a password (can be known by students)

• Staff member creates an assignment like >>>• “create a text document that explains phi”• Students can individually enrol or staff member

enrols them• Assignments are input to system via file upload• Originality report is auto-generated for each

assignment

Originality Report

Blue less than 20 matching words Green 0-24% matching text Yellow 25% - 49% matching text Orange 50% - 74% matching text Red 75% - 100% matching text

• ‘Originality reports are simply tools to help find sources that contain text similar to submitted papers’ (JISC PAS)

Originality Report Detail

• Top of report shows list of sources• Report highlights matching text• Can view source• If source is another paper submitted need to

request permission to view from class owner• Papers submitted are checked against

– Billions of internet documents– Archived copy of the internet– Local database of submitted student papers– ProQuest Commercial Database

PHI text documents

• Received 72 reports

• 75-100% 8

• 50-74% 7

• 25-49% 17

• 0-24% 29

• <20 words 11

Notes on Exercise

• “why bother referencing properly if it is not assessed”

• Final Year Students allowed to view other student’s originality reports anonymously in the tutorial

• Sticking references at end made it OK• No quotes• No citations showing source of knowledge

acquisition within body of report

Peer Assessment

• Students will reference and source because they know it will be “marked properly”

• “Good to catch the B*******”

• Students have pride in their work, they don’t like to be cheated

• CAP system ( originally Computerized Assessment with Plagiarism)

WEB ADDRESS

Setting Assignments

• Evaluative type essays are difficult to mark, hence provide essays of the type “ explain what is ….”

• CAP can remove time consuming nature of traditional marking

• Students get a grade for performing marking ‘well’• Opens up problem .. What does a student do if they

identify plagiarism?• To be able to mark well, must understand subject

area

Higher Order Evaluative Skills

• Bank of essays from previous years

• Know marks & comments

• Give these essays to the students

• Judge them on their ability in marking and assessing essays

• REMOVES POSSIBILITY OF PLAGIARISM

Are essay banks a problem?

• Not if we assess in a composite way

E.g. MCQ test associated with subject area

Presentations

Self-Assessment

Peer-Assessment

Exams (as a last resort)

• It should be remembered that often JUST providing extra time for students with specific needs is a negative not a positive for them.

When to take action?

• Is it OK if JUST formative?

• If it constitutes part of a bigger assignment?

• In peer-assessment > if a student fails to take action or fails to recognise plagiarism > what does this indicate?

• ACTION can have a SERIOUS effect on a student > Degree Classification

Student’s Final Year Results

• 86

• 76

• 71 (this module)

• 84

• 77

• carry through 80 & 75

IMPORTANT

• If you try to plagiarise• Tool to “catch you”• Tool to “help and

support”

• Not a tool to trap

• Don’t chance it … or even >