How can you deal with plagiarism?
One dilemma is plagiarism (and cheating) and how to deal with it.
Increasing class sizes, lack of teacher/student face -to -face communication, loss of librarian/ student supervision, growing use of large banks of information has increased the risk of plagiarism. The cut and paste of Internet research has increased the problem perhaps more inadvertently for students than cheating.
Given the new collaborative learning, social constructivism and Internet approach to knowledge and information, is there really such a thing as intellectual property and individual thought?
There are online ‘paper-mills’ where for a fee you can buy a paper for an assignment, which is certainly wrong.
Isn’t it?
Where do we draw the line in the sand between literature search and plagiarism?
Heberling’s paper makes the point that for many reasons it is harder to cheat or plagiarise in online media, which Rowe’s paper refutes. Whats the truth?
Although a teacher can read posted thoughts and have an idea how good a student is, when suddenly atypical writing occurs or two people are handing in the same assignment, without a proctor, you can never be sure of who an author may really be.
Is asking others for help authentic learning or plagiarism?
What do you think?
Unfortunately cheating is common and universities are so busy raising funds that ethics and faculty desire for authentic work may be in conflict with administration. Leonard Mertz’s paper provides some interesting thoughts on this issue.
Is plagiarism the responsibility of the student, teacher or administration’s? Is it the fault of the Internet, computers or social culture that reinforces a Machiavellian approach?
Currently we are using 4 approaches to deal with cheating:
1 The ethical approach discusses values and virtue towards learning, not just obtaining a piece of paper.
2 The prevention approach. We can use a password login, changing the password at regular intervals. Several short assessments ,group submissions, small group-work, increase student/facilitator contact and open-book exams prevent cheating and plagiarism.
3 The policing approach uses currently available software for plagiarism. A set of rules and principles are established by universities and journal editors to discourage plagiarism. Punishments and legal recourse also controls cheating. Although the case of the student who sued the university for letting him plagiarise raises issues of who sues who.
4 The iMap which visually records the thought processes of literature search using diagrams, text, images, concept maps as a working record of process. It is much like a reflective journal but is more thorough in portraying thought processes.
Do you have any other ways to monitor plagiarism or cheating?
Further reading
Walden, K& Peacock, A (2006) The I-Map: a process centred response to plagiarism. Assessment and evaluation in higher education 31(2) pp201-214
Retrieved USQ library ERIC database 13/5/2007
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.usq.edu.au/ehost/pdf?vid=6&hid=3&sid=493709b9-2725-438a-88a6-841abb0eb883%40sessionmgr8
Heberling,M (2002) Maintaining Academic Integrity in Online Education Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration V(1)
Retrieved 12/5/2007
http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring51/heberling51.html
Anderson,C (2001) Online cheating – a new twist to an old problem Student Affairs 2 (winter) retrieved 13/5/2007
http://www.studentaffairs.com/ejournal/Winter_2001/plagiarism.htm
Rowe NC (2004) Cheating in online student assessment: beyond Plagiarism Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration VII(II) retrieved 13/5/2007
http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/summer72/rowe72.html
Leonard Mertz, D(2005) Is Plagiarism on the rise or just being Disregarded at Online Universities? Worldwide Learn retrieved 13/5/2007
http://www.worldwidelearn.com/education-articles/plagiarism.htm
14 comments:
Plagiarism and academic misconduct are certainly big issues.
I don't think that any of the approaches that you mention are mutually exclusive.
Part of the role of the first year of university (which I teach) is to induct students into University culture - part of this is making very clear the expectations and also making explicit (rather than tacit) the Western understandings of academic culture and individual thought and intellectual property. This makes the values and ethics clear.
I combine this with a prevention approach - my assessment is quite distinct and it is obvious is students don't do the work themselves - I have explicit instructions, provide readings and templates for certain parts of the assignment(s).
The final hurdle in my arsenal is the use of an online plagiarism detection software. All students must submit electronically to the system. I provide a short video explaining how it works and how they can check their own plagiarism report and what the report means and when I decide the report is a problem. This allows students to police themselves.
I think the combination of options or approaches works well - I have cut my plagiarism rate from over 25% to 5%.
Wow Cassandra
You have an admirable approach and outcome to plagiarism. I would be interested in seeing the video if it is available.
It certainly makes the course worth taking and the formative assessment meaningful if you have to work for it rather than cheat your way through.
What are some of the techniques that other people in this seminar are using? This might be a good place to share ideas.
Joyce
I'm still picking my jaw up off the floor after reading Cassandra's statistics!
Cathy - the statistics? The cut, or the starting rate? My experience working at 5-6 Universities within the sector is that this is pretty common, though, it does not always match the percentage of those who get caught. I have always been very aware and found it easy to pick up when it was not the students' work - my brain works some strange way where I see patterns in the way people write (almost like music) and it is obvious where it is no longer theirs.
Blogspot had a meltdown when I tried to post my comment so I hope this second attempt doesn’t appear as a repeat of the first – apologies if it does & read no further There'll be dodgy formatting here to because I typed my second message into Word (should have used NotePad - duh) & then pasted it in to here in case I lost it again.
I’m not restricting myself to plagiarism here but talking about referencing as well.
I have to begin by saying what a fantastic thing to have students police themselves. I have only ever heard academics say that they use this software to police the students. This is brilliant because it says “you are responsible for working within academic culture” – it’s positive & empowering & welcomes students to academia. It goes to the heart of several things that I’ve experienced with students in information literacy sessions.
The first is that a lot of students (particularly the young ones I think) don’t see university as a place of building and sharing knowledge & ideas. Many are quite stunned when we talk about plagiarism from this perspective – they actually sit up in their seats at 7pm!! I usually perch on the edge of the front table when I chat with students & I nearly fell off the first time I experienced this!! No joke. I just assumed that they would come to uni with the same perception. Obviously the books & telly that late teens engage with is very different from any that I have or do!! I think that plagiarism is a hard concept if you don’t get the role of knowledge & ideas in a uni environment.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that students often don’t see themselves as active players in their discipline’s knowledge base. Somehow they see their knowledge as separate from it. I’m not sure if they realise later on when they develop professional identity or if it’s not something they ever think about. To me, it seems like something to talk about with students. Maybe teachers do but the students just don’t get it yet. If they did understand, would both plagiarism and referencing mean something different to many?
The third thing I talk about with them (& have only just started doing it recently) is that reference lists help their teachers see that students are building knowledge on solid foundations & that’s important. They seem to take this quite well. I also relate it to their future professional practice – if they’re proposing a design to a client or a boss, they’ll have to be able to demonstrate that it is based on solid evidence so referencing is training them up for work. I’m not met with blank faces when they hear this either. Sometimes people even make comments. It’s great if there’s a non-professional engineer in the class because they sometimes back it up with their experience at work.
The last thing I wonder about (& this particularly relates to the young ones) is the impact of the Internet. For much of their lives information has been freely shared on websites then Wikipedia & freeware. I can just hear them thinking “And?????” when we talk about this stuff. It must sound like we’ve just stepped out of the ark to some students.
I think that this is a job for transformative learning & once I’ve conquered the view that there is no other way but Google to find information, I’m going to work on this one. I already have a rowdy idea but only for f2f so far ;-)
But, I don’t think that I’ll have the same phenomenal impact Cass has had – still can’t get over that & writing all this twice has probably taken half an hour!! Sandra
Thank you Sandra for taking the time to post even though you had to do it twice. Technology is a fallible medium.
I hear what you are saying and I do believe that there is a cultural revolution that will take a lot of transformative learning to turn back. I see it as a lack of moral and ethics teaching that pervades all aspects of our capitalist society.
Using Piaget's model of moral development, I think that there are many people studying who have not achieved the required level of moral development. This may be because there s a larger percentage of te population studying now, and many of them are doing it because they have to rather than they have a love and respect for knowledge.
How could we develop an authentic learning ask to tach them about the ethic of plagiarism do you think?
Joyce
Hi Joyce, I also wonder whether the fact that we're going through a period of lots of first generation uni students who haven't been exposed to talk (at home & with friends) about this stuff before. Could this have an impact on HOW people understand? Sandra
Hi All,
Reading through this section reminded me of a wonderful letter from a teacher to their students...here is the link.
http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/facultyhandbook/taylor_letter.htm
It truly is worth a read.
Judy
Thank you Judy, It is worth a read.The ethical approach seems the most appropriate to me but he has added in a warning about the policing approach.
The letters upfront open and honest style also models integrity.
He has also used a positive word, integrity, rather than the negative aspect, plagiarism
thanks Joyce
Hi guys, I agree with you - it's a fantastic letter.
I do wonder, though, how many students make it through to the end unless it's addressed in the actual learning discussion?
Sandra
Fantastic comments from everyone, and Sandra I love your idea of linking referencing back to the professional context - we can definitely use that in my context.
We have particular problems with plagiarism and inadequate referencing from our India students in the MBA, and I know we're not the only education provider with this problem. This goes back to what Cass alludes to about Western academic culture - it's simply not widely taught in India, in fact if anything they seem to view using the work of others as a good thing - flattery if you like.
This presents a significant problem for us because we tend to assume that students with an undergrad degree entering a postgrad course understand how to reference and understand the gravity of plagiarism, but it's increasingly apparant we have a cohort that don't. Every semester we seem to be adding more information to teach students about this.
I think that in terms of identifying plagiarism, though, authentic assessments make that much easier. If you're asking people to talk about their organisation or context, it's almost impossible for them not to write some original text, and if they try to combine that with text that's not their own, for me it shows up pretty quickly. (Although I don't teach, I do sometimes provide a second eye on assignments that an academic is dubious about.)
Interesting feedback Sharon
Should we however be more culturally aware if we are offering a globalised product?
We are proposing a socially constructed learning model .
Joyce
Yes, I think we do have to be more culturally aware when offering globalised courses. I think we tend to be aware of the easy things, like whether certain content is going to resonate across cultures, but we're not always aware enough of the academic context in which students from different cultures study, and how that will affect their ability to succeed in a course offered by another culture. I think assessment is probably where all this sometimes becomes painfully apparant.
A humorous little diversion for your plagiarism section - at http://alex.halavais.net/?p=1427 a retiring Univ of Buffalo professor, rather than rant at all the plagiarism he'd seen in his long career, delivers some quite acerbic tips on "how to cheat good", as he puts it.
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