Plagiarism Whose fault is it

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PlagiarismWhose fault is it?

• Phil Davies
• FAT

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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

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Exercise Time limit of five minutes

• Write three four sentences in order to answer
  the following question.
• What is F in the context of art, physiology and
  architecture?

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Handout

• Use the information from within the handout to
  write three four sentences in order to answer
  the following question
• What is F in the context of art, physiology and
  architecture?

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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?

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Placing the lecturer in a students 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?

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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

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Is electronic detection of plagiarism a reality?

• Time consuming for lecturers to source
  information
• Use Google etc., but shouldnt 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

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Plagiarism 1

• In the past, to plagiarise another persons 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 webs easy
  access to information over the infamous Iraq
  dossier ("Iraqs 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 gthttp//online.northumbria.ac.uk/facul
  ties/art/information_studies/Imri/Jiscpas/site/adv
  _academicprac.asp
• When Tuesday 19th October, 2004

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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

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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 persons 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 webs
  easy access to information over the infamous Iraq
  dossier ("Iraqs 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 plagiarised2.
• 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)

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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!!

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45 minute deployment claim in News

• Go to the news page
• Its not there!!
• There is a search box
• Copy text into the box

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Definition for students

• Taking the ideas or copying someone elses work
  and presenting it as if it were your own?

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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 gtgtgt
• 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

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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)

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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

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PHI text documents

• Received 72 reports
• 75-100 8
• 50-74 7
• 25-49 17
• 0-24 29
• lt20 words 11

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Notes on Exercise

• why bother referencing properly if it is not
  assessed
• Final Year Students allowed to view other
  students 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

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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 dont
  like to be cheated
• CAP system ( originally Computerized Assessment
  with Plagiarism)

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WEB ADDRESS
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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

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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

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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.

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When to take action?

• Is it OK if JUST formative?
• If it constitutes part of a bigger assignment?
• In peer-assessment gt if a student fails to take
  action or fails to recognise plagiarism gt what
  does this indicate?
• ACTION can have a SERIOUS effect on a student gt
  Degree Classification

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Students Final Year Results

• 86
• 76
• 71 (this module)
• 84
• 77
• carry through 80 75

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IMPORTANT

• If you try to plagiarise
• Tool to catch you
• Tool to help and support
• Not a tool to trap
• Dont chance it or even gt

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