Designing out designing in in the Open University: strategies for dealing with student plagiarism

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Designing out designing inin the Open
University strategies for dealing with student
plagiarism

• Jude Carroll
• 19 January 2005

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Four Ds for today

• Define it
• Design out easy opportunities, design in checks
  and verification designing in learning the
  rules
• Detect it
• no blind eyes
• using a range of strategies
• Deal with it when found

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Defining plagiarism collusion big questions

• submitting someone elses work as your own for
  your own benefit
• Why focus on work?
• What makes something my work?
• How does work come to belong to someone else?
• What work does not belong to someone?
• How do you show you know or understand?
• Why is HE different from other contexts?

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• Submitting someone elses work as your own

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Two different perspectives

• Submitting someone elses work as your own work
  (Anon)
• Creating a false assumption in an assessor by
  borrowing, without specific acknowledgement, from
  other published or unpublished work (source?)

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Activity which word is best?

• Work in threes for 5 minutes
• Then
• How might you use this kind of activity with
  students?

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Why? Students rationalisations explanations

• Misunderstanding Lack of clarity re
  definitions, rules
• Lack of clarity in assignment brief,
  requirements
• Misuse Poor application of rules and
  conventions
• Weak academic skills, weak English skills
• Lack of confidence in self as learner
• Poor personal planning / time management
• Misconduct Too easy to resist
• Multiple demands and/or bunched assignments
• Already an established behaviour
• Huge fear of failure
• Entirely extrinsic motivation

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Things academics do that make it more likely

• Too much Bunched assignments
• Over-assessment
• Lack of clarity unclear briefs
• not distinguishing between collaboration and
  collusion
• not stressing what is valued and not rewarding
  it with marks
• Type of task Show you know assignments
• Single-solution assignments
• Setting already-been-solved problems
• Not changing the task or brief each time
• Focus on the end product only
• Not requiring and rewarding evidence of process

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Task does your OU experience fit this?

• Inspect the list of student explanations /
  rationalisations
• does it ring true for your OU students?
• any to add? Any not at all relevant?
• Inspect the makes it more likely factors
• which have you experienced/ done personally?
• which do you know happen in others courses?
• which are the most fruitful for action today?
• Be ready to report back consensus answers in 10
  minutes

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Design in academic apprenticeship

• -early activities to build shared understanding
  of academic conventions and values
• -early individual diagnostic activities testing
  understanding and skills
• -course requirements to know and use conventions
• - targeted feedback on correct / incorrect use of
  academic rules of citation, originality,
  attribution
• --assessing the students use of feedback in the
  final grade
• -excellent written support and guidance

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Generic guidance designing out plagiarism

• Start early. Habits behaviour, once
  established, dont change
• Acknowledge and work with students poor
  planning.
• How? Require stages, chunk tasks, create
  compilation assessments
• Check things are happening, require evidence of
  activity not assessed perhaps as a
  requirement
• Consider peer review and peer assessment. Make
  work public and owned force them to listen to
  and use the results of peer review value it
• Review assessment criteria. Match assessment
  rewards with stressed values.

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focus on assignment tasks

• Novelty task or format
• what is required specific, local , recent
• personal, individual, unique
• Higher-order cognitive skills (eg. rank,
  justify, choose, revise, interpret, analyse,
  invent, plan
• not knowledge (eg. describe, state) or
  understanding (explain) or generic application
• Assess the process as well as (or instead of) the
  product
• Authenticate (Who did this work?)

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Task inspecting two briefs

• Have a look at both briefs.
• For each example, identify how students might
  meet the requirements without learning
  anything.. List the plagiarism opportunities.
• Which of the generic suggestions might help here?
  
• Make it less likely that students see the brief
  and think, I have to make that rather than, I
  have to find that.

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Its hard to spot your own ..

• Too close. or too used to one kind of
  assessment
• Wrong time of the year for thinking
• Not being sure what is possible or permissible
• Worry about workload
• need peer review or outsiders eyes

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Dealing with plagiarism key aspects

• Making a case civil law, balance of
  probabilities
• Protecting the spotter time, stress,
  relationship with students
• Consistent, transparent, fair
• Record keeping
• Monitoring, acting on the data