Plagiarism prevention or detection The educative capabilities of SafeAssignment

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Plagiarism prevention or detection? The educative
capabilities of SafeAssignment

• Dominic Keuskamp Regina Sliuzas
• Student Learning Centre
• Flinders University

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Background

• Prolific public academic discussion regarding
  plagiarism within higher education
• High profile student staff cases
• Most universities have employed academic
  integrity policies procedures, to prevent
  similar occurrences
• Plagiarism widely seen as a threat to the basis
  of (Western) academia trust in ethical behaviour
  is the cultural glue that enables academia to
  function successfully (Rosamond 2002, p.168).
• Tightening of attitudes towards borrowing ideas
  with more competitive performance-driven
  academic environments?

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Online bandits

• Has plagiarism increased with the explosion of
  online resourcesand the ease with which students
  can cut paste?
• or has it always occurred simply become more
  visible as awareness of the issue has increased?
• Changes in students attitudes to information due
  to its ready availability on the Internet?
• One-armed bandit syndrome (Barberio 2004)
• Search engines as an ever-available knowledge
  prosthesis (Gorman 2007)
• New ethics and values for digital natives
  file-sharing, Web 2.0

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Our perspective

• Faculty-based teaching staff more likely to take
  punitive approach
• ALL advisers play unique role
• assisting students to develop academic literacy
• more likely to be aware of reasons that
  plagiarism has occurred in the writing process

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Text-matching software

• Turnitin, SafeAssignment etc.
• Matches entire text of submitted work with
  electronic archive, highlights matched text
  sources, gives matched text in a generated
  report
• Primarily promoted to enhance detection, although
  attention drawn to educative potential
• Through the provision of student access to the
  software, students can learn more about the
  process of academic writing thereby improving
  their skills. (Flinders University Teaching
  Learning website)

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Questions for research teaching

• How does TMS communicate with students?
• Does it lead to a greater understanding of
  academic integrity?

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Methodology

• Analysis of 21 reports from voluntarily submitted
  assignments
• Students not identified but comprised diverse
  group
• Information provided by reports is predominantly
  in numerical form, so quantitative approach taken

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Data collection
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Results

• Overall mean of 4 matching text per assignment
  (24 with none)
• 29 of assignments included adjudged plagiarism
  within highlighted sentences
• 15 of instances of adjudged plagiarism resulted
  from inadequate paraphrase - phrase
  interchange/synonym substitution.
• 95 of the highlighted sentences adjudged
  non-plagiarised contained text of a generic or
  technical nature, or contained proper nouns.

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Conclusions

• TMS statistics alone are insufficient for
  judgement regarding plagiarism
• Students must command multiple literacies
• Thresholds of text-matching need careful
  evaluation
• Students perceptions of the information
  communicated to them remain to be identified
• Utility of TMS for detection far clearer than for
  educationand what of prevention?

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Wider considerations

• Scanlon (2006) questions whether the use of TMS
  is technologism, which includes attempts to
  operationalize ethics in a decision algorithm
  (Dombrowski 1995)
• Are we shifting the burden of decision making
  (for student and lecturer) onto a system,
  bypassing consideration of pedagogical ethical
  questions?
• Ethics cannot be reduced to technai because of
  the uniqueness of every situation (Dombrowksi
  1995)

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• Article published as
• Plagiarism prevention or detection? The
  contribution of text-matching software to
  education about academic integrity JALL 1(1)
  A91-A99
• Available at
• http//www.aall.org.au/journal/ojs/index.php/jall/
  article/view/29/41
• Or contact
• Dominic.keuskamp_at_flinders.edu.au
• Regina.sliuzas_at_flinders.edu.au