1

Strategies for Preventing Student Plagiarism

Kam-Por Kwan, EDCx6287

etkpkwan@polyu.edu.hk

EDC Lunchtime Session

30 March 2001

2

Plan for this session

Meaning and forms of plagiarism: why is it a concern

Reasons for students to plagiarize

Sharing of experience and practice in combating plagiarism

Ideas about good practices in preventing student plagiarism

3

A cheating game?

Advances in IT make plagiarism much easier than ever downloading/purchase of online papers cut-and-paste plagiarism of electronic materials

U.S. News (1999): 80% of high-achieving high school students

admitted to having cheated at least once 75% of college students confessed to cheating

at least once 90% believed that cheaters never pay the price

No comparable data for Hong Kong or PolyU

4

What is plagiarism?

Consider the following cases: a student copies the entire/a substantive part

of another student’s essay or work a student copies and pastes large chunks of

materials from various sources (e.g. the Internet) without thinking or integration

a student utilizes materials directly from textbooks and notes without citing the sources

a student quotes other people’s work without providing proper citation/referencing

a group of students discuss ideas and produce work that are similar in many aspects

5

Why does it matter?

Brainstorming For each of the cases above, explain: whether they should be

considered plagiarism, and

whether those practices should be discouraged, and why or why not.

6

Plagiarism: A definition

“… to steal from the writings or ideas of another” (Chambers English Dictionary, 1988)

“… to take and use as one’s own the thoughts, writings, or inventions of another” (Oxford English Dictionary, 1987)

“… using another’s work without giving credit” (UC Davis: http://sja.ucdavis.edu/sja/plagiarism.html )

7

Why students plagiarize?

Plain laziness

Low chance of being caught

To save time and effort, especially when overloaded

Poor time management and planning skills

Perceiving the task as trivial/unimportant/not useful

Fear of failure/lack of confidence in own writing

Unclear about the permissible level of collaboration

Lack of guidance on proper way of quoting and citing other people’s work

8

Intentional versus unintentional plagiarism

Intentional direct copying of

past or present students’ work

direct copying of other people’s work from various sources

downloading the workload: obtaining term papers from the Internet

…

Unintentional unaware of the

need /proper way of citing or quoting other people’s work

poor writing style collaborative

effort in dealing with assessment tasks

…

9

How do you prevent plagiarism?

Sharing of experience How often do your students

plagiarize in their submitted work? What are the most common forms?

Do you or your department have a clear policy about plagiarism? How do you make it known to students

What actions do you/your dept take to educate students about plagiarism?

What strategies have you used to prevent student plagiarism?

10

Preventing plagiarism

Make the penalties clear

Make it more difficult for students to plagiarize

Reduce the incentive for students to plagiarize

Help students avoid unintentional plagiarism

11

Make the penalties clear

Set clear policy on: what constitutes plagiarism the penalties for plagiarism and other forms

of academic dishonesty

Make clear to students the policy

Stress the severe sanctions for plagiarism

Make visible your efforts to detect plagiarism and confront students who are suspected of having plagiarized

12

Make plagiarism more difficult

Set assessments that require students to apply ideas or relate to their personal experience/ a particular (local) example

Require specific components for the assessment e.g. most recent references, personal

interviews or surveys, case studies, personal reflections, etc.

Require process steps for the assessment task: e.g. outline, drafts, annotated bibliography

Require oral reports of student work Keep copies of past paper/student work

13

Reduce incentives to plagiarize

Make the assessment relevant/meaningful/ useful to learning

Ensure that students are not overloaded

Make clear the requirements and expectations of the assessment tasks

Explain the assessment criteria

Structure the assessment by setting a series of deadlines for various intermediate tasks

Assure/inform students of help available

14

Help students avoid plagiarism

Educate students about plagiarism: discuss with students what plagiarism is and

why it is an unacceptable practice in education

clarify the permissible level of collaboration in assessment

explain the proper way of citing and quoting other people’s work

15

Useful resources for staff

Examples of anti-plagiarism policy Northwestern University

http://www.nwu.edu/uacc/uniprin.html University of Kentucky

http://www.chem.uky.edu/courses/common/plagiarism.html

Strategies for preventing plagiarism: Preventing Academic Dishonesty (University of

California, Berkeley) http://www.uga.berkeley.edu/sled/bgd/prevent.html

Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers (Vanguard University of South California) http://www.vanguard.edu/rharris/antiplag.html

16

Useful resources for staff (2)

Preventing and Detection Websites: Downloadable term papers: What’s a Prof. to Do

http://www.uiowa.edu/~centeach/newsletter/online/term-paper-download.shtml

Cut-and-Paste Plagiarism: Preventing, Detecting and Tracking Online Plagiarismhttp://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/~janicke/plagiary.htm

Plagiarism.orghttp://www.uga.berkeley.edu/sled/bgd/prevent.html

MOSS: A System for Detecting Software Plagiarism http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~aiken/moss.html

EVE (Essay Verification Engine) http://www.canexus.com/eve/index3.shtml

17

Resources for students

How not to plagiarize Plagiarism and how to avoid it (Gardner, HKU,

2001)http://ec.hku.hk/plagiarism/introduction.htm

Avoiding Plagiarism: Mastering the art of scholarship (UC Davis) http://sja.ucdavis.edu/sja/plagiarism.html