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Directorate of Human Resources
Strange Bedfellows
The interaction of student plagiarism and assessment practice
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Online essay site ‘may put patients at risk’Hospital patients could be placed at risk because a new online essay service might tempt trainee nurses to cheat their way through university, plagiarism experts have warned. The website – called nursing-essays.com – was launched last month as a service that provides “a selection of high-quality model nursing essays, which are perfect for nursing students everywhere looking for a helping hand”…
Phil Baty05 August 2005
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Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
www.nursing-essays.com
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Shock and horror?
Plagiarism is: more complicated
more interesting
more useful
…seeing beyond the headlines
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
A tale of two surveys
July 2003
31 institutions
July 2005
60+ institutions
no total 6,500 cases
30% had no cases no nil reports
3 @ 200-250 cases 2 @ 700+ and named
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
What I recommend you notice
Under-reporting
[July, 2005 Scottish Examination Board
180,000 candidates, 500 exams
41 cases reported]
Under-detecting
[50% admit ignoring]
Naïve academics
Increasingly pragmatic and strategic students
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
You read, I go searching…
Is the eBay offer a threat to civilisation as we know it?
If not, what does it threaten?
Be ready to tell others in two minutes
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
The point:
Plagiarism forces us to rethink assessment
We need to resist incorrect or opportunistic attempts to say what the rise in case numbers signify
Changes to deal effectively with plagiarism will improve assessment, skills development, institutional integrity…
…and learning
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Others’ uses of plagiarism
• Profit-based, market-place thinking and outcomes-based programmes have killed education
• Widening participation is wrong
• Exams are the only way to test students
• Managers are evil
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
respondents reported that they felt ‘lost and bewildered’ at university implying that academic integration was a major issue… [it] is strongly associated with a person’s perception that it is somehow ‘natural’ and fundamentally ‘right and proper’… to be a university undergraduate.
Such perceptions are less common perhaps among non-traditional students… First year courses should aim to make ‘non-traditional students’ feel at home in the academic environment and to believe that a university education is a natural experience for people from all sorts of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds.”
Barnett, 2005
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Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
New metaphors?
Not:
crime
war
disease
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Four reasons plagiarism improves assessment practice
1. Shared understanding of UK academic culture and practices
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Shared understanding?… a definition
‘submitting someone else’s work as your own’
‘work’ What is that?‘someone else’s work’ How can work belong to
others?‘my own work’ What makes work belong to
me?‘submitting’ What is OK?
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
‘Submitting someone else’s work as your own’
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
UK learning culture
‘Original’ does not mean ‘no one ever thought of it before’. It means ‘made by you’, ‘coming from you’.
‘Your own words’ does not mean words that have never been used before. It means ‘written by you’.
You ‘show you know’ by changing things. Transformation shows understanding
‘New’ means putting together others’ work in a new way
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Four reasons plagiarism improves assessment practice
1. Shared understanding of UK academic culture and practices
2. Better skills development
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
I gave them an hour’s lecture about plagiarism so they definitely know about it but I still get it. It’s in the handbook.
What’s wrong with them?
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Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
The melody
361 ● 3612
361 ● 3612
3523 6165
1652 6132
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Are you ready to perform in a concert in two months’ time?
If not, what do you need to be ready?
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Four reasons plagiarism improves assessment practice
1. Shared understanding of UK academic culture and practices
2. Better skills development
3. Better learning
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Better learning: process, not product
• Submitting drafts – they draft!
• Tracking the process – there is one
• Activity as a pre-requisite for learning
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Four reasons plagiarism improves assessment practice
1. Shared understanding of UK academic culture and practices
2. Better skills development
3. Better learning
4. Better institutional integration
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
If you can’t love it, use it
• Clarify your own thinking
• Collaborate
• Focus on pedagogy, not catch and punish
• Document and research the local
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Summing up
• Pedagogy
• Patience
• Practical help
• Publicity
